So, how many of you are just a little bit pleased with what has happened to Rush Limbaugh?

            My sermon today looks at the flip side to one of the more popular sermon titles among ministers, which is, “why do bad things happen to good people.”  At the heart of that question is the nature of suffering.  Resentment, on the hand,  is at the heart of the question, “why do good things happen to bad people?”  In their own ways, though, each of these questions attempts to explain the meaning of justice. To give this issue a face, this sermon is for all the people who really want to see Martha Stewart do hard time. If not Martha, then the executives at Enron, or Global Crossing, or Adelphia, or Tyco. 

            For some of us, and I include myself in this category (though I like to think only for fleeting moments), we just can’t be happy until some people get what they deserve.

            To respond to this question, I will be doing something I do not do often, which is to turn to the Bible.  Before doing so, I feel obliged to offer my standard disclaimer.  Like many Unitarian Universalists, I regard the Bible as one of many sources of wisdom, and, like any source of wisdom, one that must be tested against one’s own experience, reason and conscience.  Like Shakespeare’s plays, some books in the Bible have stood the test of time better than others. 

            I begin with Job.  Job is the arch type of a character we see in many religions, the righteous sufferer.  It’s not enough that bad things happen to him. What makes his story appropriate for today’s sermon is that Job was, we are told in the second verse of the story, a “blameless and upright man.”   To demonstrate to Satan how sincere Job’s faith is, God allows Satan to destroy Job’s home, kill all ten of his children, slaughter his livestock and, after all that, to give him boils.  We get the phrase “the patience of Job” from the apostle Paul, but I must confess that my namesake must have been reading a different edition of the story because there is nothing patient about Job.

            Most of the time this story is told, it is because Job repeatedly asks the question, “why me?”  Yet, the passage I want to lift to your attention comes from chapter 21, when Job turns the question from himself to others and asks,

            “Why do the wicked live on, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?  Their children are established in their presence and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them. Their bull breeds without fail; their cow calves and never miscarries. They send out their little ones like a flock and their children dance around.  They sing to the tambourine and the lyre, and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.  They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to Shoel.”

            If I were writing this, I might ask, why do some people get to eat all they want and stay thin?  It’s just not fair. My guess is that everyone can name some injustice in life that especially gnaws at them. Think about what yours might be.

            The remarkable thing about the answer that God gives to Job is that God gives no answer. Instead, he rebukes Job for even asking the question. “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without  knowledge?” . . . Where were you when I lead the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.”  And God’s answer goes on like that for pages. In the end, Job is humbled enough to say, “I will not question you . . .I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”  Upon hearing this, God then restores Job’s fortune, blessing him, we are told, with fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, a thousand donkeys and seven sons and three daughters to replace the seven sons and three daughters God allowed to be killed in the first chapter.

            The positive spin both rabbis and Christian clergy give this story is that it shows the enormity of God and how limited our human understanding of God ever can be. Allowing for the fact that we may call the ultimate reality God or something else, there is wisdom in that teaching.   The cause of suffering is shifted from our own behavior to God’s will—which is very convenient if you’re a sinner, but that much more frustrating if you think of  yourself as rather righteous.  Suffering is all part of a great and grand plan, and we must trust that our suffering in some way serves God’s purpose.

 I am not satisfied with this explanation.  First, the ending seems to contradict everything the story is supposed to stand for because, in fact, Job is rewarded with material wealth for his faithfulness.  Faithfulness is not its own reward in this story. Moreover, I never will accept that the killing of ten children can be offset by the granting of ten more children.  As your minister, I promise you that I never will tell you that some grievous loss you may suffer serves a divine purpose. 

A better answer to the question “why do good things happen to bad people?” comes from the less well known book of Ecclesiastes, although that book contains the oft-quoted passages that begin, “For everything there is a season, and time for every matter under heaven . . .”  Unlike Job, Ecclesiastes is not a story with a character and a plot. Rather, it is a collection of teaching on wisdom attributed to Solomon, though no scholars think he wrote it.  In that book, the author wants to know why he should be good if it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

“What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then, have I been so very wise?  And I said, to myself that this also is vanity.  For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How can the wise die just like fools? So, I hated life. . . ”  Later, he writes, “

 “Again, I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful, but chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster.  Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them.”

Unlike the author of Job, the author of Ecclesiastes offers a response. In short, the author says, enjoy life while you can.

As I would paraphrase it, the author is telling us, the rain falls on the wicked and the righteous and, whatever the reason, you’re better off with an umbrella than without one.  Do want you want to do in life and enjoy it, but know that you are accountable for your actions: quoting again, “Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for these things, God will bring you to judgment.”

            Put a mental bookmark by that last comment, “God will bring you to judgment.” Now, let’s skip ahead to the New Testament. In Matthew, Jesus tells a parable about a landowner who hired laborers for his field throughout the day, so that some started at daybreak and others came at midmorning, some at noon, and still others at five in the afternoon. When it came time to pay the laborers, the landowner gave each a full day’s wages. Of course, the men who had worked all day long protested because they thought they deserved more than the people who didn’t start until 5:00.

            Quoting: “But, he replied to one of them. ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage. Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I chose with what belongs to me. Or are you so envious because I am generous. So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

            How many of you can identify with the laborers who worked all day long?  It reminds me of the first few years I was a lawyer. I was eager and ambitious, and I worked hard. There were a lot of others, though, who were close to retirement and were just biding their time. They were known as ROAD employees–R-O-A-D, retired on active duty.  I produced more in quantity and quality than all those guys combined and made about half of what they did.  Like the laborers, I got everything I was promised, but I resented that other people got more than they deserved.

            Why do the wicked prosper?

            Of course, there are a lot of ways to interpret this parable. One way is to say that Jesus is admonishing us to be happy with what we have.  Yet, there must be more. What did Jesus mean when he said, “the last will be first, and the first will be last.” Here, Jesus is describing the Kingdom of God, but it’s not clear if he is proclaiming a new social order here on earth or if he is referring to a heavenly eternal life,  What he might be saying is, God’s justice will prevail, but you might not see it in your earthly lifetime. Another way to put this is to take the adage, “time heals all wounds” and reverse it: “time wounds all heals.”  Another modern interpretation is that Jesus is endorsing the idea of a living wage.  Our respect for human dignity creates a floor that we cannot allow our fellow human beings to fall below, no matter how much they are able or unable to contribute to the larger economy. But, that’s another topic altogether. Let me return to the topic of resentments.

            Further into Matthew, Jesus teaches that the day the Son of Man returns, there will be a judgment and God will separate the sheep from the goats. The sheep will at God’s right hand and the goats will depart into the eternal fire prepared for the devil.  The sheep in this case will be those who saw the hungry and gave them food, saw the thirsty and gave them drink, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked and cared for the sick.  The goats will be those who saw the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked and the sick and who did nothing.

            I think Jesus got the right reason but the wrong result. I don’t believe that heaven and hell are places one goes to after one dies.  Most of us think of heaven and hell as the states of being we create for ourselves in this lifetime. Yet, Jesus had the right standard. We ought to  measure our lives by how well we treat those whom Jesus called, the least of these. As Jesus said, it’s easy to love the people who love us. That’s no test.

            So, how do all of these readings answer the question, “why do good things happen to bad people?”  I think there are at least two answers.

            First, all of these readings share some sense of judgment or accountability for our lives.  Here is where our faith can overcome our resentments toward those who seem to profit from their wrongdoing. There is an accounting. From time to time, we all take a measure of our lives, and it is we who will judge our lives as wanting or fulfilling. That’s true for Rush and Martha, as well as ourselves.  Based on my experience and every other one that others have shared with me, that accounting will not be based on our wealth or attachments. We  judge ourselves by the life we have lead, the love we given and the love we have received. 

The times I am most angry about the corporate crooks that seem to be getting away with everything is when I am most anxious about my own money, my own status, and my own material wealth.  I don’t like who I am when I get like that.  It doesn’t happen nearly as often as I would like, but, every now and then, I do the right thing. I live into what Jesus called the kingdom of God and what I might call the spirit of love.  I feel called to help someone without any thought of reward or recognition, or I feel the courage to speak up and challenge some injustice in my presence. It is on those occasions that I feel a new sense of peace and serenity. My response to the question, “why do good things happen to bad people?” is not to answer the question, but to transcend it.  When I am living into my faith, I don’t hear the question.

            Those of us who identify ourselves as Unitarian Universalists have claimed a faith for ourselves that calls us to live our lives with personal integrity and with a commitment to social justice.  When I live into that faith, I feel a sense of purpose. And, all of those resentments toward the wicked who seem to prosper seem to vanish.  I can let myself be happy.  That’s one answer. Here’s another.

            All of these readings are consistent in reminding us that we must remain faithful to things we cannot understand.  This faith need not be in a deity.  But, these readings do speak to a faith in something bigger than ourselves. When confronted with every reason for despair, we must have hope.  When given every reason to doubt the power of love, we must love.  When our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls call us to something that seems beyond our reason, we must have faith in ourselves and in each other.

            Ecclesiastes got this much right: it is not the swift who will win the race, if the race in this case may be considered the journey we all are on. In fact, it is not a competition because we all can win. We need only love the life we have. 

Blessed Be.

© 2004 Paul Britner