Bible reading: Job 38:1-7, 34-41.

There’s an old chestnut of a story which goes like this. A small child is painting a picture. Like most small children’s pictures, it’s just a mishmash of colours, so the child’s teacher gently asks what it’s supposed to be depicting. The child of course knows what they’re painting and confidently states, “It’s a picture of God”. The teacher is rather taken aback and says, “But no-one knows what God looks like”. “Well”, comes the response, “They will know when I’ve finished”.

As I said, it’s an old story and you’ve probably heard it many times before. But it poses a real question: how do we build up our mental pictures of God? Or, to put it another way, how can we find out what God is like? I think there are a number of answers which we can give, although none of them are without their difficulties.

Some folk would say that we can see God in the beauty and order or creation; I tend to think that, when they say that, they’re visualising a glorious view of mountains and valleys, forests and waterfalls, perhaps a sunset or star-filled sky. That is all wonderful: but what do we do with the “difficult” aspects of creation: earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, drought or destructive volcanic eruptions? What, if anything, do these tell us about God? Do they portray him in a good light?

Many of us would say that we can know God through our spiritual experiences. While I don’t doubt for a moment that this is true, how can we be sure that those experiences really are encounters with God, rather than our minds and senses playing games with us, or even bad dreams brought about by indigestion? It’s all a bit subjective.

There are other ways in which we can build up our ideas of God. We may have seen pictures of God, from Old Masters to illustrations in Sunday School literature; I think that these may influence us more than we realise and can contribute to us thinking of God as the “old man with a beard in the sky” – yes, Michelangelo, I’m looking at you!

We can also, I think, build up a picture of God in our imaginations: this of course is likely to be highly inaccurate, a god created in our human image rather than the other way round. And, of course, we have Scripture, which has to be our primary source of information. But even here we may run into problems: can we really believe in or trust what was written such a long time ago, and how do we cope with the nasty bits which are an integral part of the text?

A couple of Sundays we started to think about Job. In a very tricky Bible passage which sounds like some kind of bet between God and the Devil, we heard about Satan apparently being given permission to wreak almost unlimited disasters on Job and his family, to see if Job would end up cursing God. Yet, after his animals had been stolen, his servants slaughtered and every member of his family killed, with Job sitting scratching at his painful suppurating sores and being called a fool by his wife, he doesn’t curse God but says, “There are times when God gives us good things and times when he gives us bad ones. We must accept both of them equally”: that’s a fatalism we find hard to handle.

Because the Lectionary only gives a few weeks to the book of Job, and because last week’s service was a Parade, we today are jumping far ahead. This means that we’ve missed the “meat” of the book, which is a lengthy discussion between Job and his three friends or so-called “comforters”. Although we’ve been told that Job is an upright and devout man, these men are locked into a belief which says that God rewards us if we’re good but punishes us if we’re not. In their view all these terrible events have come upon Job because he has committed some awful sin – an accusation which Job vigorously resists. By the time we get to today’s passage the three friends have left and, finally, God makes an appearance and speaks. He does so in a very dramatic way. For, we are told, he answers Job “out of the whirlwind”.

We’ve seen too many tempests and tornadoes this year; but this whirlwind is no natural phenomenon. It is instead a life-changing force which is undefined and hard to understand. It says that God is dynamic, constantly in motion, and untameable; that he cannot be contained in a box made by humans. There is perhaps a hint of divine disapproval here, a suggestion that Job and his friends have tried too hard to pin God down; that’s probably how the original readers of this book understood it. But I couldn’t help thinking of that sound like a mighty rushing wind which filled the disciples’ hearing on the day of Pentecost and told them that God’s Spirit had come among them in power: a whirlwind that would create and build, not destroy.

However, when God does start to speak, he does so in a way which at first sight seems harsh and unhelpful. For, all through the book, Job has been looking to God for answers; he wants to know – as we often do too – why so many awful things have happened to him. “If only I knew where to find him, I would state my case before him and find out what he would say to me”, says Job; he also complains, “I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer”. Now God is, at last, speaking: but does he give Job the answers he’s looking for? No, he doesn’t; instead he fires a barrage of his own questions at the hapless man.

These questions are stern and terrifying: “Who are you to ignorantly resist my plans? Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Was it you who shut up the sea behind doors? Have you ever shown the dawn its place? Do you know where darkness and light both live? Can you control the stars and constellations? Do you feed the lions and birds of prey?”

God’s cross-examination, introduced by the words, “Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me” is long (it lasts for nearly four chapters) and relentless. By its end Job must have not only felt battered and bruised, but very, very small. Is God trying to show Job how insignificant he is in the grand scheme of creation, and that his concerns are irrelevant? If so, that is hardly the loving God, interested in every individual, that we so cherish.

But perhaps that’s not the picture that God wants to offer Job here.  To me, he seems to be saying several things. One is that he is far bigger and more untameable that Job had ever imagined: he is an independent God who has the right to act as he pleases. We can’t boss him around or even expect him always to behave in certain ways. A second thought is that God is talking about creation, which so often seems chaotic and out-of-control. Yet, despite the freedom which God has clearly given to the created universe, it is still his, even though we may not understand (or like) its workings.

My third thought brings the other two together: much as we would like to think so, the created order doesn’t revolve around us humans; we are only one part, albeit a special and unique part, of a much bigger picture. One commentator says: “Job learns that the scope of creation exceeds any human measure of right or wrong, useful or useless, and beautiful or ugly. An adequate understanding of creation and an honest estimation of our place within it require that we see creation in terms of God’s intention and scale”.

I’m afraid to say that, at the end of the saga, Job never really gets the answers he has been seeking. What he does find is a sense of humility and reverence before God. Here are some of his closing words to God:

“I am unworthy – how can I reply to you? I spoke once, but I have no answer – twice, but I will say no more”.

“Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know”.

And finally: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes”.

I’m sure that we all hold many unresolved questions about life and faith; I think we must accept that, to some of them at least, we’ll never get answers. We have to live with that tension of “only knowing in part”. But – and with this I close – we are different to Job in one fundamental way. For, while he only knew God as a mystery, we know far more about him. That’s not just because we have had centuries’ more experience, more time to think things through, more Scripture to read. No; we have the huge advantage of living after the time of Jesus, usually considered to be God’s most complete revelation.

Listen what John says in his Gospel: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known”. Listen, too, to the writer to the Hebrews: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by [his] Son”. Our picture of God, shaped by the stories of Jesus’ life, ministry, teaching, death and resurrection is different and more complete than Job’s ever could be. The invisible and indescribable God has shown himself to us in a way we can readily understand. The coming of Jesus to earth doesn’t give us all the answers: but it surely helps us along the way.