What Was Lost and What We Freely Give
Traditionally on Ash Wednesday, believers in many liturgical churches have ashes marked on their foreheads. Growing up in a secular household, I remember how alien this looked to me the first time I saw it. A Catholic coworker, arrived at our office with a smudge on her forehead.[1] We worked in a huge government office building, so I continued to see these smudges, and slowly it dawned on me that it was Ash Wednesday. I was relieved that I hadn’t told her to wash her face!
Ashes are a rich metaphor. They symbolize what has been lost that cannot be regained, and also what we freely surrender. In the ancient story of Job, Job, a good and prosperous man, loses all his possessions. If that were not bad enough, all his children are killed in a tragic accident. Finally, while he is still mourning his great loss, he comes down with a severe case of painful boils that completely cover his body from the sole of his foot to the top of his head.
Devastated, Job sits in an ash heap, and mourns. He mourns in complete silence for seven days and seven nights. The story of Job beautifully illustrates what I wrote about yesterday: how difficult it is to witness suffering! Job’s three friends actually do an amazing job in the beginning. They sit with him in silence for the entire seven days. No advice. No “it will all be alright.” No “buck up.” But after that, Job finds words to express his tremendous sorrow. That’s when Job’s friends fail spectacularly. They lecture him, and beat him up with platitudes. They imply his own secret sin caused his problems (according to the story, it did not). They tell him “confess your sin,” “just trust God,” “everything happens for a reason.”[2]
Far from comforting Job, the words cause deeper distress, and goad Job into accusing God. The story is primarily about our discomfort with suffering. Job’s friends are not comforting Job, they are comforting themselves. They are creating a narrative for themselves that tells them that Job’s suffering is deserved, and thereby they can feel themselves secure from experiencing the same. They insulate themselves from feeling the discomfort of the existence of injustice in the world. We all “get what we deserve,” they tell themselves, therefore as long as I am good, only good things will happen to me.
No. This is not the biblical truth. Bad things do happen to good people. The good man or woman does suffer. Good people do lose everything through no fault of their own. Loss cannot always be explained. Is there purpose in loss? I believe there is, but that purpose is not always found easily, and it is definitely not found without suffering. One of my favorite quotes on suffering comes from the devotional writer, Oswald Chambers:
“Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.”[3]
I believe Job’s friends prolonged Job’s emotional suffering by lecturing him rather than loving him. In the end of the story, God answers Job directly, but He doesn’t give Job a specific reason for his suffering. Instead, God paints a broad stroke of narrative that covers everything from the creation of universe to a mountain goat giving birth — a perspective that we are small, and yet important and cared for. Job still doesn’t understand his loss, but he “repents in dust and ashes.”[4] He changes his mind.
If at this point we have any doubt about the role that Job’s friends played, the narrative leaves little room for a positive interpretation. God tells one of them:
“I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”[5]
The three friends then, in effect, have to go to Job and admit their error in order to receive forgiveness[6] for the wrong they have done.
Democracy
So here we are praying for democracy. Already we are watching many things we love burnt to the ground. We have found ourselves surrounded by Job’s comforters. While we mourn, they mock. While we grieve, they offer us platitudes that are meaningless. Rather than sitting quietly with us in our sorrow, they tell us God, not man, has orchestrated our devastation. They hide their faces from our pain. In short, they misrepresent God. They paint him in their own image. We are right to reject it.
And this is why allowing ourselves to look on suffering is important. We cannot make truth our own without suffering. We cannot understand Jesus without being touched by the pain in the world around us. I want to say this in the clearest possible terms to my Christian brothers and sisters, because I know so many who have spent our lives singing songs about seeing Jesus and knowing Him: You cannot know Him without experiencing the pain of this world. You cannot truly know Him unless you are willing look on the suffering of another without looking away.[7]
Ashes represent a loss from which there is no recovery. In Job’s case, it was his beloved children. We too have experienced loss - lives for some, for others it has been jobs, our sense of security, family members, or our democratic norms. It is fitting and right to mourn our losses, even while we work to preserve what is still not lost.
Ashes also represent those things we freely surrender - our “burnt offerings,” if you will. The Lenten tradition, passed down for centuries, is to surrender something for Lent — a favorite food or drink, a habit, even an attitude perhaps. For myself, I am choosing to surrender some of my own comfort. I am prayerfully considering what I will give up especially from companies that are actively harming people. I am buying more local, and choosing to support my actual neighbors instead of multinational corporations that are harming my neighbors. I’m also choosing daily to let go of hatred and bitterness. And, by the grace of God, I am learning to love even my enemies. Loving does not mean not being angry. Loving does not mean being silent. But it means being willing to forgive, even while standing my own ground.
In Love & Solidarity,
Me
Questions for Reflection:
- What losses am I grieving?
- What do I choose to surrender?
Resources:
Resist and Unsubscribe - Is a site that provides information on how to unsubscribe from big tech companies that are supporting policies that devalue human rights. Scott Galloway who has organized this boycott for February is a realist. You don't have to do everything to do something. He is also gathering real data about the impact of boycotts. The site provides you with direct links to information on how to unsubscribe from various platforms.
Footnotes:
[1] sometimes priests put the ashes in the shape of a cross, but not always. In this case, I didn’t have the benefit of that symbolism.
[2] Not direct quotes from the story, of course! However, these sentiments are expressed quite clearly in the story.
[3] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, “Approved Unto God,” reading for December 13. Emphasis mine.
[4] Job 42:6
[5] Job 42:7
[6] My pet peeve is when I hear Job’s friends quoted to bolster some argument. Yes, they spoke some truths, but they spoke them out of context and with wrong application. For me, unless I’m illustrating the danger of platitudes, I’d rather find those truths elsewhere.
[7] Luke 9:23; 14:27, Matt 16:24, Mark 8:34
Photo credit: Margaret McNett Burruss, from a bonfire a few years ago, when I was mourning some things I lost, and letting go of some things that I'd come to realize were not helpful.
0 Comments