Lessons from Job, Sitidos, and My Mammie

'The LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

"Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?— when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, 'Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped'?"'

--Job 38: 1-11

I wanna tell you about my Mammie. Her given Christian name was Eula Silcox, and she was my maternal grandmother. Eula raised five kids in the projects of Bristol, VA, practically all on her own: they were Sam, the oldest and most rebellious, whom everyone called Bobo, Roncie, who was the father-figure among his siblings, Patsy, the oldest daughter and fun-loving jester of the group, the youngest daughter Sharon, who was gentle, kind, and deeply spiritual, and my mother Susan, who always seemed to be the glue that held everyone together. My Mammie was tough and had a lot of curveballs thrown at her – from being shunned by certain family members to an often abusive relationship with her husband, my grandfather Joe. She worked in a paper factory and a hospital, and sacrificed more than I’ll ever understand for the sake of her family. Of all the qualities I heard repeated about my Mammie, everyone said she had the patience of Job.

My Mammie, Eula Silcox, after she married her husband Joe.

Odds are that we all know someone like that, about whom others said, “They’ve got the patience of Job.” While I agree that my Mammie was a patient, loving person who never seemed to waiver in her faith, I have to say it’s not the best description because, well, even Job broke. 

Unfortunately, the reading we just heard is the only one that we get from Job on a Sunday morning this whole year. Taken out of context, it’s hard to tell what’s going on, but I’ll try to set the scene for you. God makes a bet with Satan that Job can have everything taken away from him, including his own children and his very dignity and still won’t curse God. Calamity after calamity befalls him. While his friends try to rationalize this ridiculous string of bad luck, Job very slowly begins to see things from a perspective that these privileged men don’t have: the perspective of those who suffer. Still, Job stubbornly sits in silence on a dungheap, isolating himself and wallowing in his pain, seemingly alone in a sort of “Why me?” state. Job’s wife Sitidos – who doesn’t get named in the story but is given a name by Jewish Midrash – suffers too, though, and she understands that sometimes existence is cruel and makes no sense, even if there is a supposed God of right and wrong. As a woman she knows what it's like to have no control over her life, and she understands that no one gets what they deserve. She only has one line in the story, in which she yells at Job for persisting in his foolish pride and integrity. She even throws bread at him on the dungheap so that he doesn't starve (her name even means 'bread').  Finally, patient Job breaks all the way down and curses the day he was born, angry that it seems God doesn’t care at all about him. The reading we have this morning is the beginning of a three-chapters long response from God. The TLDNR version of that is: who do you think you are?! All of existence suffers, why should you be so arrogant as to think you’re any different? The final realization for Job is a new understanding of God, apart from simply a moral understanding of right and wrong; God is the one who is present with him in the tempest, both the chaos of the storm and the presence of order within it. I encourage all of you to watch the video below for Song of Sitidos by Kristen Leigh for a deeper understanding of the Job story from the perspective of his wife.

Song of Sitidos, performed by Kristen Leigh (with Eric Traynor and West McNeil).

God is in the tempest, in the adversity. This is what Job learns and what Jesus literally embodies in a moment in the Gospel of Mark when he and the disciples are caught up in a windstorm on the Sea of Galilee. Darkness has descended and waves of terror threaten to overwhelm them, and there he is, nestled like a baby on the cushions. “Teacher!” they say, “Wake up! Don’t you care that we’re perishing?!” Don’t you care? Are you even awake? 

We get caught in our tempests, tossed to and fro by the winds of change and confusion. Things happen that make no sense and no one gets what they deserve: Children die of cancer. Good people remain loyal to their bosses only to lose their jobs to corporate greed. Hospitals and schools are bombed in the name of keeping people safe. Autocrats and would-be dictators are propped up for the sake of upholding democracy. Don’t you even care, God?! Are you even awake?! Do you see our sinking condition, our little Mother Earth being swamped by more than she can bear as she tears herself apart? We don’t need the patience of Job. We need the righteous fury and anger of Job. Or, at least, that’s what we tell ourselves.

What’s the difference between us and those disciples in that boat? Have we drawn our conclusions before Jesus even gets to say a word? Isn’t that what Job did when he cursed God? The reality is that getting into a boat with Jesus will not assure us of smooth sailing . A life of devotion to this God won’t yield vast riches or large families, as the heretical Prosperity Gospel would have us believe. The fear felt by the disciples in the boat had moved into full-on despair, similar to the place Job went. Even with Jesus there, they cannot help but be stuck in their fear. It’s not that fear is the opposite of faith – a healthy fear, the kind that stands in awe of the magnitude and power of God can strengthen faith – but when we get stuck there, in our anger and pain, unable to see the ones suffering with us, unable to even imagine a different scenario, that’s when we are consumed by fear and despair, and curse the very day we were born. 

An Eastern European icon of Jesus in the boat with the disciples.

But Jesus speaks. “Peace! Be still!” Does he really say that to the raging sea or the despairing disciples? Or both? From his quiet repose on the cushion in the stern, Jesus sees and understands all of the troubles of the human condition – let’s not forget how he lived, suffered, and died. He understands, from Gethsemane, what it means to fear, and from the cross, what it means to despair. It’s precisely because he knows our conditions that he meets us with that same still, small voice. Even as the storm clouds are raging all around our doors and we think to ourselves we can’t take it anymore – to borrow a line from another singer-songwriter – Jesus is there, with us, in the storm.

The hard truth that Job teaches us is that sometimes the world is chaotic but God doesn’t leave us. My Mammie knew that. She had a good bit of chaos come her way. It wasn’t about having more patience, just knowing that we’re never alone. We may want something more tangible when all around us is falling apart, something that proves God cares or that Jesus is paying attention. But what we get is “Peace! Be still.” It’s the oldest lesson God taught us: that there is never a place we can go that God isn’t. There in the boat. Up on a cross. Cause in the tempest, we will see, that God is in every adversity.