How Do We Help Our Friends When They Suffer
Notes
Transcript
Handout
We can’t forget that most of Job is set up as a dialogue. It is a conversation that happens between Job, his three friends, and then ultimately God. We looked previously at Job’s search in suffering. We looked at where God is in suffering (He doesn’t move, we do). And in order to do the book of Job justice, we have to talk about his friends.
Most of the conversation is absolute miscommunication. Everyone is saying what is most important to them without really considering the other person. And everything believes they are the most right.
I know that sounds nothing like us in our day, but let’s pretend that we can relate.
It’s like the worst game of telephone. Where someone starts with a phrase and repeats it to someone who repeats it to someone and on and on until there is a final statement. It is often nothing like the first.
But first let’s look at the place where the friends enter into the picture.
We have the three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar who show up. Elihu comes later it seems. But they see Job from a distance
and they
And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.
Now before we get into how off the rails it goes, they do get this part very right. They weep with him, they sat with him and importantly, no one said anything for 7 days.
We will get into this but that is a great perspective on caring for people while they are suffering.
After 7 days Job begins the conversation. Here is some of what Job says:
“Why is light given to him who is in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul,
who long for death, but it comes not,
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
who rejoice exceedingly
and are glad when they find the grave?
Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in?
For my sighing comes instead of my bread,
and my groanings are poured out like water.
For the thing that I fear comes upon me,
and what I dread befalls me.
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
I have no rest, but trouble comes.”
Job is in distress. He longs for an end, he is not at ease and has no rest.
And so the friends feel the need to speak into this unease.
And we find out really quickly that the friends all have very particular ideas about Job’s suffering. They get some parts right but they get a lot wrong
We will always misinterpret suffering
We will always misinterpret suffering
Let’s get the big awkward reality out of the way. We will never hit the target on someone else’s suffering.
We will say too much or do too little. We can never get close enough to the suffering to be able to know exactly how to respond. Job’s friends try explaining the situation, they try giving advice, they end up trying guilt, cajoling, and even attempt to secure a confession of guilt. Job’s friends are trying to diagnose Job’s problem. But they just do not get it right.
They believe that Job is wrong. They believe that he is arrogant. They think he is too quiet, too loud. They think he is evil or that he is manipulative. The have decided that Job has done something to deserve what is happening to him.
And in doing so they misinterpret Job’s situation and misinterpret God’s character.
Look at what Bildad says to Job
“How long will you say these things,
and the words of your mouth be a great wind?
They are trying to justify their opinions on who God is and trying to quell their own discomfort with the situation. They have arrived and believe they are correct. They listen to Job just so that they can respond to Job.
They believe Job has done something wrong. We know as the audience that is not the case. But they cannot believe it to be true. Instead of trying to comfort Job toward God, they are trying to get a confession.
They believe they know what God is saying all the while misrepresenting Him. To their credit they get the big things correct but miss the way that God actually works in the world. Look at Zophar in Job 11.
“If you prepare your heart,
you will stretch out your hands toward him.
If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away,
and let not injustice dwell in your tents.
Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish;
you will be secure and will not fear.
You will forget your misery;
you will remember it as waters that have passed away.
Zophar quickly diagnoses Job. He figures it out. Not so that Job doesn’t have to suffer, but so that Zophar doesn’t have to suffer.
Zophar thinks he can figure God out. Job did something to deserve this. God is just in His action or inaction. That’s it. Let’s go home.
We are Zophar. When we experience tragedy we think we understand it entirely. Let’s just get this out of the way. You don’t. You don’t understand someone else’s suffering. And you do not have a monopoly on God’s perspective. Neither do I.
We misinterpret suffering because we don’t want to suffer ourselves. Suffering makes us uncomfortable. We want to look away. People are disfigured through sadness, tragedy or accident. And so we don’t want to stare at them. We don’t want to feel sad ourselves. Suffering is a vulnerable place to be and we don’t ever want to feel vulnerable
This is what happens when we observe suffering. We are quick to zip it up and close it off and not have to deal with it. This is why we often ask, “what happened?” Not because we are genuinely concerned but because we are questioning whether we are safe.
We live in a culture of the hot take. Suffering doesn’t work that way. Take the last couple of weeks. I mentioned we have experienced political violence and tragedy in Charlie Kirk’s murder. And we have experienced school shootings and a young woman being killed on a bus. And what has the response been like?
All we do is conclude with hot takes. This is what this means! This is what happened! This is what we need to do! This is what will happen! Revival! Civil war! Vengeance! We have lived out Job’s friends in real time. I have watched so many videos on people telling me what happened and what this means and what to do. But I don’t hear much wisdom. I don’t hear reflection. We are acting in a way that has figured God out, not in a way that figures Him into the equation.
We are suffering as a nation. You feel it. I feel it. And hot takes never make suffering go away. Job’s friends are a cautionary tale for us to approach suffering differently.
We cannot talk or behave someone out of suffering
We cannot talk or behave someone out of suffering
We know this, Job knows this. It is really nothing earth shattering to say that we can’t shake ourselves out of suffering. That is not a surprise.
My brothers are treacherous as a torrent-bed,
as torrential streams that pass away,
which are dark with ice,
and where the snow hides itself.
When they melt, they disappear;
when it is hot, they vanish from their place.
The caravans turn aside from their course;
they go up into the waste and perish.
The caravans of Tema look,
the travelers of Sheba hope.
They are ashamed because they were confident;
they come there and are disappointed.
For you have now become nothing;
you see my calamity and are afraid.
Look at what Job is saying. That his friends are like river during the Spring melt. It is flush with water. It is overrun with water. But when the heat comes it evaporates.
When heat, or suffering comes, the life giving water disappears. When people stop by for a drink, there is nothing to give. “they come and are disappointed.”
We think we have the ability to remove suffering. That if we just say the right thing, it will take the suffering away. So we say too much or don’t say enough
We can never say enough or never do enough to remove someone’s suffering. But there are things we can do that help.
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
I like this verse. Because we are not called to solve another’s suffering. We are called to come near to people in suffering.
Say less, stay close
Say less, stay close
People are overwhelmed. They are overwhelmed in their situations. They are overwhelmed in their stress, in their emotions, in their greed, in their shame, in their trauma.
And when people feel that, when they feel what is wrong or feel what has happened, they may not know what all of it means. That is the reason we ask “why.” We want to know. And when we show up in people’s lives and just sit with them and commit to them. And instead of telling them what we think we begin by inviting them to share their story.
Suffering is too big for a sentence or a paragraph or a conversation.
People are desperately trying to write with their pain, to speak with groans and then when they can get a word out, use a too big language to try and make sense of it.
Your ability to say less and stay close can help to coax some of the story out.
When Robin and I were first married we had a friend named Jeremiah who was beginning to engage with the Christian faith. He had just gotten into a Bible study and was learning about Christ when his dad, while on his way to work, got into a terrible accident on the freeway and was killed.
Jeremiah hadn’t heard from his dad all day and had wondered the worst. He called us and let us know that he couldn’t find his dad. And then his mom got the call. And so an hour later he showed up at our apartment with a 6 pack of beer. He didn’t know what to do. I was at work so Robin invited him in and called another friend of ours and they came over and spent time with him, just walking him through the immediate shock of the loss.
I got home later and spent some time with them all. We just talked and wept with him.
He didn’t get better that day or week or year. It was a long road of suffering. But we didn’t gather around him to make him better. We gathered around him to hold him up.
Saying less and staying close doesn’t necessarily help us to recover. It doesn’t fix people in suffering and struggling. But it does give them the ability to take steps forward they weren’t able to before.
Because there is a part of helping people just retell their story. To locate themselves.
But they also need to reimagine their story. They have to locate God by understanding they are part of a bigger story all all together.
Suffering can be part of a much larger and better story in Christ.
Suffering can be part of a much larger and better story in Christ.
Let’s look at the example of Jesus healing a woman in Mark 5. Jesus doesn’t just ask her to tell her story, he helps her to see herself in Christ’s story.
A woman was suffering with a “discharge of blood” Mark 5 tells us. And she could not get relief from doctors. She heard about Jesus and wanted to be healed. She wanted to, in the middle of the crowd, touch his cloak and be healed, and go off into the faceless crowd. So she does just that and is healed. But Jesus recognized something had happened.
And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?”
The woman was frightened and fell before Christ and retold her story, the “whole truth.”
But then Jesus, after hearing her tell her story, didn’t just affirm it, but he invited her into reimagining herself in Christ’s care.
Listen to what He says:
And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Jesus calls her His daughter. This is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus refers to anyone like this. It is familial. Jesus is calling her into family with Him. And then He blesses her, “go in peace and be healed.”
Jesus isn’t just having her repack her story again, He is restoring her, giving her a way through.
We often feel like we are bearing burdens that we have been carrying around our whole lives. Grief and shame and brokeness. Our own sin gets in the way. We are overwhelmed to share our story and Christ is there to listen, but He doesn’t just let us do it,
He calls us to reimagine it through relationship with Him. He is the place of safety and the healing balm.
Our role is to say less and stay close while we walk others toward Jesus. We help them live in the rhythms and patterns of life with Him. People might be bent over in grief. They may be wailing in shame, but Christ always and still has a way through.
Maybe show root video here?
As Christians our call is not away from the awkwardness of suffering but in and through it. Christ bled for those awkward moments, allow Him, in His bent and stooped posture to walk you into it and introduce someone to His greater story.
This is what the good process of grief in community can do.
Mark and Terry Hathaway
