Job 36:26-37-13
26 "How great is God - beyond our understanding!
27 He draws up the drops of water,
which distill as rain to the streams;28 the clouds pour down their moisture
and abundant showers fall on mankind.
29 Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds,
how he thunders from his pavilion?
30 See how he scatters his lightning about him,
bathing the depths of the sea.
31 This is the way he governs the nations
and provides food in abundance.
32 He fills his hands with lightning
and commands it to strike its mark.
33 His thunder announces the coming storm;
even the cattle make known its approach.
1 “At this my heart pounds
and leaps from its place.
2 Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice,
to the rumbling that comes from his mouth.
3 He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven
and sends it to the ends of the earth.
4 After that comes the sound of his roar;
he thunders with his majestic voice.
When his voice resounds,
he holds nothing back.
5 God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways;
he does great things beyond our understanding.
6 He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’
and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’
7 So that everyone he has made may know his work,
he stops all people from their labor.
8 The animals take cover;
they remain in their dens.
9 The tempest comes out from its chamber,
the cold from the driving winds.
10 The breath of God produces ice,
and the broad waters become frozen.
11 He loads the clouds with moisture;
he scatters his lightning through them.
12 At his direction they swirl around
over the face of the whole earth
to do whatever he commands them.
13 He brings the clouds to punish people,
or to water his earth and show his love.
Do You Have a Quid Pro Quo Kind of Faith?
Do you know what quid pro quo means? It’s an old Latin phrase. And even though it’s in a different language, I bet you can understand. Quid pro quo literally means, “this for that.” Conversationally, we might say, “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.” It refers to a social contract, whether it’s written down on paper or unspoken yet understood.
An example: if I head out on holiday and ask my neighbour to take my garbage to the curb while I’m away, it’s perfectly reasonable for him to expect me to return the favor when he goes on holiday. He does something for me; I do something for him. Quid pro quo. That’s the way the world works.
Or, at least, that’s the way we want the world to work. How would you feel if your neighbour borrowed your toolbox every weekend for a year, and the one time you need to borrow something from him, he says no? You’d be outraged, right? That’s not fair! We had a deal (even if we never said it out loud)! Quid pro quo. If you won’t give me the quo, I’m not going to give you the quid.
That’s what we do in this world. Is that what we do in our hearts with God? Do you have quid pro quo kind of faith, i.e. an unspoken agreement with God that says, “Lord, as long as you hold up your end of the bargain, I’ll hold up mine”? Or, more likely, “Lord, if I hold up my end of the bargain, you had better hold up yours”?
That was Satan’s accusation against Job. He claimed that Job would not love God if he didn’t feel God’s love for him, i.e. if he didn’t feel like God was “scratching his back,” or doing him favors. So, Satan challenged God to take away all the blessings God had given Job to see if Job would still love God.
Then, for 36 chapters, we see Satan chip away at Job’s love for God. The death of his children and the loss of his health was only the beginning. I think Satan’s true stroke of genius was using Job’s friends against him. We heard last week how they leaned into the quid pro quo mentality. “Job, you must have been horribly sinful for God to treat you this way. He treated you badly because you treated him badly.”
Unfortunately, Job took the bait. He corrected his friends’ faulty logic, but stayed within the quid pro quo parameters. And Job’s basic response was, “No! I didn’t treat God badly. I have been nothing but good to God, therefore,” quid pro quo, “God should be nothing but good to me.” I did that for God, he should do this for me. I scratched God’s back; I held up my end of the bargain. Now it’s time for him to return to the favor.
That is human logic. That is the way we treat each other. That is not the way God works. And, thankfully, God was not standing idly by while Satan sicced Job’s friends against him. God sent a friend too. His name was Elihu. He was the one who spoke the words we heard a minute ago:
“How great is God – beyond our understanding!”
“He does great things beyond our understanding.”
Are you catching the theme? Sometimes God does stuff that we will never understand, i.e. that we can never understand. And that’s OK! Because God is good, even when times are bad. And to help us understand, Elihu puts on his best meteorologist hat and talks about the weather, of all things.
Talk about something you can’t count on or control! I grew up in a town where we referred to our local weatherman as “Liar McGuire.” Weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable. You never know exactly what is going to happen until it does.
But God knows, because he’s the one who makes it happen. He is the one who “draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind. Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds, how he thunders from his pavilion?”
The best meteorologists can mock up their models and make their best predictions – and they can get close – but God knows it all, because God is the one who makes it happen. We are just spectators who marvel at what God accomplishes.
Have you ever just sat and watched a storm roll in? It can be beautiful, especially here in Alberta as you see those clouds roll over the plains and watch the lightning from miles away. But storms can be pretty nerve-racking too.
Do I have everything in from the yard? Are my windows closed? Do I need to cover the flowers? Will there be a flood? Will the lightning start a forest fire? Will it turn out the lights? Is this going to be a gentle rain that’s good for the crops or hail that will break windows and destroy siding and shingles?
Elihu captures that uncertainty with the final words of our passage for today, “[God] brings the clouds to punish people, or to water his earth and show his love.” The same event can accomplish two very different purposes, and not only are we in the dark as to which it will be, but we are also entirely powerless to do anything about it. All we can do is wait and see.
And that’s the point!
In the middle of our reading, Elihu states his thesis: So that everyone he has made may know his work, he stops all people from their labor. Sometimes God takes a situation entirely out of your hands and puts you on the sidelines as a spectator in your own life to remind you who is really in control. God shatters the quid pro quo paradigm and basically says, “I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and it doesn’t depend on you. More than that, it’ll be good for you.”
Throughout the course of his dialogue with his friends, it becomes obvious that his friends saw his suffering as a punishment from God, while Job felt the opposite. Job felt as though he had earned all the blessings God had given him. He felt as if he had held up his end of the bargain by worshiping God and offering sacrifices, and now God was being unfair; God owed him. Quid pro quo. God, I did something for you; now it’s your turn to do something for me.
But, God destroys the quid pro quo mindset by stripping all control away from Job. Job was powerless to help himself. Job had no cards to play, no way to twist God’s arm and force his hand. All God wanted Job to do was let go.
Let go of the delusion that we are in control of our lives. Let go of the idea that if we do something for God, he will do something for us. Quid pro quo is a dangerous way to go, because it forgets that if God treated us the way we treat him, we would have no hope whatsoever.
Even Christians – and maybe “especially Christians” – can live life as if we own God. As if he owes us for every hour we sit here, for every good deed we do, for every donation we make, every prayer we pray.
But if God really gave back to us what we gave to him, we’d have to count those times that we only serve him to serve ourselves. We’d have to count all the times that we don’t pray to him, that we don’t spend time with him, that we don’t even think about him for days on end. We’d have to count the self-righteousness that feels entitled to special treatment and is shocked and appalled when God doesn’t behave like our slave.
God doesn’t have a quid pro quo covenant with us. And that’s a good thing! Because for God, it’s all quid; it’s all what God does for us without a stitch of what we can do for him. And even when the clouds God sends are dark and scary, they can carry the rain that shows God’s love for us.
That’s the way you should feel every time you see the symbol of our religion. The cross is a horribly dark and cruel image. It’s a symbol of death. It’s a reminder of what we deserve for treating the Almighty God like our personal errand boy. But it wasn’t meant for us. It was reserved for Jesus, who took on himself the punishment that we deserve for our sins.
That’s the kind of God we have, who breaks the quid pro quo paradigm and doesn’t wait for us to give to him before he gives and gives and gives to us. He gives us his forgiveness and love. He overlooks a multitude of our sins and showers us with blessings. Every day we wake to new gifts of grace from his hand. And even when times are bad, God is good because he holds the cross before our eyes and reminds us who is really in control – it’s the God who loves us and sent his Son to save us.
It can be really frustrating – and really scary – to feel like you have no say in what happens in your life. You can’t control whether you get cancer or lose your job or house. But you don’t have to, because God is in control. And even when the clouds are dark and scary, he always showers you with his love.
So, let go of the quid pro quo and let God be in control. He is great and even though his works may sometimes be beyond our understanding, they are always for our good.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.