Joel 2:1-2 & 12-17

William F. Schnell

Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2010

 

An old friend and I have had an interesting exchange of emails since Monday.  We go way back to when we were kids at church camp.  Over the years I dated his sister and he dated mine.  When I rode my bicycle to Florida, I stayed with him along the way.  When I moved to San Antonio, Texas, he stayed with me.  After Nancy and I were married, he drove his car up into our front yard at 3:00 AM with a loudspeaker telling us to come out with our hands up.  He made a similar splash when he came to visit us in Milwaukee.  Not long ago he purchased grave plots for himself and his father that are within a few yards of ours in the Gahanna cemetery--that kind of friend.

 

I was supposed to visit him a month ago during a motorcycle trip to Key West, but poor weather in Florida resulted in a cancellation.  He was going to arrange for me to have a photo-op with my motorcycle on the Daytona International Speedway.  He can do that because he is the President of said speedway, and has been for several years now.  I think it has been a pretty good job for him, but even good jobs have their not-so-good moments now and again.

 

This past Sunday would have been one of them for him.  It was the biggest day of the year for NASCAR racing.  It was the opening day of the season known as the Daytona 500.  In the middle of the race a pothole developed in a strategic spot on the track, causing a tire to be cut and the race to be put on hold for 1 hour and 34 minutes while a patch job was attempted.  Unfortunately, that patch did not hold and a second patch was made requiring an additional 46 minutes delay.

 

Meanwhile, the mid-40 degree weather was too much for many in the stands and they bolted for the parking lot.  The effect on TV ratings has yet to be determined.  The effect on my friend was much easier to determine from the pictures taken at a news conference where he said: "We're the World Center of Racing. This is the Daytona 500. This is not supposed to happen, and I take full responsibility.”  When I saw the news Monday morning I fired off a prayerful email and that is how our exchange of correspondence began.

 

It has been fun watching this pal make his professional progression through life.  One thing bulds upon the other and with hard work, talent and a little luck you amount to something.  And then all of a sudden your head is on the chopping block because of a stupdi pothole-in-the-making beneath the asphalt.  Indeed it was that uncommonly rainy weather in January that cancelled my trip which was highlighted in the news as the probably culprit for this subterranian fault beyond the vision of the track inspectors.

 

The author of our text describes “The Day of the Lord” as such a swift, unexpected and decisive moment.  One moment everything is fine and dandy, the next moment the world as we have known it is coming to an end.  The Prophet Joel is the author of our text.  Biblical scholars are at odds over exactly when Joel’s prophetic voice was heard, whether before, during or after one of the defining events in the life of God’s people we know as the exile—that act of ethnic cleansing which removed them from the Land of Promise.  And it is okay that we do not know exatly when this propehsy was made because its timeless spiritual truth is timeless and therefore timely in our own day.

 

Our text begins, Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill.  Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming.  It is close at hand—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness.  Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come (Verses 1-2).  Joel says that an invading army is coming, but he uses a recent experience fresh in the memory of his people to descibe it.

 

In the chapter preceding ours he describes a recent plague of locusts which devoured the landscape.  He reminds his hearers: What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.  …A nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness.  It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees.  It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white.  …The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up; the grain is destoyed, the new wine is dried up, the oil fails (1:4, 6-7 & 10).

 

One day everything is fine in that agrarian culture.  The growing season has been excellent, the verdant fields are ripe with harvest and the prospects are excellent for more than enough food to store away.  The next day it is all gone as a swarm of locusts large enough to darken the noonday sky descends upon every living plant from wheat to grapevines to olive trees.  All are stripped bare leaving behind a barren wasteland and equally barren prospects for a hungry winter to follow.

 

Yes, a plague of locusts is something an agrarian culture does not soon forget.  Joel reminds the people of that recent plague to describe what is coming next because of their unrepentant sin.  An invading army is coming, just as destructive as that plague of locusts.  Before them fire devours, behind them a flame blazes.  Before them the land is like the garden of Eden, behind them, a desert waste—nothing escapes them.  …They rush upon the city; they run along the wall.  They climb into the houses; like theives they enter through the windows (2:3&9). 

 

The Assyrian King, Sargon II, overran Israel and carried its population away into exile.  Hear how he describes his military tactics in a similar rout from the secular historical record.  “The city of Aniashtania... together with 17 cities of its neighborhood, I [Sargon] destroyed, I leveled to the ground; the large timbers of their roots I set on fire, their crops [and] their stubble I burned, their filled-up granaries I opened and let my army devour the unmeasured grain.  Like swarming locusts I turned the beasts of my camps into its meadows, and they tore up the vegetation on which it [the city] depended; they devastated its plain.” 

 

One day you are a citizen of a sovereign nation, the next you are an exiled slave.  How quickly and completely life can change for the worse.  As Joel says in our text, The day of the Lord is great; it is dreadful.  Who can endure it? (Verse 11).  The Day of the Lord is a day of judgment for sinners.  Who are the sinners?  According to Paul and the larger biblical testimony, …all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  That would include you and me.  What is more, …the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). 

 

It all sounds pretty hopeless, except for what God proclaims next through the prophet.  “Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.”  Rend your heart and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity (Verses 12-13).  When a sinner repents, God relents.

 

Repentance literally means “to turn around.”  In the Bible it means for people to turn from sin and back to God.  If we repent of our sins and turn back to God, God will repent of his wrath and judgment and turn back to mercy and forgiveness.  In several places the Bible applies the exact same word elsewhere translated as “repent” to God.  In other words, we can get God to change if we are willing to change.  This is the reciprocity of repentance. 

 

While exiled from the land of promise to the land of slavery, the people of God did repent of their sins.  As a result, God made it possible for his people to be released from their bondage and return to the land of promise to rebuild their nation and their lives under his protective and providential care.  So even their darkest hour had the redeeming effect of moving them to repentance and moving God to mercifully save them—to resurrect them to a new and better life.

 

Tonight we begin the season of Lent which culminates in the resurrecting power of God made known to us in Jesus Christ on Easter morning.  But unlike Jesus, our resurrection requires repentance.  It requires acknowledging our fallen nature, confessing our sins, being sorrowful for the hurt and harm we have cause, and making amendment of our lives with the strength and light of understanding that God provides.  That is the hard work of Lent, but it brings with it the hope of Easter.

 

Maybe you have hit a pothole on the speedway of life.  Maybe your life is not as recession-proof as you once thought.  Maybe a plague of locusts have left your life a barren wasteland.  Maybe you have been too long exiled from the Promised Land.  Do not lose hope.  There is a way back, and repentance is the key.  If we repent, God will relent.  He will relent from wrath and judgment.  He will resurrect to a new and more glorious life.  May we experience the reciprocity of repentance as we make our pilgrimage through the season of Lent from this Ash Wednesday Eve to Easter morn.