Bishop Jackelen, Consecration Service

Many people have been asking to read the text of Bishop Jackelen’s sermon: and here it is!

Job 19, 23-27

London, 090117

Consecration of Bishop Jana Jeruma-Grinberga

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ “Peace to this house!” (Luke 10:5). I am honoured and delighted to share in the joy, prayers, excitement and anticipation that mark this day.

In sharing the Word with you, I must admit one thing right away. When preparing for this sermon, I could not let go of a text from the book of Job. I tried to, but it did not work. Job kept staying with me. It may seem like a strange choice of character, though. Can Job, the struggling sufferer, be welcomed as we celebrate the consecration of Jana, the bishop?

Well, Job may not be the first guest we thought of inviting today. Yet, I think that he has something special to offer at this time when our boldest hopes and best wishes have to face the constraints of reality – be it the effects of economic crisis, the situation in Gaza or more personal concerns.

Let us listen to Job 19: 23-27

It is Job speaking:

“O that my words were written down!

O that they were inscribed in a book!

O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

And after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God,

Whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me!”

These are remarkable words in several respects. To start with, translation from Hebrew is difficult, in fact in some places impossible. So is the discernment of what the message really is! The New Revised Standard Version alone mentions five alternative readings of the last two and a half verses and adds that the meaning of another one is uncertain. The Swedish translation from the year 2000 gives up on one verse (first half v 26) and substitutes three hyphens in brackets. “Redeemer” can also be “vindicator,” the “in my flesh” may also be translated as “without my flesh”. And so forth. Facing such difficulties, the serious reader is inclined to agree with the very last line of the passage: “My heart faints within me!” Alas, not even that one is unequivocal, as other translators prefer the wording: “My inner life is consumed with desire!”

At this point a preacher’s heart may indeed be consumed with the desire to quit the task of engaging with this passage of scripture – and yet the text does not really leave you alone once you have started to listen.

Sure enough, these lines from the Hebrew Bible have had an astounding effective history. Far from its original context in Job’s struggle, these words have done amazing things for people. I am especially thinking of the famous line: ‘I know that my Redeemer lives.’ I remember the old tombstones on the cemetery I would pass through twice a day on my way to and from elementary school. I particularly remember a big dark stone with a solid base and a shape that seems to push upwards. It had a number of names on it, and there were years of birth and years of death joined together by a little hyphen that covered many decades for some and very few years for others. Together these hyphens represented more than a century of human life, experiences of love and despair, tears of joy and grief, two long wars, and maybe even the experience of becoming a refugee and remaining a stranger until the day of death. Below those names, right at the base of the stone, it said: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”

As an epitaph, these words come across as a profession of faith of the dying and the dead. See, I will rest in peace; I can die from you because my Redeemer lives. Christ rose from the dead. Trusting His life, I can let go of mine. “I know that my Redeemer lives,” engraved on a tombstone – that is one of the most vigorous ways of summarizing Christian hope.

Georg Friedrich Händel has immortalized this interpretation of Job’s pre-Christian outcry. He used it in his oratorio The Messiah. The first part of the oratorio deals with messianic prophecies and the birth of Jesus Christ. The second is about the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ and closes with the famous Hallelujah chorus. The third and final part then glances toward the future, ponders the judgment and closes with praise to Christ as the Savior of the world: “Worthy is the Lamb. Blessing and honor. Amen”. At the beginning of this final part of the oratorio we find the aria for soprano “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Yes, – Händel made it an aria for soprano! What we hear is the voice of an angel, rather than the raucous voice of Job who is pushed to the absolute limits of his physical, mental and spiritual abilities.

Amazingly, these verses have shaped faith, comforted people in their grief and nurtured bold faith even though we are not even really sure how to translate them correctly into English!

The Christian interpretation of Job’s words has occasionally shaped an image of Job as a hero of faith. And maybe that’s what many people expect of a bishop, too: to be a hero of faith. In that case, Job may count as an impressive example: In the midst of a terrifying fate, confronted with friends whose weird theology and flawed pastoral skills must feel like rubbing salt into Job’s wounds, the hero emerges as a witness of a very bold faith. Or Job a super stoic who could take it all without losing faith.

There is more to this, however. I do not want to have Job the hero of faith block our view of Job the questioner of faith who calls on God. Who even calls on God against God when things become unbearable. Job rages against the friends who try to explain evil and suffering as having a higher meaning. “How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words?” he rages. There IS no justification for the injustice that has been inflicted on him. Job has no reason to justify God. Instead, he accuses: “God has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head” (19, 9). That is, God has taken away all the dignity that according to Psalm 8 belongs to humanity: “You have made human beings a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.” It’s all gone for Job. And it is God who has taken it. Even worse. Job charges God with breaking Job down and with uprooting his hope like a tree (19, 10-12). Killing somebody’s hope equals murder. In this sense, Job charges God with murder. And he is very determined: “O that my words were written down.” And not simply in a perishable book. But with iron chisel and lead, engraved on a rock forever! So that even when Job and his friends are long gone, the rocks will continue to shout out God’s injustice. That is Job’s hope. And so he proclaims: “For I know that my – and now I am using the Hebrew word – go’el lives, and at the last will stand upon the dust.” Now, who is this mysterious go’el (usually translated as ‘redeemer’)?

The word go’el is fairly often used for God, so Job may indeed appeal to no one else than God. But hasn’t he just said that he has nothing good to expect from a murderous God? Indeed, that his only way of keeping away from drowning in madness is to accuse God? Can Job have someone else in mind? The word go’el is also used for the next of kin who steps forward on behalf of a relative who is not able to take care of himself or herself. The go’el is redeemer, vindicator and avenger. The go’el works to restore broken community.

Maybe it is this latter go’el that Job is putting his faith in: a mighty advocate who will rise up after his death and confront God on all those heavy charges. Yet, who could confront God successfully except Godself? After all, there is no one like God! The distinction gets blurred: the avenger, vindicator and redeemer must be Godself who puts to death demonic images of God. God against God.

From this, a different gospel emerges than that of Job, the hero of faith. It is a gospel that says: you may argue with God, you may question God, you may call upon God against God in the face of evil and suffering. There is no need of a theodicy in the sense of defending and justifying God. We can lament. And we can leave it to God to speak for Godself. Eventually, that is exactly what Job does. “Here is my signature!” he says, “Let the Almighty answer me!” (31,35), and so God “answered Job out of the whirlwind” (38,1). And indeed, God has spoken, is the witness we will want to add: God has spoken to us and the world in Jesus Christ.

Job, a hero of faith, precisely because he is a questioner of faith and a questioner in faith! He is one in the long row of questioners in the Scriptures: Sara questioning the promise of childbirth in old age, Jacob at the Jabbok not letting go of the strange God without demanding a blessing, Martha in Bethany questioning Jesus’ late arrival at her brother’s grave, Thomas doubting the resurrection of the Christ. They were all witnesses of faith by being questioners of the faith. They all in their own ways received the blessing and the peace of the living God. They surround us as a cloud of witnesses (Hebr 12, 1) – daring in their questions and in their faith, surrounding us with their examples. Now, there’s a promise to walk with – as bishops and pastors and lay ministers, as women and men and children of faith. Let’s do it! Amen.