There’s a bloke at every barbecue who reckons he’s got God’s number sorted. Do the right thing, say your prayers, front up to Mass, and the Big Fella will give you good crops, healthy kids, and a Bunnings sausage that doesn’t fall out of the bread.

Suffering in this view is suffering only happens to the “others,” the people who didn’t do the right thing. Job is the Bible’s answer to that bloke, and it isn’t gentle.

We meet Job this Sunday only at the very end of the book, after forty-one chapters most of us have never sat through; chapters in which Job loses everything, sits in the ashes scraping his boils with a bit of broken pottery, and then spends round after round arguing with three “mates” who’ve turned up to explain exactly what he’s done wrong to deserve it.

Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are the ancient world’s answer to the fella who messages you after a cancer diagnosis with a theory about your diet. They are wrong. And the author of Job has God say so explicitly.

The book of Job isn’t a story that proves the tidy formula: faithful people suffer, then get rewarded for their faith; so be good and God will look after you. In Job, suffering is pointless, and Job never gets an explanation for his suffering. What he gets is God turning up and asking him where he was when the foundations of the earth were laid which, let’s be honest, is not really an answer. It’s God pulling rank.

And Job accepts it anyway, not because the ledger has been balanced, but because he has encountered the mystery of the divine and he’s stopped needing the ledger.

However, there is a trap in this week’s reading. Job gets everything back double, new kids included. It’s tempting to read that as the happy ending that proves the formula after all. But no new child ever replaces the ten who died, and the text doesn’t pretend otherwise. The restoration isn’t a reward for Job’s faithfulness. It’s pure gift; not a prize.

This brings us, gently, to Luke’s seventy-two disciples, arriving back from their mission trip thrilled that even the demons obeyed them. Jesus redirects them: don’t rejoice because you have been given power over demons; rejoice because you are known to God.

And then that extraordinary prayer of Jesus: “Thank you, Father, for hiding this from the clever and the credentialed, and showing it to the little ones” (Luke 10:21). Job’s three mates were the clever and credentialed. Job, ash-covered and furious, turned out to be the little one – not because he was faithful or wise, but because he recognised the presence of God even in his suffering.

So next time someone at the barbecue tells you their good fortune is God rewarding their virtue, feel free to mention Job. Just maybe leave out the boils till after the snags are done.

Ian J Elmer

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