The blues can be defined in two ways; a state of melancholy or  a style of music evolved from southern African-American secular songs and usually distinguished by a syncopated 4/4 rhythm, flatted thirds and sevenths, a 12-bar structure, and lyrics in a three-line stanza in which the second line repeats the first. Of course for a raw definition of the blues I offer the words of B.B. King, "The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation."  

Blues is an African-American music that traverses a wide range of emotions and musical styles. “Feeling blue” is expressed in songs whose verses lament injustice or express longing for a better life and lost loves, jobs, and money. Yet the blues are also dance music that celebrates pleasure and success. Central to the idea of blues performance is the concept that, by performing or listening to the blues, one is able to overcome sadness and lose the blues.

Historically, the popularity of blues coincides with the rise of the commercial recording industry, the introduction of “race” records aimed at African American record-buyers after 1920, and the emigration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. Many of the earliest African American recording stars were blues singers. The first blues songs to be recorded, often called “classic blues,” were jazz-influenced songs in a vaudeville style, sung by the great blueswomen: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and others. These singers were often accompanied by pianists, guitarists, or even small jazz combos.

The “country blues,” usually considered an earlier form of the genre, was actually recorded in the mid-1920s. There are several regional styles of country blues, including delta blues from the Mississippi Delta, Texas blues, and Piedmont blues from the Southeast. The blues were a response to the suffering of the great depression and the pain  of growing up in the rural south or the crowded cities of the north.

The blues are normal. Suffering is part of life. Suffering is part of your life and suffering is part of my life. That is just the way life is. Suffering is part of the real world. There is certainly a lot more blue skies than gray skies but the days when the rain pours down and the skies are gray are real.

When suffering happens away from us, it does not affect us so deeply. That is, we hear on TV about wild fires destroying lives and families or we read in the newspaper about an airplane crash that killed two hundred people, and we are bothered but our sleep is uninterrupted. Yet when the tragedy comes real close to home, either in our own family or our own neighborhood or our congregational family, we often ask the question: "Why me? Why us? Why is this evil happening to us? Is God punishing us? Why is God allowing this evil to happen to us?" One often has feelings of anger, rage, bitterness and sorrow. We often persist in the question: "God, why did you allow this suffering to occur within my family?"  We begin to feel the blues.

"Why God? Why did this happen? Why is God picking on me? Why has this terrible tragedy happened to our family? Why was this allowed?" A person screams these questions out into the night? At sometime during our lives, all of us will ask those questions in personal ways.

As we work through the classic books and personalities of the Old Testament, we discover that the Old Testament had an answer for these questions. All of these Old Testament books make it absolutely clear: if you obey God and walk in the ways of God, God will bless your life. But if you do not obey God nor walk in the ways of the Lord, God will punish you and you will experience the wrath of the Lord. Then these Old Testament authors took it one step further when they wrote: when bad things happen to people, it must be as a consequence of something evil they have done. Any suffering that happens to you is a consequence of your sin. It is either your sin or your parent’s sin or your children’s sin. 

The Bible was clear for a thousand years, from 1300 BC to 300 BC, and the answer was clear to any Jewish mind: You have violated the law of God and you are experiencing the wrath and punishment of God. … The Bible is so clear in Deuteronomy and Exodus and the Kings and the Psalms, the Proverbs and the prophets: if you walk in God’s ways, God will bless you. If you violate God’s ways, God will punish you.

But…about a thousand years, after the law of Moses and after the kings and after the prophets,  along came the book of Job. Which suggests to us there is enormous suffering that happens to us which is not the result of  our sinfulness. That suffering is part of the fabric of life and suffering is not the result of God’s punishment. The book of Job is the book of the blues. Here we have  a whole new understanding of suffering. The New Testament confirms this new understanding in the life of Jesus, the cross, and his suffering on the cross. One of the major differences between the Old Testament and New Testament is the role and purpose of suffering.

Once upon a time, there was man by the name of Job, and he did not have the blues. He was one of the wisest and richest men who had ever lived and he was a very good and fine man. Job walked with God, was blameless and upright and did everything to avoid evil. He was truly a man of God. Job had seven sons and three daughters. He was enormously wealthy. He had seven thousand sheep and three thousand cattle and a thousand oxen and five hundred donkeys. Job had enormous wealth. When he or his family would throw a party or a feast, when the party was over, Job would give an atonement offering to God for any sin that had been committed unwittingly. Job was as upright and as good and as loyal and as God-fearing as had been any person before him.

One day, an angel, the fallen angel called Satan, was standing before the council of God, and God said, “Where have you been lately Satan?” Satan replied, “I have been out there, roaming around the earth.” God said, “Yes, I know. In your wanderings, did you see my servant Job? A man who loves me, is upright and does everything to avoid evil.” Satan said, “O yes, I have seen your servant, Job. You protect Job from all the disasters and if you, God, did not protect him from all those disasters, he would not be so obedient to you. He is obedient to you because he knows that you will protect him. If you take all his protection away, he will curse you.” God said, “Go ahead. We’ll see what happens.”

The next day, it all came crashing down  and Job caught the blues. Have you ever had that happen? Where you thought life was going along real smoothly and in one day, your house of cards came crashing down. On Monday your singing Sinatra, The Carpenter’s, Elton John or Beyonce and on Tuesday you are singing Billie Holiday, Hank Williams,  and  Muddy Waters.  The whole thing came crashing down. It was a total disaster. You have seen it happen to other people, and therefore, you know that it can happen to you. You and I build our illusions of security, and one day, it all comes crashing down. That is what happened to Job. On that day in Job’s life the blues came, the warring enemies attacked, the Sabeans, and they killed all the donkeys and all the servants taking care of those donkeys. Before you knew it, there was a lightning storm that wiped out all the sheep. Then the Chaldeans attacked and killed all the camels. Later that day all ten children of Job were having a party and all the children and grandchildren were there at the house, and a sudden storm came roaring through and shattered the whole house and everyone who was in it. All ten of Job’s children were killed. A servant came to tell Job all of this. Job experienced enormous despair and inner pain and said, “I came into the world with nothing and I will leave this world with nothing. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Praise be the name of the Lord.” The scripture adds, “And Job did not blame God” for the disasters that happened.

A short time later, the angels were all up before the council of God and God asked Satan, “What have you been doing lately, Satan?” Satan replied, “I have been roaming around the earth.” God said, “Have you seen my servant, Job, down there? He is a really upright man. He worships me and avoids evil and has stood up to your test.” Satan replied, “Yes, but you didn’t let me take his health away. You let me take his health away and I will bring that man down to his knees. You wouldn’t let me touch his body, but when I do, that will make him crack.” God says, “Go ahead.” … So Satan went down to earth to find Job. Satan gave Job this disease and Job was covered with sores from head to foot. Job went out to the garbage dump and took a piece of pottery, broke it, and with the sharp piece of pottery, Job scraped off his sores. Job’s wife came out of the garbage dump and said, “Job, curse God. Curse God and die.” Job said, “No, I am not going to curse God and die. The Lord brings good things in our lives; the Lord brings bad things in our lives; praise be the name of God. I will not curse God.” And Job did not blame God for the disasters which happened in his life.

Then, things change. Three friends come to visit him. Job was sitting there in the dump and these three friends see the disasters that have happened to Job. For seven days, the friends say nothing. Meanwhile, Job was simmering and simmering and simmering and on the seventh day, Job’s anger explodes when he begins to sing the blues, “Curse be the day that I was born. Curse by the night that I was born. My pain is so great that I want to die. God has been miserable to me.” Now, the three friends had carefully read Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon and the prophets. These three friends knew the rules. They knew when Job was suffering, it was his fault, his parent’s fault, or his children’s fault. Somebody has to be blamed. And so, for the next thirty chapters, these three friends stick it to him, trying to convince Job that he is at fault.

Hear what the first friend says in the book of Job. In chapter four (TEV, Today’s English Version), Eliphaz says, “Job, will you be annoyed if I speak and give you a little advice?  Happy is the person whom God corrects. Do not resent when God corrects you for your sins.” Job would get angrier and angrier inside. He was simmering and smoldering and simmering and smoldering.

The next friend, Bildad, says (chapter 8), “Are you, Job, finally through with your windy speech? God never quits justice. God never fails to do what is right. Your children must have sinned against God” and God punished them with the punishment that they deserved. All ten of them. Job became angrier and angrier and angrier. He was simmering and smoldering and simmering and smoldering.

The third friend, Zophar, says (chapter 11), “Put your heart right, Job. Reach out to God. Put away the evil and the wrong that you have been doing and repent of your ways.”

Well meaning friends offering the conventional wisdom, but times were changing and not even Job new just how much things were changing. Job’s response was another verse of the blues, “Even if I were right, my mouth would say that I am guilty. Even if I were without blame, He would say I am guilty.  Even though I am without blame, I do not care about myself. I hate my life.  It is all the same, so I say, 'He destroys both those who are without blame and the sinful.'  If death comes fast by disease, He makes fun of the trouble of those who have done no wrong.  The earth is given into the hand of the sinful. He covers the faces of its judges.” (Acts 9:20-24).

A fourth friend arrives Elihu is his name. Elihu is tired of it all. In chapter 32, Elihu says, “I cannot control my anger any longer because Job is justifying himself and blaming God.” Elihu was also angry at Job’s three friends. … Elihu was the youngest and he finally began to speak, “God teaches human being through suffering and uses distress to open their eyes to God.” All along, Job had been saying, “Let me see you, God. I want to see you face to face.”   Elihu said, “God uses suffering and distress to finally open our eyes to God.”

Elihu finishes his speech and there is a pause. There is a long pause and then there is a whirlwind, and God speaks out of the whirlwind and says (chapter 38), “Who are you to question my wisdom, Job? With your ignorant and empty words. Stand up like a man like a man Job, and answer the questions that I ask you. Where were you, Job, when I made the world? Where were you when I created the days and the nights and laid the foundations of the earth? Where were you when I made the leviathan and sea monsters?  Where were you Job when I created all the world, you Job who think you know so much about me? Who are you to say that I am the cause of evil in your life? Who are you to blame me? Job, you know so little. Are you, Job, trying to tell me that I the Lord God am unjust? Are you saying that I am unfair because you have suffered in this world?”

Finally, Job falls to his knees and says in chapter 42, “Lord God, I know that you are all powerful. I am so very ignorant. I have talked about things I did not really understand.” This is the key line in the whole book, “In the past, I knew only what others have told me but now I have seen you with my own eyes and I am ashamed of what I have said and done.”  In his suffering, Job’s eyes were opened. Job falls to his knees in repentance.

The book of Job makes it clear suffering is not a result of sin. Then we move into the New Testament, and in the New Testament, you find that there is a fundamental difference towards suffering from vast majority of books of the Old Testament.  You hear the words, “God did not spare his Son from the cross, but God chose the way of the cross and the way of suffering in order to save the world.” If God did not spare his son, Jesus, from the cross, why should God protect you or me from the cross? God used suffering to save the world. It is part of the grand mystery  none of us understand.

The Apostle Paul wrote” “Suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope will not disappoint us.” Paul invites us to learn the wisdom of the cross, the wisdom of the crucified Christ, the wisdom of the blues.

In the Old Testament and the background of the New Testament, when someone had leprosy, blindness or lameness, you avoided them because they were being punished by God. But in the life of Jesus, when somebody is suffering, you go to the place of suffering. Where people are being crucified the most, you go the most. Where you find the blues, there is God in the midst of those people.

Our primary symbol is the cross, the way of the cross saves. In an odd way the blues save  us because they move us to our knees to meet Jesus again.