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“Ask the Animals”
October 20, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church,
Pastor Anna Blinn Cole
Job 12:1-15
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
Job 12:1-15
12Then Job answered:2 ‘No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you.3 But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know such things as these?4 I am a laughing-stock to my friends; I, who called upon God and he answered me, a just and blameless man, I am a laughing-stock.5 Those at ease have contempt for misfortune, but it is ready for those whose feet are unstable.6 The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure, who bring their god in their hands.7 ‘But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you;8 ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.9 Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?10 In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.11 Does not the ear test words as the palate tastes food?12 Is wisdom with the aged, and understanding in length of days?13 ‘With God are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding.14 If he tears down, no one can rebuild; if he shuts someone in, no one can open up.15 If he withholds the waters, they dry up; if he sends them out, they overwhelm the land.
Hey everybody. I’m so happy to be back with you today. I’m happy for all of the normal reasons like I missed you and camping in the cold rain is not super fun. But I’m also really happy to be here today because today we’re starting a little mini-series on my favorite book of the Bible. It’s the Book of Job. And if you’re thinking, isn’t that book where everything that could possibly go wrong for this man named Job, does go wrong. You’re right. This is that book. This is that story.
I don’t love that Job suffers in this story. And he loses a lot. Family. Home. Farm. But what I love about this story is that it is very real. It is very honest in the sense that everything does not go perfectly. It feels honest in a relatable way to real life, like now, when hard things actually happen and we can’t sugar coat it or “pray it away.” Job is our guy. Hard things happen to him and he’s frustrated. He’s confused. He's angry. He asks the question that we have probably asked at least once in our life: “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
I love this little piece of the Bible because it wrestles with hard questions without providing easy answers. And maybe loving that makes me weird. But in all honesty, I think life is too complicated for a faith that just provides easy answers.
Job is what Biblical scholars call Wisdom Literature, a subsection of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. The narrative is not interested in setting this story in a historical time period or really even in a well-known place. It’s not history. It’s wisdom. And it’s timeless.
Now, I’m not going to give you a full summary of Job. I have actually linked to a great 11-minute video that does just that. It’s on our Facebook page and will be linked in the comments on this live stream. But I do need to give you a little bit of context for what is happening in the passage we just heard and how any of this relates to the stated theme of the day, the animals. Trust me, it all connects.
Job is a man to whom very difficult things have happened. He is a good man. He loves God. He does all the right things. Yet he loses so much. He loses his farm, the animals and farm workers to fire and theft. He loses his house and his children in a bad storm. He then also gets very sick. And if all of that weren’t enough, his wife, who is still with him, says “you might as well just give up.”
Job has lost everything that matters to him. And almost just as bad as the pain of losing what he loved, is the confusion he’s feeling when he thought that being a good person would somehow earn a better outcome for him with God. Everything in his faith tradition so far has told him this wouldn’t happen.
This is about the time in the story when Job’s “friends” show up. They are the kind of “friends” that show up when everything has gone wrong in your life and try to give you advice about what you could have done differently. Do you know the type?
And they just pile it on. Your life is so terrible, Job, and normally God is so good. So if your life is terrible, and God is really good, then….that must mean you weren’t good enough. And they spend chapter after chapter thinking and discussing together in front of Job, with Job, what Job must have done that was wrong.
And now I must pause for a short meme break because when it comes to Book of Job Memes the internet did not disappoint.
It’s worth it, even with a typo, because it captures the feeling we’ve all had and Job was experiencing. “Friends” who try to help you feel better by trying to explain why you are suffering; trying to justify your suffering in some way; especially by saying God caused it. These people are not your friends and they certainly aren’t worth quoting.
And just about the time we open our Bible to read our passage today, Job has had enough of it.
12 Then Job answered: (and I love this line)2 ‘No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you.
If this explanation is the best that the people around him can give him, this kind of “wisdom from people” is surely dead. Because it just doesn’t make sense. Bad things are happening to good people while bad people just sit around and have a good life.
Job goes on, I am not an idiot. I have been faithful to God. I have served God well. And you laugh at me? It’s easy for those who have not experienced hardship to understand what those in hardship are truly feeling. Don’t try explaining my situation to me. That’s not caring. That’s not what God would want.
Job is tired of his friends’ wisdom that says everything happens for a reason, so deal with it. Instead, look around you, says Job. And here something is shifting, he’s beginning to get a hint of a different kind of wisdom and it’s not coming from the humans around him.
The wisdom of people, Job says, dies with them.
Ask the animals instead.
V. 7:
ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you;8 ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.9 Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?10 In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.
What is Job saying? That in the midst of a roller coaster of emotions as he wades through the tragedy of his life, he’s not interested in cheap religious advice that sounds good on paper. He’s not interested in platitudes. Deep down inside he’s not interested in a version of God where suffering is a consequence of not praying enough. He’s beginning to see a wider view of God. A view in which God is the creator and every living thing in God’s creation lives and breathes with God’s care. Ask the animals and they will teach you. God loves us. God cares about us. You, me, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea. God is the source of all wisdom and God has given us all that we need.
By looking outside of himself toward animals, another part of God’s glorious creation’ By looking there instead of at the traditional advice being spouted to him by the humans, Job sees a different kind of Wisdom.
This is what’s so refreshing about the Book of Job. It flips the script. Instead of believing things about God that other people tell you, look outside of yourself and humanity, in general. Observe God’s creation. God’s First Testament.
Start with the animals. They will teach you what you need to know.
They will show you God’s goodness when they cuddle on your lap, like a puppy who has learned to trust and rest. They will show you God’s persistent care when they find paths through the mountain hills when the roads have washed away, like the mules who carried food to the humans stranded by Helene. They will show you God’s measured, patient timing when they purposefully scurry around burying nuts in the fall to prepare for the winter’s snow, like the squirrel that left its footprints in the wet concrete of our new sidewalks last week.
And then there’s this :
This is a map of the birds in the air. (Below) The Cornell Lab of Ornithology mapping bird migration, to be exact. This is the typical pattern of bird migration each fall.
This is what happened, though, on September 26-28. (Below). What happened? Hurricane Helene happened. No humans needed to tell the birds. They used their senses and then they told each other. Not every bird made it through that storm. But for those who found a way to survive in the midst of disruption and change and tragedy, they teach us a lesson.
When we suffer, the animals teach us that we do not suffer alone. That we are one part of a larger whole. That we can be resilient. That we can care. That we can forge new pathways around big problems. I am not an ornithologist, but I am 100 percent sure no bird blamed another bird’s bad behavior for causing that hurricane to come. They didn’t cast shame or point fingers in blame. They adapted to the tragedy and helped one another get through it.
…ask the animals, and they will teach you; ask the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
Life is really hard. Really horrible things can and will probably happen to us at some point. Yet God made a big world. It includes tragedy and it also includes a lot of beauty. And resilience. And determination. And cuddling. Just ask the animals.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Anna
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