Be that as it may, today we shall soldier on with Job, and if it turns out that God does not come well out of it, then so be it – better that, than run and hide from the text lest its truth discomfort us, than stick our heads in the sand and look for a more comfortable, unchallenging text, a more compliant, less mysterious God.

Much has transpired between last week’s reading from chapter 2, when we left Job on the pile of ash scratching those itchy sores with a potsherd, and today’s reading. Three friends arrive, first to silently mourn with Job, and then to pretty much judge and challenge him and defend God. They argue that Job is suffering because he must have sinned, and that what he needs to do is confess and ask for forgiveness. Job knows that this is not the case, that they have got it wrong, and that if only he could get a fair trial before God, he would prevail. And so we come to today’s reading, a soliloquy spoken by Job.

Job is not asking for much, but on the other hand, maybe he is asking for everything. Job has known suffering beyond endurance, has lost his children, his wealth, his standing in the community, his health, and even the respect of his three friends who condemn Job for not confessing faults (although Job knows that he is blameless). Now he only asks for one thing: that God speak to him, be present to him, give him an audience. Using the language of the legal system, Job would lodge a complaint against God, would haul God into court, would bring God before a tribunal where he would truly be heard and addressed in a manner he could understand. Perhaps over-confident in his oratorical skills, Job believes that if God would just draw near to speak with him, Job would win God over. But Job cannot serve his complaint on God, because he cannot find God; if he knew where God dwelled, even there he would go. But God is absent, and God is silent.

This is the same absence, the same silence, which the psalmist gives voice to in the psalm with which we opened this service (Psalm 77). The psalmist cries aloud to God, that God might hear, and yet God is silent. She prays day and night; lying abed in the lonely solitude of the mid-night hours, she meditates and wonders why God is absent, silent, unresponsive to her pleas.

Elsewhere in the Bible is recounted instances where God was not silent, where God drew near and spoke and provided assurances and promises to peoples and individuals. In that foundational account of the Hebrew people, the Book of Exodus, the Hebrews groan under their bondage to Pharaoh in Egypt, they cry out to God for help, and their cries go up to God, who hears their groaning and resolves to save them, to bring them up out of captivity and to the Promised Land. Earlier, God spoke to Abraham and Sarah, calling them to migrate to Canaan, and promising that despite their advanced years their descendents would be as numerous as the stars in the sky; later, God would speak through the prophets, calling Israel back to its covenant with God when it had strayed, promising comfort and restoration when it was afflicted.

Many of you have testified of how at one time or another God has spoken to you as well. For some, this has taken the form of a voice you have heard, assuring you that you are beloved and cherished; others have testified of experiencing the presence of God in nature, through community, through the experience of love, through a mysterious sense of abiding presence, through worship.

And yet even for these folk these instances of the experience of God’s presence or word are the exception and not the rule. At various times in life just about everyone has found or will find themselves not knowing where or how God might be found, wondering why God appears to be silent in the face of our pleas and our prayers, our suffering and the suffering of others. When one grandchild is rendered a paraplegic and another is struck down by an invasive brain tumor; when a parent is diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a spouse with cancer; when despite decades of hard work an economic downturn forces the family business to close, or a spouse cheats, or a child turns to drugs, or a friend cannot rise from depression; when skyscrapers are felled or car bombs explode or a hurricane wreaks devastation. In the face of this suffering we, like Job, turn round and round looking for God, we raise up our prayers, we search for answers and even just a reassuring presence, and so often we are met not with words but with . . . silence.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor writes “Very few people come to see me because they want to discuss something God said to them last night. The large majority comes because they cannot get God to say anything at all. They have asked as sincerely as they know how for answers, for guidance, for peace, but they are still missing those things. They want me to tell them what they have done wrong. They have heard me talk about God on Sundays and they hope they can make use of my connections. Perhaps I know a special technique they can try or – better yet – perhaps I can lend my own weight to the cause, adding the poundage of my prayers to theirs in an effort to force some sound from God.” (When God is Silent, Barbara Brown Taylor, Cowley Publications 1998 p. 51).

It may be that it is not God who is silent, but we who are blocked from hearing God. Perhaps we are blocked by the ambient noise which continually fills our lives, by the mindless chatter streaming from drive-time radio during our commutes to school and to the office, by the drone of the talking heads on the televisions that populate our rec rooms, living rooms, kitchens and even bedrooms, by the Ipods and Walkmen, the cellphones and the beepers. Maybe we are so used to the depth of the noise which surrounds us that we don’t even realize that perhaps the only way God might get through to us would be for God to put a megaphone right up against our ears!

And yet let us not, as Job’s friends are so quick to do, take God off the hook completely. For Scripture testifies, and our experience confirms, that God will be silent. But let us remember that it has always been against the backdrop of silence that the word of God has begun to be heard. Again, from Barbara Brown Taylor: “In each of the gospels, the Word comes forth from silence. For John, it is the silence at the beginning of creation. For Luke, it is the silence of poor old Zechariah, struck dumb by the angel Gabriel for doubting that Elizabeth would bear a child. For Matthew, it is the awkward silence between Joseph and Mary when she tells him her prenuptial news, and for Mark it is the voice of one crying in the wilderness – the long-forgotten voice of prophecy puncturing the silence of the desert and of time.” (Id., p74). And even when Jesus came preaching, what he left his listeners with more often than not was not answers, but questions, not easy responses, but silent wondering, silence which demanded that his hearers complete the meaning, not only in their minds, but in their actions. What else are we to do with, for example, “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread will give a stone?,” or “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?”

Much as Job longs for an end to the silence of God, he finds God’s silence to be preferable to the nattering, facile explanations of his friends. They are in his way, all their talk drowning out the possibility of hearing God break that silence, all those pat answers getting in the way of Job bringing his case to the only one who Job would have hear it, to the only one who chooses to answer, if at least for the time, with silence.

Perhaps this is the true essence of faith, the willingness to storm God’s silence, to rail against injustice, to go forward and backward and to the left and to the right not only in the hope that God will hear, but trusting that God does hear, that God has not abandoned us, that justice will be done, and that silence – even silence – has a meaning and a purpose. And that behind that silence, unseen and so often unspeaking, is the God who (as we sang earlier) was there to hear our borning cry, who was there as we grew old, and who will be there as the evening gently closes in.

A silent God, with just one more surprise. ----------