“Gelassenheit”

“Gelassenheit”

Text: Job 2:1-10

© October 8, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen

Did you know that people who attend worship on a regular basis live longer than people who don’t go to church? Researchers have found that, on average, the typical churchgoer lives 2 to 3 years longer than those who don’t go to church. Or just recently they released a study that found that people who live close to a church have fewer automobile accidents than people who live far from a church.[1]

I think we like to hear those kind of reports. Because those kind of facts and statistics help to reassure us about something that we really want to believe – and that’s if we’re there for God, then God will be there for us. If we stick close to God, then God will stick close to us. If we do good things for God, then God will do good things for us. Deep down inside most of us, that’s the way we hope that it works.

But then we come across this story in the Old Testament called the book of Job, and that whole way of thinking seems to get blown to pieces. In these opening chapters of Job, God and satan have a conversation with each other. And God basically says, “Hey, satan, have you seen my boy Job down there? He’s really something! He’s so good and decent and faithful. He never even thinks about sinning or turning away from me.”

But satan answers, “Come on, God. The only reason that Job is such a Mr. Goody Two Shoes is because of all the incredibly nice things that you do for him all the time. Look at the way that you’ve blessed him with a family and with wealth and with honor. That’s the only reason he’s so good and decent and faithful. He acts that way just so you’ll keep doing more and more stuff for him.”

So God says, “Well, let’s see about that. Tell you what, satan, I give you my permission to go down on the earth and take away all those good things that I’ve given to Job. And then let’s see if he’s still faithful to me.” And so satan did just that. Through a series of disasters, Job lost all his servants, all his livestock, all his wealth. And then to top it off, satan caused a huge wind to blow, knocking down the house where all his sons and daughters were, killing every last one of them. But even after all that, Job remained faithful to God and said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

And that’s where we pick up the story with the passage that we listened to today in chapter 2. God and satan meet up again, and God says, “I told you so. I told you, satan. Despite all that you did to him, Job is still faithful to me no matter what.”

But satan said, “But Job hasn’t really been put to the test yet. Yeah, it’s one thing to lose your wealth. It’s one thing to see other people around you suffer and die. But if it was Job himself that was suffering, I bet he’d be changing his tune in an instant.” And so God gave satan permission to make Job suffer – the only restriction was that satan wasn’t allowed to kill Job.

And so we end up finding Job being afflicted with some horrible, painful skin disease. And even though Job’s wife tells him to give up on God – to even curse God – Job says, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” And then the passage ends with these words: “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” Now, does that simply mean that even after all that had happened to him, Job remained faithful to God? Or does the fact that it says that he didn’t sin with his lips mean that while he still said the right religious words about God with his mouth, deep down inside he had had it with God?

If you read on in Job, you find that the rest of the book is primarily a conversation that three of Job’s friends have with him. But their basic argument is that God only makes bad people suffer. In other words, from their perspective, Job must have committed some sin, and that’s why he’s suffering as he is. And so, according to Job’s friends, what he needs to do is confess his sin to God and change his ways, and then everything will be fine again. But Job insists that he hasn’t done anything wrong, that he didn’t sin. And from the opening chapters of the book, we know that’s true. You see, if someone does some kind of evil, and they’re made to suffer for it, for the most part, we don’t have a problem with that. But what the story of Job forces us to wrestle with is: How is it supposed to make sense when innocent people are made to suffer?

And that is one of the deep mysteries of our faith. The technical, theological term for that is theodicy. And theodicy is essentially the struggle to figure out how we can take three things that we say we believe and put them together, when it doesn’t look like you can put them all together. Those three things are our belief that God is good, that God is all-powerful, and that there is evil and suffering in the world. And the basic problem seems to be that if God is good, and if God is all-powerful and can do whatever God wants to, why would God not use his power to eliminate evil and suffering? Or at the very least, if God is good, and if God is all-powerful and can do whatever God wants to, why would God not use his power to make sure that innocent people aren’t made to suffer?

But as we know from the world around us, all too often innocent people are made to suffer, sometimes in horrible ways. Take, for instance, what happened just this week to those little Amish schoolchildren. A man decided that he was mad at God for the way that his baby daughter died shortly after birth years ago, and so he barged into an Amish schoolhouse in the eastern part of the state and killed five little girls. We hear the news reports about what took place, and we can’t help but wonder: Where was God in the midst of all that? How could God let something like that happen?

There just aren’t any easy answers. Sometimes people mistakenly think that since the book of Job is about an innocent man who suffered, that if they read the book of Job they’ll find some kind of explanation for why that sort of thing happens. But if you read all the way to the end of Job, when God finally shows up and speaks to Job, God doesn’t offer up any simple answers. No, when God finally appears to Job and speaks to him, God basically says, “There are some things in life that you just don’t have the ability to understand why they happen as they do. But trust in me anyways.” Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to trust in God even at those times when nothing seems to make any sense?

A willingness to do just that, though, is at the heart of the Amish faith. They use the German word Gelassenheit to describe it. Gelassenheit in essence means to a willingness to yield yourself to God. Gelassenheit involves a willingness to set aside your own ideas and wishes about what your life should be like and to accept instead the life that God wants you to have – and that includes accepting both the good things that God wants you to have, and the bad, trusting that both the good and the bad have a purpose, even if that purpose is only known right now by God.

And so that’s why, in the aftermath of those schoolchildren being killed, the Amish people weren’t out looking for vengeance. They weren’t out looking to take matters into their own hands. No, even though their hearts were broken and their spirits were crushed by what had happened, even though they had no idea why such a horrible thing would happen to such innocent little children, the Amish believe that in good times and in bad, the only thing you can really do is remain faithful to God. The only thing you can really do is put yourself into God’s hands and trust that somehow God will see you through.

And so that’s why in the aftermath of those schoolchildren being killed, the first words out of those Amish people’s mouths were words of forgiveness. And those weren’t just some empty, religious-sounding words. No, because at the same time they set up an account to accept donations for the families of those slain children, they also set up an account to accept donations for the family of the man who did the killing.[2]

Oftentimes what we want from God are explanations and reasons for why things happen as they do. But what God offers us instead is a promise. And that promise is that God will be with us, even when it doesn’t look like God is with us, and that God will see us through. And that’s good news for us. Because sometimes we’re not so sure that we’re able to make it through the next year or the next month, or maybe there are times when we’re not even so sure that we’re able to make it through the next hour by ourselves.

It’s like a story that Corrie ten Boom told, that at first when I read it, I have to admit that I thought it was kind of a dumb story. But just recently I think I’ve come to see what the story really means. Corrie ten Boom, as you may be aware, was a woman who lived in the Netherlands with her family as World War II was breaking out. As Christians, they felt led to help hide Jewish neighbors from the Nazis. But one day the Gestapo came to their door, arrested them, and sent them off to a concentration camp.

One cold winter morning at the Ravensbruck concentration camp, Corrie woke up with a cold. Her nose was constantly running, but there in that concentration camp, where was she going to get a handkerchief? But then her sister Betsie said, “Why don’t you pray for a handkerchief?” At first, Corrie dismissed that idea. After all, the world was at war, thousands of people were dying in battle every month, millions of Jewish people were being exterminated in the death camps – so how could she possibly bother God with something so incredibly trivial as a handkerchief?

Well, since Corrie hesitated to pray for a handkerchief, her sister Betsie prayed for one for her. Soon afterwards, another female prisoner came up to Corrie and handed her a small package. When she opened it, inside was a handkerchief. Corrie asked the woman, “How did you know? Did Betsie tell you? Did you know that I had a cold?” The woman said, “No. I was just sewing some handkerchiefs out of an old piece of sheet, and there was a voice in my heart saying, ‘Take one of your handkerchiefs to Corrie ten Boom,’ and so I did.”[3]

What I think that story shows us is that if we can come to trust that God is going to be there for us in the little things in life, like when we need a handkerchief, then at some point we’re going to learn to trust that God is going to be there for us when it comes to the big things as well. It’s like when Jesus was on the cross. One of his final prayers was, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Most basically, in that prayer Jesus was saying, “God, I don’t completely understand why things have happened as they have. God, I don’t fully understand why I have to die like this. But even so, God, I know that I can trust you, and so even now, as I hang here on this cross, I put myself into your hands.”

An often-asked question is: Why do bad things happen to good people? But as we look to God and wait for an answer, we find that most of the time no answer comes. And so, when we find ourselves in that kind of a situation, we need to decide what we’re going to do. Do we throw up our hands and give up on God? Or do we have the ability to remain faithful to God, and to trust that we have God’s promise that somehow God will see us through?