What do You Need?

Job 2:11-13

To ask one another, “where are you from?” is to build connection and trust with another. We are all seen and known more fully as we ask and answer that question.

To dare to ask another “where does it hurt?”, is to acknowledge that suffering is universal, that we all experience loss, and that pain shared is pain divided and diminished.

So, this morning we ask the question, “What do you need?”

And to ask that question we travel all the way back the mythic “land of Uz” where lived a man named Job.

Let’s pray for mercies as we travel and wisdom as we learn …

So, yes … buckle up. To try to answer the seemingly simple question “What do you need”, we are going to delve into a “masterpiece of religious thought, in which the tragic suffering of a righteous individual occasions a probing theological investigation of the divine economy” (FotW, B4,123). Ooo, those who aren’t here this morning will be sorry! This book in our bible was “probably written by an Egyptian or a Mesopotamian, but apparently not by an Israelite, sometime in the eight-hundred-year span between the tenth and second centuries BCE as an imaginative parable all wrapped up in a dramatic presentation replete with superb Hebrew poetry” (123). Good thing we prayed!

The Book of Job.

The name itself conjures ancient wisdom – or ancient folly, depending on who you hear it from. Even if we know of this writing only loosely, our minds fill with images of an old, bearded man, a happy family and farm devasted, visitations by well-meaning friends who start out helpful but end up stupefied at the old man’s stubbornness. We think of God and the Satan, heavenly bargains, earsplitting whirlwinds and even more deafening silences; Behemoths and Leviathans; shame, repentance, dust and ashes.

And all this to answer a simple question?! Hmm … Let’s slow down and go back a bit. Back to the beginning …

Once upon a time … in the ancient land of Uz, there lived a man named Job. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yokes of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants. This man was the greatest of all the people of the East, blameless and upright, one who feared GOD and turned away from evil. And then … he had very bad week.

In a cosmic conversation that Job knows nothing about, the Satan challenges GOD, saying, “Job is faithful only because life is going well for him.” So, GOD permits Job to be tested, and suddenly Job loses everything – or nearly everything. He is allowed to live. And that’s the reason we’re able to ask him this week, “What do you need, Job?”

I’m hopeful that using Job doesn’t’ diminish the reality that every single one of us “needs”, as well. We all need others, we need one another, we need time, we need friends, we need help. I know you’ve all heard sermons on Job that suggest we really don’t have it that bad – never as bad as this man, so “look on the bright side”.. This is not one of those sermons. We may not have it that bad, but that’s not the point.

Just as with the weeks before, this week’s question recognizes that we all have need and that we all need each other. And … infuriating as it may be at times, we need this reality we call GOD. We need it to make sense of things, to care, and to interact with us. These needs prompt us to reflect on our own needs, priorities, and desires, which can be very difficult to discern in the midst of our own difficult situations. We don’t need to compare ourselves with Job. But, we can commiserate with him.

Our curriculum guides for this month chose to read a passage from Job to respond to our question for one specific reason. See if you can spot it as we read Job 2:11-13. Listen for the Word of GOD … Read Job 2:11-13, The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to GOD.

In the midst of Job’s afflictions, three of his friends promptly leave their homes and come to him. They tear their garments and weep loudly, and sit with him for seven days, saying nothing. Their response is the ministry of presence, of true solidarity, of seeing his excruciating pain and joining him there. In essence, we are instructed this week that this is what we all need - companionship, for someone to come quickly, to simply show up.

These three friends of Job, part of the lore and the myth of this story, offer solidarity in very specific ways. Initially hey react with an appropriate level of emotion. We appreciate that, too, don’t we? When others recognize and validate, but don’t try to fix, our pain. They even offer an outward sign that his traumas are real and worthy of lament. They tear their robes and “throw dust in the air upon their heads”. (The significance of this gesture is “obscure” I read this week. But, I do believe I’d feel you cared about me if you threw dust on your head for me!). These friends sit with him for seven days and witness with their simple presence the weight of their friend’s pain and trauma. This simple “being with” one another is “incarnational.” It is a sacred act. And every Sunday, we do this. We come together and do this, witness one another’s existence, traumas, needs, and spend time together. As we noted last week, we rarely take the time to get into specifics when we are gathered in this number. Maybe after these weeks together that will change. But at the very least we should know we witness one another’s existence, traumas, needs just by being together.

And that could pretty much sum up the answer to our question, couldn’t it? What we need is for people to show up for us and acknowledge what hurts. Put an “amen” on that and move on to the sermon hymn and affirmation of faith. Except … I know the rest of the friend’s story. And so do you …

After they sit with him and comfort him for seven days with their ministry of presence, they decide that what he really needs are long lectures about how his suffering must be his fault. Eliphaz says Job must have sinned somehow. Bildad insists that Job needs to repent and that his children must have deserved their fate of death. And Zophar implores Job to “direct his heart rightly” so GOD might be lenient toward him.

Job repeatedly insists, “I haven't done anything to deserve this!” His friends respond, essentially, “Well, you must have. GOD wouldn't let this happen otherwise.”

So, what does Job need now? Now that the patience of his patient friends – who waited for seven whole days for him to figure out what he did wrong – has run out. Here again, I don’t mean to diminish the power of presence, the still quiet power of just sitting with someone in their pain can, and does, bring comfort and healing. Sometimes that is all that we can do as a friend, a colleague, a pastor, a fellow member of the church. But then what are we, as Job, supposed to do with the very real pain that still persists?

It’s then, I believe, that what we need a faith strong enough to fight back, strong enough to ask the unanswerable question, expecting it to be answered. A faith that is brave enough to say that commitment to a God who jerks us around like a puppet on a string and does not have the good grace even to tell us what is really going on, is a misplaced commitment. A faith that is … well, faithful enough to tell Job, and every one of us who has experienced the unimaginable through no fault of our own, that this isn’t GOD. That GOD isn’t like that.

In the world we live in, suffering is not always the consequence of our failures. And virtue does not always mean we’ll live happily ever after. So what do we need when our teachings and understanding of GOD, teachings that tell that the universe runs on the principle of rewards for good and punishment for bad, is at odds with our lived experience? It’s then that we need a faith that insists Love do better next time. A faith that calls into question any Life that is not the abundant promise Jesus give us. A faith that stands up to the God we’ve created, and insists on the hope, and the peace, and the joy we’ve been promised by the true GOD- the GOD beyond our understanding, but at the heart of our faith.

Job eventually stops politely arguing and starts demanding answers from GOD. As GOD finally speaks, Job realizes that the universe is much bigger and more mysterious than he had imagined. He is never given a simple explanation for his suffering. Yet, through his insistent faith, he confronts GOD directly, and that confrontation changes everything – for him and for us.

Faith, we now know, is not the same thing as having all the answers. Faith includes questions, anger, grief, honesty, and even arguing with God. Faith includes saying things like “God, this hurts”, “I don't understand”, “This isn’t fair,” and “Where are you?”

(It even includes saying things like, “Could my friends please stop explaining my suffering?”)

So, the book of Job begins by teaching us that we need others to be present with us – in the good times and the bad. But it ends by teaching us we need so much more. In the end, we may not get an explanation for why we hurt. But, in the end, I don’t think that’s what we need. What we need are honest encounters with GOD. That is where a truer, deeper, more mature faith really begins. That’s what we need here at Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church, and what every member of every church around the world needs. A faith that fights back, insisting on Love.

I hope and I pray that each and every one of you gets what you need here.

Amen.

Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor

Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / September 27, 2026