The Third Sunday before Advent
Sermon preached by the Reverend Dr Jonathan Soyars
‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. // And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. // For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep. // Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. // For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.’[i]
With these words sung by soprano and chorus, Georg Friedrich Händel’s Messiah debuted to wide acclaim at Easter, Dublin, 1742. The lyrics themselves were written by the composer’s patron and friend, Charles Jennens,[ii] who makes an interesting exegetical, or interpretive, move. He links our portion of Job 19 with a letter written centuries later by the apostle Paul, which comes down to us as 1 Corinthians. Jennens was not the first to read Job’s supposed ‘redeemer’ as the apostle’s Christ. From the earliest period, leading church thinkers have recognised, reasonably, I think, that Job and Paul can make a deeply resonant pair, that the ideas of redeemer and resurrection help express the mystery of Christ’s long expected return, and through participating in him our entering into full and forever life at the End. Our lectionary agrees, serving up alongside Job two texts that speak of resurrection and our Lord’s reappearance, Luke and 2 Timothy.
Nevertheless, reading our passage from Job exclusively through the lens of resurrection — a thoroughly Jewish lens, by the way — risks limiting the meaning of Job’s words as they flow from his lips. There is another way of fruitfully reading them, one that might speak more immediately to us in our own day. So come with me into the text.
The book begins by introducing Job as a man who, although privileged, ‘was blameless and upright… feared God and turned away from evil’ (1.1, 8). Shortly after that, there is a gathering of heavenly beings, and an Adversary appears, whom Jewish and Christian tradition later names Satan. This Adversary suggests Job’s piety reflects little more than divine protection and blessing. Were God’s protection and blessing removed, the Adversary argues, Job’s piety would evaporate. God seems up for the challenge, so he entrusts Job to the Adversary. In the two scenes that follow, Job loses virtually everything, presumably because of the Adversary’s action: he loses his children, his servants, his livestock, his health. Yet somehow, in the face of such loss and the pain that goes with it, Job neither ‘sin[s] [n]or charge[s] God with [any] wrongdoing’ (1.22). Word of Job’s terrible state gets out, and three of his friends come to visit, supposedly to ‘console and comfort him’ (2.11). At first, they sit with him silently, observing the scale of his suffering (2.13). Then, after a week, those three friends launch into a series of speeches directed at Job, to which he responds. Over many chapters, the four argue about whether Job’s suffering is just, or proportionate, or hopeless. All the while, Job maintains his innocence, without success. Nothing changes.
And so, having lost faith in everyone else, Job places what little confidence he has left in the one whom our modern English translation calls his ‘redeemer’. It even capitalises the word, implicitly linking this ‘Redeemer’ with the God of the next verse, whom Job will eventually see, after the ‘Redeemer’ ‘stands on the earth at the last’ and ushers in the final resurrection, which is Job’s only hope, so the argument goes. This reading we Christians, with Händel, know well.
Some Jewish scholars, unburdened by the typological tendency to read our Lord here and everywhere in Hebrew scripture, construe things rather differently, and sometimes translate our text differently too.[iii] On their reading, Job looks not for a ‘redeemer’ à la Christ, but a ‘vindicator’, precisely because he lacks one now. The difference is small but significant, and it resonates with what Job seeks elsewhere in the book: an ‘umpire’ between him and God (9.33); or a ‘witness’ to plead his case in heaven (16.19). Whether Job has a divine vindicator, even Godself, in view is, to me at least, unclear.[iv] Whoever it is, Job needs a vindicator in part because his friends refuse to understand his struggle, the depth of his loss, and the extent of his alienation. Had his friends done that, they might have at least tried to defend — or vindicate — him, which they did not do. Instead, they offer him platitudes. They quote tradition at him. And they try to force Job to accept those platitudes, to read that tradition and his loss their way, to take a long view. In doing so, even though they are there, in a sense Job’s friends effectively abandon him.
Our passage prompts memories of when I too have abandoned those around me who needed someone, anyone, to vindicate them. From shamefully arguing that a superior’s comment toward a colleague at work was not really that sexist… to silently walking by those experiencing hunger and homelessness on Cambridge’s unequal streets without offering a word, let alone food… too often the real needs of others wronged are far from my mind, sometimes intentionally so. Can you think of a time when, like me, you failed to vindicate someone close to you, or did not even try? I suspect many of us have done that, maybe still do. Such is human nature, as they say.
Thankfully, Job’s longing and scripture more broadly signal a better way. Here’s the thing: unlike Job’s friends, who fail to respond with sufficient empathy to injustice, Jesus, the one we call Christ, does that repeatedly throughout the Gospels, particularly in Luke, the one read today, and he summons his followers to do the same. Our Lord sat, ate, and stayed with all manner of traditionally overlooked, disadvantaged folk, offering them not just presence but advocacy — the shadow side of vindication — in recognition of their real needs. Dare we try to do the same, as Christ calls us, in the days we have left, until we too see God beyond the grave?
This morning, I invite you to advocate with Christ for those in your own spheres of influence who, like Job, crave vindication but have not found an advocate yet. As you do, there are dangers, to be sure, like the danger of paternalism, of thinking you can parachute into a situation and by your powers of instinct or intellect know what the soon-to-be-vindicated requires. Instead, I commend humility, vulnerability, and what theologian Sam Wells calls simply ‘being with’. For him, ‘being with’ is a posture toward others, including those in need, marked by presence, attention, participation, and partnership, much like God’s posture towards us.[v] In practical terms, ‘being with’ requires taking cues not from ourselves but others, by first listening to what sort of vindication or advocacy they say they need, and then working it out together.
Imagine what our community, and our world, would look like if, unlike Job’s friends, that is what we did! I reckon there would be less talking past, less walking by. And there would likely be more solidarity, more cultivation of common cause with those on the sharp side of injustice like Job, with inhabitants of the underside of society like those with whom Jesus advocated, with those perhaps even here today whose lives of seeming security mask real distress. Persistence in that task is difficult, I know, for the task itself seems unending. But one day, it will end. Then death and with it the need for vindication will pass away, as Händel’s lyrics ring in our ears, when our Advocate and Redeemer finally stands, and we set aside all pains and sufferings like Job longed to do, and are, as today’s Collect puts it, ‘made like [Christ] in his eternal and glorious kingdom’.
Until that Day, as true friends and real advocates, keep at it.
Amen.
[i] Georg Friedrich Händel, Messiah (1742). Lyrics by Charles Jennens. Available http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/messiah.htm. Accessed 4 November 2022.
[ii] Denis Stevens, ‘Handel’s Messiah. Note on composition and text by Jennens’. Available https://www.baroquemusic.org/HandelMessiah.html. Accessed 4 November 2022.
[iii] TANAKH, the Holy Scriptures: The new JPS translation according to the traditional Hebrew text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), p. 1366.
[iv] Compare C.L. Seow, Job 1-21: Interpretation and commentary, Illuminations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 802-808.
[v] Samuel Wells, A Nazareth manifesto: Being with God (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), esp. pp. 123-227.