Sermon: Getting Small
Texts: Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 36c; Job 38:1-7, 16-18, 34-41
Date: October 18, 2009
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
We re-enter the story of Job this week in the middle of the whirlwind. The whirlwind. The words flung down by the Almighty are meant to take your breath away.
And they do. This stunning speech of the Lord, of which we heard just a part, is among the most remarkable texts in scripture. It’s beautiful, and awesome, and fierce, even terrifying. This is no cozy Grandmother God who draws you to her bosom to rock and comfort you. Open another book in the biblical library if you want to see that side of the Divine. This God roars at the puny human who has dared to call the Lord to account.
Poor Job. He is suffering; it’s what he is famous for. He’s lost his property, his livestock, his wife, his children, and his health. He’s lost everything except his confidence that he did nothing to deserve the suffering he is just barely enduring. He wonders why God has become his enemy. So he has called for God to meet him on his turf, end the silence and answer for this suffering. He wants answers, and he wants them now.
Would he have initiated this meeting had he known God would show up in a whirlwind? Perhaps he didn’t really think God would make an appearance at all. Can’t you just feel his wretched “uh-oh” when the wind whirls and he is engulfed in this overwhelming encounter?
God does not comfort Job. Far from it! “Who is it that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” God gets downright sarcastic at one point. After asking if Job knows the way to the dwelling place of light, this line: “Surely you know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is so great!” [Job 38:21]. This fierce God does not comfort Job. Yet the end result of the Lord’s long speech is curiously comforting. Why is it that putting Job in his place is so captivating?
I suspect it has something to do with getting small. Do any of you remember Steve Martin’s old comedy schtick about getting small? It was very silly; I’m not sure why it was so hilarious. He started by saying that he didn’t do drugs any more. Except for one thing, this new thing, maybe you’ve heard of it, it makes you small. About this big. “And you know, I’ll be home, sitting with my friends, and we’ll be sitting around and someone will say, ‘Heeeyyy…let’s get small.’ So you know, we get small, and the only bad thing is if some tall people come over…” He goes on to talk about how he knows he shouldn’t get small while driving, but sometimes gives in to the temptation. When the cop pulls him over he looks at him and says, “Heeeyy…are you small?” “Nooo! I’m not!” The cop says, “Well, I’m gonna have to measure you.”
The speech of God about the wonders and mysteries of creation have the effect of measuring Job. And he ends up looking pretty small, doesn’t he? I don’t think it was Job’s intention to begin with. I don’t think he called on the Lord to meet up in order to get small. In fact, ol’ Job was towering over center stage in the drama of his own life when he called on the Lord to answer him, right now. His situation was dominating his field of vision, taking up all the psychic space available to him. Any other actors in his drama were relegated to bit parts; his environment might as well have been transparent for as much as he was seeing it. He was a giant in his own landscape.
Not that I blame him. I can get obsessed with a sore foot or an injured feeling, quickly arriving at that “it’s all about me” space. I don’t suffer a fraction of the loss, grief and ill health that preoccupied Job. I understand completely how Job would be looming large in his own life story.
Yet even for Job it is appropriate to put him in his place, shrink him down to size. The end result of God measuring Job and finding him small is therapeutic for Job. It’s not cozy and comforting, but it is healing. And isn’t that the way it is in life sometimes? When whatever is troubling us is taking up our entire field of vision, when we’ve begun to imagine that the drama is all about me and it’s starting to look like a tragedy, getting small can actually help us get a grip. You mean there are other actors on this stage? You mean this tree on my stage is something more than a prop for my scene? Are you saying there are other people in this human story who are suffering, too? And many whose pain dwarfs mine? Sometimes we just need a little perspective. Not that this is gospel, but there is considerable wisdom in what Rick says to Ilsa in the closing scene of “Casablanca”: “I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.”
When God addresses Job he puts his small life in the context of not just immense space but immeasurable time. And that’s another way that getting small can be soothing. One of our kids (not a morning person) was apt to star in an a.m. drama that went something like this. She would get up a little late because the alarm didn’t go off, and while rushing around, she would stub her toe. If she then poured sour milk on her Cheerios or couldn’t find the permission slip that was overdue, she would usually declare that the whole day was ruined. This was before 8:15 in the morning. So we would try to remind her that there was a lot of day left, and the only way the whole thing was going to be ruined was if she went through the rest of it in a foul mood. Wise old parents that we were, we could maintain the calm perspective that it was still early.
I imagine that God maintains that perspective with our lives, having lived through an eon or two. It’s nearly always true that no matter what is happening in our lives it is still early. We may be suffering grievous loss, thorny conflict, dim prospects. We might even be wondering if life is ruined—no way out. You know what? It’s still early. Hearts heal, reconciliation blossoms, what seem like insoluble problems get solved. If we can get small on the timeline of our lives, we can get some therapeutic perspective. I think this is one of the gifts that God gives Job when God measures him and finds him small.
The thing about God’s speech that is most awe-inspiring and most beneficial is not so much that God finds Job small but that Job finds God immense. He experiences a dramatic reminder that he, Job, is not God. God alone is God. Our small minds can barely grasp the mystery that is the divine creative force in the universe.
This is comforting for several reasons. It’s good to remember that there is a God, and that we are not it. We are not in control of how the universe unfolds. That can be a mite frustrating at those moments when we would very much like to be in control, and would like to be able to instruct God on how things ought to be run. But for the most part, it is a great relief to remember that we do not control and cannot manipulate the divine Life for our own pleasure and ease.
Among other things, that means that I could be an utter failure at what I set out to do and it’s still possible that the universe will progress. I could be a complete failure as a mother, for instance (though I hope I am not), and God will still be a mother and a father to my children. I could make lots of mistakes as the leader of a church and God will still work around me to communicate grace through the rituals and fellowship of the church. God is moving things along toward beauty, harmony, peace, and justice with or without me. That doesn’t excuse me from taking my part and trying to join my efforts with God’s; but it does relieve me of carrying the weight of the whole world on my shoulders. And that’s a good thing. I am grateful to be small in the shadow of God’s vast wings.
God takes Job on a whirlwind tour of the universe in the divine speech at the end of Job. Like an ant being caught up in the palm of a giant, the Almighty shows the small human a glimpse of the immeasurable scope of creation. The author of the book of Job uses the most poetic language available to his or her imagination to lift Job above his usual perspective and get a glimpse of God’s. “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail…?” “Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven?” “Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south?” “Do you know where the mountain goats give birth?” “Who has let the wild ass go free?” “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, or caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth…?”
The staggeringly beautiful truth is that God is not finished with this creation yet. God is an incredibly creative force in the universe still: conceiving, designing, inventing, generating, crafting the creation. We can see the splendor of what has already been done and wonder at what is still evolving. It’s vital that we “get small” on a regular basis—that we tune into the limitless creative force that surrounds us and engulfs us and entices us. I am convinced that seeing ourselves as small in the context of the boundless creation will not leave us feeling weak but rather feeling confident in God’s inexhaustible will to make something new. We ourselves may be made new, and we may enter into the process of divine creativity as God works for the renewal of the earth.
Getting in touch with awe is a shortcut to recalling God’s unbounded imagination. In Jane Wagner’s play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Trudy the bag lady tells about taking her space chums on an outing. “They’re insisting that I take ‘em someplace to get goose bumps. They want to see what it feels like. I think we should take in a play. I got goose bumps once that way. On the way to the play, we stopped to look at the stars. And as usual, I felt in awe….Suddenly I burst into a song: ‘Awe, sweet mystery of life, at last I found thee…’ And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be in awe about something. And I became even more awe-struck at the thought I was in some small way a part of that which I was in awe about. And this feeling went on and on. My space chums got a word for it, ‘awe infinitum.’ ‘Cause at the moment you are most in awe of all you don’t understand, you’re closer to understanding it all than at any other time. And I felt so good inside, my heart felt so full; I decided to set time aside each day to do ‘awe-robics.’”
Excellent advice. Set aside time each day to do awe-robics. May it make you small, may it remind you of the enormity of God’s love, and may you be blessed by being carried away as a participant in divine creativity.