October 20, 2024

Job 38:1-7; Mark 10:35-45

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall declare to me…”

Job is calling out to God, to find out why Job has to suffer, why his family has to suffer. A whirlwind comes and God answers out of the whirlwind. Who is this person who thinks he can question the ways of the world?

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

According to this reading, the world is beyond the comprehension of mere human beings. It is beyond their intelligence, their wisdom, their yearnings for fairness or their hopes for the future. The world is beyond all of this.

Who determined its measurements–surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

We are told the world it is beyond all understanding. Or, is it?

I would argue that this Biblical scene is far more complex than a simple verbal exchange between God and Job, one where God comes off as merciless in the face of Job’s suffering. But I think this is a misreading of the passage, which is not meant to be interpreted literally. I do not think that God “says” one word here.

The whirlwind is itself the answer. For the whirlwind, or the tornado or the hurricane, is indifferent to the concerns of Job or anyone else who happens to be in the way. Nature is not interested in anything, let alone the plans of human beings. And God is not hurling storms around to make a point. Humans must adapt to the ways of the world, for the world will surely not adapt to them.

But those are the ways of nature and the world, not the ways of human society. They are sometimes seen as equivalent, as if social forces were the same as the weather and other so-called acts of God. One person or one family may get swept up in those social forces, but those are situations of our collective making. Not easy to control of course, but society is not the same as a whirlwind, whether sent by God or otherwise.

Now, back to the movies. Our movie this week was chosen because we are in the heat of the election season: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. You may have seen it. It is an old Frank Capra film. Frank Capra who became synonymous with feel good entertainment. His It’s a Wonderful Life has become the quintessential Christmas movie, one that we will be screening this December. Stay tuned.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has a similar story, a well-intentioned and earnest man fighting against the intractable forces of greed and corruption. Jefferson Smith is a literal Boy Scout, leading the so-called “Boy Rangers” in an unnamed prairie state (probably Montana). Smith is appointed to fill out the term of a senator who unexpectedly died, leaving a vacancy. Smith was chosen because he was politically naïve and therefore thought to be easy to manipulate.

This initially turns out to be completely true. Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart, is humiliated by the local Washington press corps who tricked him into making silly faces and poses that were then featured on the front pages of newspapers. Smith proceeds to stalk around Washington accosting the reporters and knocking them unconscious. That is one way to deal with the press.

The senior senator, Joseph Paine, is a hero of Smith and an old friend of his late father. But Paine is corrupt, under the control of a political machine led by a newspaper magnate, James Taylor. Taylor has organized a project to build a dam in their home state and he will profit from the effort after having bought up all the land that will be taken for the project. Senator Paine orchestrated the federal effort to build the dam.

Paine tries to distract the earnest Senator Smith, who as a result proposes building a national boys camp along a river where, you guessed it, the corrupt dam building project is supposed to take place. The boy’s camp is to be funded by pennies, nickels, and dimes donated by children around the country. Smith tries to oppose Taylor’s scheme but is betrayed by Senator Paine who accuses Smith of the corrupt land deal Paine and Taylor had put in place. How that was to turn a profit for Taylor afterwards was an unanswered question.

After a hearing involving falsified evidence and testimony, his Senate colleagues were poised to expel Smith from the Senate. But Smith along with his politically savvy aide Clarissa Saunders, orchestrates a 24 hour filibuster causing the Senate to grind to a halt. Smith faces repeated attacks from Taylor’s machine. His Boy Rangers are literally attacked back home by Taylor’s operatives as they try to defend Smith and get out the message about Taylor’s corruption.

Falling with exhaustion, Smith appeals directly to Senator Paine on the Senate floor begging him to do the right thing finally and to remember the Biblical adage of loving thy neighbor. To be honest, this line gets shoe-horned into the movie without much connection to the overall story, but I am not one to ignore an easy link to a sermon. The personal plea unexpectedly works and Senator Paine bursts into the Senate chamber declaring Smith’s innocence and his own corruption for all to hear.

This heart-felt shifting of fortunes happens over the course of maybe two minutes of screen time and leading to the sudden conclusion of the movie. Personally, I thought it might need a little more exposition and some post-victory discussion, but when “The End” appears on screen, there is no further arguing.

I like this movie, though it is not a perfect film. For example, the entire filibuster episode takes no more than 24 hours, but the events back home on the prairie seem to unfold over many days. There is enough time for large billboards to be erected and major media campaigns by Taylor’s newspapers to attack Smith and his Boy Rangers. Honestly, it would take more than 24 hours to design the billboards, let alone put them up. But I must let go of this movie second-guessing.

This is a feel-good movie filled with earnestness about the American dream and the institutions of democracy. This should be no surprise because the director, Frank Capra, was known for this fresh-faced optimism in his movies, even as his characters fought against the corrupt systems they find themselves pitted against. You are just supposed to roll with it and soak up the happy vibes of Americana.

Jefferson Smith is the perfect example of this as he wanders around Washington wide-eyed at the monuments that stand testament to those ideals. Again, it is a stirring bit of storytelling that feeds a need for optimism and hope in our nation.

But to be honest with you, Jefferson Smith is a hero despite himself. We are not told his age, but by law he had to be over 30 years old to serve in the Senate. And how did he get to be thirty years of age and not once notice that people can be selfish and dishonest? And, as a Boy Ranger leader, how did he not know that punching members of the press was not a good idea? Earnestness takes a more straightforward approach, I realize.

As one news reporter called it, this was David against Goliath without even the benefit of his trusty sling and stone. But that was not entirely true, at least in my estimation. Besides wholesome goodness on his side, Senator Jefferson Smith had another weapon in his arsenal: his aide, Clarissa Saunders. In fact, the only reason Smith does not end up in jail for attempted land fraud is because Saunders understands how Washington works. In many ways, I think she was the true hero of the movie, because without her, Smith was hopeless and helpless.

Saunders is a Capitol Hill veteran. She knows the Senate rulebook and how procedurally to get things done. She is jaded and cynical, however, perhaps after years of serving Smith’s predecessor who seemed to be under the control of the Taylor political machine, like Senator Paine. By the way, when you name a character Paine, reminiscent of Founding Father Thomas Paine, you should anticipate some sort of return to the right path.

Saunders wanted out of Washington as she had become sick of the backstabbing and double-dealing of the place. She was a heavy drinker and almost got married to an equally inebriated member of the press corps. Saunders at first thinks Smith is a well-intentioned fool who has no idea how things work. And she is completely correct. Smith takes the big stands and makes the grand speeches, but none of that would have mattered without Saunders carefully guiding him through it all. She manages all the earnestness and focuses all those good intentions in a meaningful and effective way. She understands the system and helps them both ride through the whirlwind.

When Smith is at his lowest, Saunders finds him brooding at the feet of the grand statue at the Lincoln Memorial. And she says to him: All the good that ever came into this world come from fools with faith… Fools with faith.

Smith sees the world through rose colored glasses, while Saunders’ glasses have been stained with years of mud that has been slung around her. She then tells Smith that “you had plain decent everyday common rightness.” Rightness meaning that his ways of approaching the world and the needs of the people of his state were right. They were decent. They reflected the plain old values that most people use as the measure of how to live. And none of that had anything to do with how Washington worked.

This movie came out in 1939. At one point, Frank Capra was in Washington with President Roosevelt as the Second World War began to unfold in Europe. And Capra questioned if his movie was the right message for that moment, if his dark picture of Washington corruption would undermine people’s faith in democracy at a time when faith was sorely needed. Others also questioned the wisdom of showing the film, particularly in Europe. But Capra pushed to have the movie release regardless of those questions and it was the right choice.

People understood that the government is not perfect but the ideals underlying the nation, and its democracy, are worth turning back to again and again. An ideal does not exist in the world but is a measure of what we should be doing, even if our execution is nowhere near perfect.

Which brings us back to the whirlwind. We exist in a complex and diverse nation, with many differing opinions and political points of view. And one of the ever-present assumptions is that we are strictly polarized, left to right, conservative and liberal, and never the twain shall meet.

In this sense, however, I think we sometimes mistake the weather report for the whirlwind. We assume that the views and opinions of those editorializing the world around us are true. That their sad tales and dire predictions are more than guesses, even if they are educated guesses. And we get locked into a cynical and pessimistic mindset, with two intractable sides of America clashing over fundamentally contrary worldviews.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

As I said before, I do not think God is actually speaking from within the whirlwind but that the whirlwind is a symbol of the nature of the world. Not out to get us, but fundamentally indifferent. There is no knowing or caring in a tornado. There is no knowing and caring is a hurricane or earthquake.

The knowing and caring comes from the people around us, those in harm’s way and those looking to help. The knowing and caring comes from those planning beforehand, those trying to anticipate and then alleviate the suffering of others.

What did Jesus say? [W]hoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant…

We often hear that so and so the politician is a servant of the people. But that is not how it often pans out in real life. There was a study done recently looking at popular support for various political ideas and projects. And it was found that even if 70 percent of the public supports an idea, that idea is not guaranteed to be supported by elected officials unless it is also supported by corporate interests.

Not special interests, by the way, but corporate interests, business interests. Not AARP and the NAACP, not the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts, not Main Street but Wall Street. This study basically confirms that the Taylor machine will get what it wants, but Jefferson Smith and the Boy Rangers, not so much.

As I mentioned, I think Clarissa Saunders is the unsung hero of this film. And I also think of her as a more practical example of how each of us should approach this unusual time in our political history. Saunders is cynical after years of political experience. She knows how the world works, and it is not a place for earnest Boy Rangers.

But this is where the comparison to the Book of Job and the whirlwind finally diverges. Washington is not a whirlwind, not an inevitably destructive place. Politics is not an intractable force of nature that cannot be argued with but only survived. It is not a fundamental force in the universe, but a creation of our making, our best intentions and our selfish tendencies. Whatever politics is, we have allowed it to become.

No one person can change it, even with a 24-hour filibuster. But the value of those acts of courage is not because they are guaranteed to win, but because they might influence the rest of us to take a stand. Democracy is not exactly a reflection of the will of the people, at least as that one study suggests, but that is because we allow it to be this way.

Our second hymn is a rousing anthem of American idealism. What was the last verse?

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears

We sing it, but do we live it? Do we try to make it into reality? There is another line: God mend thy every flaw. And yet it is not God’s creation to fix but the culmination of human choices, both conscious choices and inadvertent choices, direct planning and slouching apathy. We have the government we deserve because we are the ones that choose it again and again every two, four, and six years.

But this is not something that can be left unattended. It is not something we can simply shake our heads and pretend is the weather. If we are dissatisfied with the government we have, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because even if we like the people we vote for, that does not mean we should accept everything they do or accepted everything they allow to happen.

Clarissa Saunders is the most interesting character in the film because she is a cynic who overcomes her negativity to try once again. To try caring, to try making a difference. To stop just loving or worshipping those American ideals but to expect our leaders and government to pay attention to those very ideals. Sometimes it takes an earnest and even naïve display of such idealism to remind people of what matters. And sometimes it takes overcoming our cynicism, letting go of our pessimism, to make a difference.

Cynics and pessimists are often proven right with their negative predictions, but that is often because it is easier to watch the world burn than to get a bucket. It is easier to let our human-created whirlwind make a mess of things than to try to fix the system that allows those whirlwinds to form in the first place. We may not have the government that we want, but as the saying goes, we have got the government we deserve. Deserve, because we have allowed it to be, and we allow it to remain.

Three weeks from now, there is an election. I will not presume to tell anyone how to vote. But please vote. Please show up. Please make your views heard. And just before you fill in the little circles on the ballot, before you pull the proverbial lever on the machine, think about what you are doing and who you are asking to do it.

And when the smoke clears and we have elected new leaders of our nation, keep thinking about what you are doing and what they are doing. Keep thinking about if these new leaders are serving the people or serving something else.

And as a reminder and a closing prayer, the last words of a hymn:

America! America! God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Amen