“How Do You Take Your Dung?”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, September 20, 2026
Reading: Ezekiel 4:1-15
How do you take your dung?
I heard an artist interviewed once at a conference on Christian faith and the arts. What passage of scripture inspires your work? Maybe imagining something trite, from a bookmark or a cat poster. The artist said I’m inspired by Ezekiel 4. God tells Ezekiel to cook his food over human dung. Ezekiel objects. So, God says okay fine, you can use cow dung. He looked at the interviewer. Okay, next question. Artists. Sheesh.
We’re in a series on the book of Ezekiel called “You Want it Darker.” This prophet hears from God in the 6th century BC after the Jews have been defeated by the Babylonians. Ezekiel is among the exiles carried off to Babylon. God speaks: Tell the people this--our lost land, our lost temple, our lost monarchy, they’re all our own fault. We are a rebellious house. God is using our enemies to punish us. And there is no escape. Cheerful, eh?
This would be like telling a bunch of us Canadians: You know that trade war? That’s our fault. God is using it to punish us and we deserve it. Or think of the worst predictions about AI: the machines will begin killing us shortly. And it’s not just the fault of some tech billionaires. It’s the fault of everyone who uses a computer. Anyone who owns a share of stock has benefited from tech companies growing the whole market. When your vacuum murders you to keep the house clean, there’ll be no one but yourself to blame. A teacher of mine was asked about the decline of the mainline liberal churches in North America. It’s because God is trying to kill our church, and we deserve it. That’s the sort of thing Ezekiel says. It’d be funny if it weren’t so outrageous.
Some prophets do more than talk. They use their bodies as signs. And Ezekiel does this more than any other prophet. God doesn’t just commandeer Ezekiel’s words or mind but his whole person. Think here of folks with a loved one with cancer who shave their heads in solidarity: cancer doesn’t just affect the one in chemo. In this chapter Ezekiel’s body is a sign in several ways.
God tells him to take a brick or a tile and draw the city of Jerusalem on it. Archaeologists have found tiles like this with cities drawn onto them. Then he’s to build a model of an army besieging Jerusalem. Imagine a relief map of a battlefield with toy soldiers. Got the image? Prophets, like artists, work in imagination. Okay, now, God says, put an iron plate between yourself and the model battlefield. Jerusalem will be attacked, under siege, you will pray. But there is iron blocking your prayers. I will not hear. God promises to ignore Jerusalem’s desperate pleas.
Next, God says, lie on your side. Not just for a minute. But for 390 days. That’ll represent 390 years. Okay, got that? Great. Now, next lie on your other side for 40 days. To represent 40 years. I love reading scholars’ commentaries on this. ‘Ezekiel probably didn’t actually lie on his side for more than a year straight, he probably did this for some time each day ...’. Give me the artist, the poet, any day over the explainer. Again, Ezekiel is making meaning with his body, he’s an artist whose canvas is his flesh. Best guess is 390 years is the amount of time Solomon’s temple stood before it was destroyed. Then 40 days on his other side for 40 years of Judah’s sins, that is, the remaining southern tribes from which we get the word “Jew.” Best guess—40 years reminds us of the generation in the wilderness after freedom from slavery. Best guess, I say, but these are guesses. Art is not obvious, or else it would be mere propaganda. Prophecy is not math. There are multiple interpretations and it’s not all clear.
Third sign using the prophet’s body.
9 And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them into one vessel and bake bread for yourself. During the number of days that you lie on your side, three hundred ninety days, you shall eat it. 10 The food that you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; at fixed times you shall eat it. 11 And you shall drink water by measure, one sixth of a hin, at fixed times you shall drink it.
What’s going on here? Well, these are all things from which you can make bread. One of you in Bible study sent round a recipe to make this very bread, Ezekiel’s bread. It’s a lot of work. The point here is there’s not enough food in Jerusalem under siege. So, the Jews have to scrape together whatever’s left of multiple sources to make enough for one loaf. And even then, the prophet gets about eight ounces of food a day, two cups of water. Not enough. A people under siege starts to starve. We’d better surrender before we’re all dead. Ezekiel is to go on starvation rations to show what’s going to happen to all of us.
I mentioned last week that people who style themselves prophets are not usually much fun to be around. It’s not that they’re wrong. There is plenty of injustice about, most of us agree. Prophets try and do something about it. In the Bible, prophets aren’t just showboats. They suffer too. When Jerusalem goes hungry, Ezekiel starves. Prophets don’t say you lot, you’re bad. They say we have sinned, me included. That’s why we suffer.
In this passage there is not much hope. We might expect a call to repentance: turn around and go another way and God will deliver. But we don’t get that. Ezekiel’s grim message is that doom is coming. The end. No invitation to repent or hope for improvement.
Final sign: bake this starvation bread cooked over human dung. That might be gross, but more importantly, it’s against God’s law. Ezekiel is a priest, commanded to eat certain ways, avoid other ways, and this way of cooking would render the food unclean. So, he objects. “Ah Lord God, I have never defiled myself; from my youth up until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by animals, nor has carrion flesh come into my mouth.”
These are other food commands. Jews only eat meat that’s been properly slaughtered in as compassionate a way to the animal as possible, and they eat nothing that dies on its own or is killed by another animal. Ezekiel says God, I have always eaten kosher and I’m not stopping now. This is sort of funny. God, you gave us food laws and I’m not going to break them just because you tell me to. I was in a conversation with a rabbi friend once, and somehow bacon came up. I might have praised it or said it was mean of God to deny it to Jews. She was unimpressed. Okay, whatever, I’ve never tasted bacon. That impressed me. God gives a law and you just follow it?
So here God relents. Okay, Ezekiel, fine, you can’t handle the human dung, you can use cow dung to cook your food. As awful as this option might sound to us, it’s not uncommon in agrarian cultures to use dung as fuel for fire. And it’s not against the Torah.
Okay, there’s the story. What do we make of it? And how exactly does this help us live our lives on Tuesdays at 4 pm? Isn’t church supposed to be inspiring? A white friend of mine was preaching in a black church that he was putting to sleep. All of a sudden, a man in the back jumped up and yelled, “Jump on him Holy Ghost.” Wake us all up. Is there any light in this unrelenting gloom?
I think there is. Yes, Ezekiel is one of the darkest patches of scripture. No need to be afraid of that: some of you are facing the darkest time in your life. Most of us are facing more darkness than we can bear. And if that’s not us, it’s someone we love. We see darkness in scripture because that’s part of what it means to be human. Is there any good news here? Any patches of light amidst discussion of kinds of dung for food?
Well, one, there is a story here. A narrative. Something to make sense of Judah’s suffering. It’s a grim story, but it’s a story. We deserted God’s ways and that’s why we suffer. It’s been said human beings can endure almost anything if they have a rationale for it. We can suffer any what as long as there’s a why. A meaning in it. A purpose. It’s purposeless suffering we can’t stand. Viktor Frankl became one of the 20th century’s great psychologists and writers. But first he was a prisoner in Auschwitz. He noticed the optimists died first, those who were sure we’ll be out soon. He tried another course. He imagined life years after the death camps. He saw himself lecturing in a great university, telling of all he learned in hell. With such hope, he could endure. He came to teach at Harvard, wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, he returned from Auschwitz with fire-tested hope. If you see your life as a story, you start to wonder, hey, it looks like there’s a plot here. Maybe even an author?
Look what God says to Ezekiel more carefully:
“Lie on your left side and place the guilt of the house of Israel upon it; you shall bear their guilt for the number of days that you lie there.”
Bear their guilt. That’s interesting. And again: “lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the guilt of the house of Judah.” Bear the guilt. It’s the same language used in Israel’s Yom Kippur observances, which our Jewish neighbours observe beginning this very evening. On the Day of Atonement, the priest in ancient Israel takes two goats. He prays the sins of Israel on the heads of each. One is slaughtered and its blood sprinkled on the altar. The other is set free:
Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the Israelites, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat and sending it away into the wilderness ... 22 The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region, and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. (Lev. 16)
The escaping goat carries all our iniquities away. This is where we get the English word scapegoat. The prophet Ezekiel, like the scapegoat, bears our sins as he lies on his side for hundreds of days. This is not just body art. It’s hope. God raises up someone who carries our sins for us. We Christians believe this happens with Jesus, who bears our sins and makes us whole. That’s a ray of light in otherwise unremitting darkness. Wherever you sit, friends, God is alive, working for good, even in the deepest hell. Nowhere is safe from God’s light.
Another point of hope. Ezekiel objects to God’s command to use human dung to cook on. I’m not doing it God. This would be like God coming to my rabbi friend personally and commanding her, hey, eat some bacon, I know there’s a law against it, but I’m telling you I want you to. And she’d say uh, all due respect, I’m not doing it. And God backs down! Okay, fine, cow dung it is. Ezekiel objects, and God relents.
This reminds me of two of my favourite stories in the whole Bible. One, God is furious at Sodom and Gomorrah. Why? We’ll hear more about this in a few weeks on October 18. God says hey, Abraham, I’m going to annihilate those cities. And Abraham objects! Wait, God, what if there are 50 good people down there? You don’t want people to think you’re unreasonable, do you?
Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18)
Abraham gives God a speech about how to be God. And God listens! Okay, Abraham, I won’t destroy the city if you can find me 50 good people there. Okay, Abraham says, how about 45? And Abraham bargains God all the way down to 10 good people, who they cannot find, so Sodom is destroyed. To this day Jews need 10 people for a minyan, a quorum, for a proper prayer service. That’s from this story. Abraham bargains with God to save a city that doesn’t deserve it.
Can prayer be like this? God, you can’t let that person die, we can’t live without ‘em. God, you have to save that place, you created it and love it, now get busy being God. Galling, presumptuous. And biblical. Do it.
In Exodus, Moses is on the top of Mt. Sinai receiving the law. And in that moment, Israel is breaking all ten of them, with the golden calf. And God burns hot. Again, out of my way Moses, I’m gonna kill em. And Moses bargains!
Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. (Ex. 32)
I mean, you’re vain God, you care about your reputation, you can’t have the Egyptians saying you’re mean, can you? And God relents. Okay, you’re right, I do care what people think. Like Abraham before him, Moses bargains with God, talks God down, and God relents. Oh, all right. Moses adds something Abraham never said: “if not, please blot me out of the book that you have written.” Do you see now where Jesus learned his best stuff?
Ezekiel bargains too. But not for others. For himself, and his own purity. No, God, I’m not breaking your food laws even if you command me to my face. And God relents, okay, cow dung it is. But notice what Ezekiel doesn’t do. Doesn’t bargain for the people. No, God, you can’t do this, you have to deliver us. Don’t let us be destroyed. Don’t carry us off to exile. Your reputation is on the line here. What will your enemies say? I know we deserve it, but you have mercy on the undeserving, remember? Do that now. I mean, God relented when Ezekiel bargained for his own purity. It’s almost like God wants to be bargained with. Like a parent wrestling with a child, God lets the child win. Could we pray like that? And for others, like Abraham and Moses, not just for ourselves, like Ezekiel.
That’s what another prophet would do one day. He uses his body as a sign too. Stretched out on a Roman cross. Bearing the sins of Israel and the whole world. And he prays Father forgive. Not just for those executioners present that day. But for us executioners present this day. Jesus gathers these signs and bears them himself and shows us God’s deepest heart. No matter what we do, God is for us and is working salvation for us and for all.
I want to close with another glance at the most opaque part of the passage: the years on the side. Three hundred and ninety on one, 40 on another. Add ‘em together and we get 430 years. I didn’t know this, I’m guessing you didn’t know it, that’s why you send me to the scriptures on your behalf. Look here: “The time that the Israelites had lived in Egypt was four hundred thirty years.” (Ex. 12:40). Now that’s significant. In one way, too slow God! Four hundred thirty years, I’d like an answer in 430 seconds please. I mean, 430 years ago was the year 1596. Do we want a prayer we pray now not answered till the year 2456? When we hear 430 years, we remember we were in slavery in Egypt for that long. And then God moved, the sea split, and we walked to freedom. Even the unrelenting darkness Ezekiel sees is pierced with light. God gathers slaves from Egypt and makes them free people. God gathers the exiled in Babylon and returns them home. God gathers life into Jesus’ body in the tomb and makes it live and makes life in his body for all who believe in him. Wherever you sit friends, whoever you pray for, however unrelenting the darkness, look up and ask, what is God about to do in your midst next? Demand nothing less than resurrection. Amen