Fr. Funston’s sermon for October 7, 2012, “The Patients of Job: Party One”, is now online:
This book, as I made mention from this pulpit some weeks ago, is a work of fiction, but that does not stop it from being a work from which we can learn great truth. Or perhaps I should say “great truths” for, more than any other book in the Bible, Job offers what some might call a “post-modern” or pluraform vision of truth. Job, in the midst of his suffering, is visited by his wife, his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and a fourth man, Elihu (who may just be a passerby). Each of them offers an explanation of why life has treated Job so shabbily and offers advice as to how he should respond. Job’s answer to each of them is basically, “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me!” The character Job could be the patron saint of our post-modern age, and the Book of Job offers us a variety of remedies, a selection of alternative truths for whatever besets our spirits; it also provides a glimpse at the over-arching meta-truth that sustains our lives, namely the awesome power of God. We all come to this book, as we come to all of Scripture, as patients seeking medicine for the soul; we are all the “patients of Job.”