Dionysus on a Bike

Job 39:26-4:5 – 6/3/2026

ob has a complaint with God and he makes it. God’s response is thunderous. Verse after verse, God asks Job if Job can do the wondrous things in the natural world that depend on God’s creative will. The questions are rhetorical. Of course Job cannot command the birds, the animals, the mountains, and the sea. The distance between God and humans, the difference in power and perspective, is immense. God ends this litany of rhetorical questions demonstrating the limits of Job’s power and control and then basically asks, what do you have to say about that?

Job doesn’t have anything to say. He basically says “I am nothing, what can I say to God?” The most basic fact of existing in the world is finitude. At the most basic level, each person, in relationship to the vastness of the universe, the expanse of time, and the complexity of all that is, is virtually nothing. There is virtually nothing over which I have control. The unfolding of history and the fate of nations, let alone entire ecosystems and planets, do not depend on me. How to respond to this nothingness of self? What is the proper response to experiencing this finitude for oneself?

Job’s response is to shut up, to say nothing, to admit he is nothing and refrain from commenting further. We all clamor to be heard, and our vast multitude of legitimate complaints is continually rising up from us who suffer here on earth. Like Job, there is a certain point at which I am reminded how little I matter and how little of the world is up to me, how the world would continue its course uninterrupted without me. I am of no account. And I shut up. I lose the words. Even if I had the words, I lose the will to speak them.

Recognizing our insignificance and losing the words and the will to speak is not the end of the story; it is not the last word. But it is a necessary step. This is wisdom not just for Christians or for monotheists, but for everyone. Whether God exists or not, whatever God might be like, the truth of our human powerlessness remains. None of us raise up mountains. None of us cause the sun to set. The world’s course does not depend on our will. Regardless of how one conceives of that which is greater than oneself, even if it is an impersonal material universe, the proper, fitting, and natural response to our powerlessness is silence. There is nothing to say at the thought of the infinity of what is.

Silence is not the last word. Words return. Those words differ from person to person, even if the silence for all of us is the same. The return to action, thought, speech, and self-awareness after the experience of the absolute infinite is particular to an individual’s situation, identity, constitution, and background. What matters is the initial impulse to be quiet and notice how small we are. There are many ways to proceed from there, but the starting point in reverent humble silence is universal.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.