I would like us to consider Job as a pilgrim. You know the biblical character of Job. He is the one who was very faithful and had everything anyone could want, and then had it all taken away and was visited with great sickness and painful maladies. In a matter of days Job loses his family, his home and all of his possessions, and then becomes inexplicably and painfully ill. None of what happens to him seems to be connected to anything he has done or deserved – it appears to him to be utterly arbitrary.
So far none of this seems like a pilgrimage. In fact, perhaps it seems the opposite. Just recently I even wrote that a major component of pilgrimage is travel, movement from here to there and back – and Job doesn’t go anywhere. Everything happens to him, and he simply stays put and experiences the pain and uncertainty that has befallen him. How is he a pilgrim?
I will acknowledge that I’m going to become very unliteral here – but then again, the story of Job is not literal, so I believe I am well within my rights. I would like to suggest that, while Job does not himself go anywhere physically, he indeed goes on a journey – one that is holy and one that results in great transformation. Job enters into grief, sorrow and suffering. His pilgrimage is spiritual. He may not go anywhere, but he is taken into a land that is foreign to him and is transformed. In some ways it is as if the pilgrimage passes through him instead of the other way around.
At any rate, it is worth noting that very early in the story, he is joined by his friends. As he wades through the mire of his own grief and misery, three friends show up. The first thing they do upon seeing him is they weep and they tear their clothes in agony and solidarity. Then the narrator tells us they sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights and they don’t dare utter a word. There is a sense that – while they cannot technically experience what Job is experiencing – his misery belongs to them as well, his journey is in some strange way theirs as well. He may be alone, but he is not alone. His friends are on this pilgrimage with him.
This actually makes Job’s story consistent with most pilgrimages: One is never really alone on a pilgrimage. It may feel like a solo venture – you may even be seeking solitude – but when you walk the way of transformation, others show up.
I have already written too many times about my pilgrimage to the Ligurian coast of Italy where, back in 2000, I experienced an unexpected connection to God and a moment of conversion that has shaped the rest of my adult life. What I may not have mentioned to you is how impossible it is to be alone walking the hiking trails of Cinque Terre. You are never alone for more than a few moments. After all, it’s a popular destination for hundreds of thousands of people each year. Walking the trails, other people inconvenienced me, annoyed me, helped me, cheered me on. On a pilgrimage you find that you have companions, whether you asked for them or not.
Speaking of annoying, Job’s friends are not silent forever. After 7 days they start talking, and it seems like they will never stop. Most of the time Job’s friends are talking, they are trying to solve the unsolvable problem of why this has happened to Job. They are trying to uncover that which is not uncoverable. They are attempting to turn his journey into an equation. It is not an equation. It cannot and never will be fully understood. It can only be experienced.
The talking seems unhelpful – and there is much to criticize about what his friends say, but honestly? Even in the blathering there is beauty, because it reminds us that Job is not alone. Sure, he’s alone in that what is happening to him is happening to him specifically, not his friends. His suffering is his own. But also, his friends have chosen not to abandon him. They have chosen to let his fate affect them. They didn’t have to do that. Their desire to solve his problems – however misguided and annoying they are – is a sign that his suffering, his destiny, his life matters to them; that it belongs to them in some deep ineffable way.
If someone you love has ever experienced profound suffering, you know what I mean here. It is happening to them, not you. And also somehow it is yours too, it is happening to you too in ways you likely cannot articulate. And you are invested in the outcome, in them.
Eventually in Job’s story God shows up. Literally. If indeed Job is on a pilgrimage, God’s appearance is Job’s destination. And in this story, unlike Job’s friends, God doesn’t even pretend to be helpful. God simply says, “You will never get to know or understand why this happened to you,” and then disappears again. God shows up and nothing is revealed and everything is revealed. This is more true about God than we ever want to admit. God’s revelation is obfuscating, and God’s obfuscation is revelatory. I am not trying to be difficult here: it’s just that God is difficult. God is both deeply known to us and also forever a mystery. God is the one who is simultaneously known and unknown – God is the one who is present but invisible, who is totally available to us but refuses to be confined by our understanding or expectation.
Again, in my own journey, this has been the case. On the day of my conversion, as I walked my path, I heard God’s voice saying very plainly, “You believe in me.” It was not a command or an urge. It was a simple observation. And in that moment, God revealed that they had been paying attention, that they new my heart and mind.
And also, now what God? You told me a truth, but you did not tell me what to do with it.
You told me a truth but you did not tell me what to do with it. But you did put all these people around me. People who love me and care about me and are connected to my journey and for whom my destiny, my life matter. I am not who I was, but also I am not alone even when I am alone.
At the end of Job’s story, he is transformed. I do believe his companions and his God are the ones who help make it so. He is not alone, even when he is alone.
