Job’s Intimacy with Dust and Ashes

Beginning the Lenten Season with Luke and Job.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Even now - to set the image of dust and ashes properly - it may be helpful to remember where this journey ends. On Easter Sunday, we will head to church buildings and sanctuaries adorned with all kinds of signs of life and vitality: flowers and bright colored clothing, sharp golds and yellows woven into pure whites in our liturgical dressings and paraments, and breakfasts & lunches full of good food to eat. The contrast between this culmination - new life out of death - and a beginning in dust and ashes is purposeful.

The book of Job is saturated with images of dust and ashes, with almost two dozen mentions of either or both. They are used to indicate a variety of related things - mortality (in the return to dust), creatureliness (formed from dust), certainly grief (dust thrown on head), social humiliation (sitting on the edge of town in an ash heap), and feelings of worthlessness (proverbs of ashes). Ultimately, ashes and dust in Job point to a universal equality in death. Even more starkly, they mark the boundary between human frailty and the life of the divine.¹

Dust and ashes are not nearly as present in the gospel of Luke, but they are not absent. They play a bit of a different role, though. Jesus uses dust as a bit of a sign of judgment and ashes as a sign of repentance. Whether it’s his instruction to the disciples to shake the dust off their feet in places of unwelcome, or the repentance of Tyre and Sidon that results in sitting in sackcloth and ashes, these things point to the need for something humanity cannot provide for itself - forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption.

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It’s really weird when you think about it. Those of us who will go to an ashes service tonight will stand or kneel before someone who will dip their finger in some oil, then ashes, and wipe it on our forehead. Weird. It’s among other weird things like dunking people under water or eating the flesh and blood of the Son of God.

But if we let it, it’s “simply” the reminder of our great need. It’s best done in community as we receive ashes individually, but bow together in need of God’s help. It’s not just about the culpability of sin (though that is present). It’s also about the fact that all humans are recipients of the consequences of sin, evil, and suffering, whether our own or that of others. And it’s also done well when coupled with the instruction from Jesus that we shouldn’t necessarily parade these things around town.

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The gospel of Luke begins with such intentionality. Christ’s isn’t just a neat story, but crafted out of a deep love for God. Luke then delivers to us a well-ordered gospel, with intentionality turned toward particular people, accounts, healings, teachings, and the example of Jesus.

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As we begin a journey in Job, it’s important to note what Job is and isn’t. We could just read through it and make comment on isolated words or passages standing alone. But it’s crucial to get the overall picture.

Job isn’t exactly a straightforward story. It does have significant characters, but not a solid and noticeable narrative movement. It involves a heavy amount of ancient poetry, not easily accessible to us as modern readers. Some assert that it may be among the oldest books of the Bible, if not the oldest (or at least portions thereof). Perhaps most apparent, it is rather disconnected from the larger story of Israel, and we don’t want to read too much into it, rather letting the story stand alone.

Unlike most of the rest of scripture, while there is a little bit of hope within, Job certainly doesn’t offer a neat and ordered box of answers for evil and suffering (proof-texting from Job isn’t wise).

The book opens in a heavenly courtroom and continues to use legal language throughout. We will read words and terms that call to mind legal proceedings - the argument of cases, arbitration, consequences, and judgment.

It does, however, provide companionship. It shares wisdom. It offers understanding - not in the sense of mental assent, but in the solidarity of a “Me, too.”

So while I have offered a portion to begin reading below, we likely won’t be reading it straight through and may jump around a bit. So if you really want to dig deep into Job with me in this season, knowing the whole path ahead of time will be really helpful. I invite you to take in one of these two 11 minute introductory videos. I appreciate this one from the Bible Project. It’s a bit more technical, but not dense in its solid overview of what’s going on in Job. But there’s also this one from the Spoken Gospel, which is more theatrical but also gives a good overview. Or, watch both.

Either way, I’m grateful you’re in this with me.

Luke 1:1-4

Many people have already applied themselves to the task of compiling an account of the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used what the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed down to us. Now, after having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, I have also decided to write a carefully ordered account for you, most honorable Theophilus. I want you to have confidence in the soundness of the instruction you have received.

Job 1:1-5

A man in the land of Uz was named Job. That man was honest, a person of absolute integrity; he feared God and avoided evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred pairs of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a vast number of servants, so that he was greater than all the people of the east. Each of his sons hosted a feast in his own house on his birthday. They invited their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When the days of the feast had been completed, Job would send word and purify his children. Getting up early in the morning, he prepared entirely burned offerings for each one of them, for Job thought, Perhaps my children have sinned and then cursed God in their hearts. Job did this regularly.

Prayer

God,

I need you. Goodness…we really, really need you. Your grace, your presence, your forgiveness. The reconciliation and strength that only something outside of the experience of humanity can provide. I don’t trust the system, even as much as people say it’s founded on you.

For you are good. And this is not good.

I pray it for myself. I pray it for my family. I pray it for the Church, certainly universally, but most especially in these days, the corners of the Church that look nothing like Jesus.

Help us God, for I realize that we cannot rise from the ashes without first acknowledging their mark all over us.

By your Spirit & in Christ,
Amen.

1. Just for a few examples:
Job 2:12 - “They raised their voices and wept… and they threw dust upon their heads toward heaven.”
Job 7:21 - “For now I shall lie in the dust; you will seek me, but I shall not be.”
Job 10:9 - “Remember that you fashioned me like clay; and will you turn me to dust again?”
Job 30:19 - “God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes.”
…and so on.