Sermon 8th June 2014

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker preaches - continuing our study of the Minor Prophets. The reading is from Joel 1 verses 1-12.

One of my reflections on this Minor Prophets series is that it has been somewhat lacking in jokes thus far! There are reasons for that, I suspect, and we will come back to them. But here’s the best one that I could come up with for today. It’s about a Texan on a visit to Australia, and his response to everything that he was shown. From the farms to the cattle, from the rivers to the bridges, they had them all bigger back in Texas, he claimed. It wasn’t long before his host tired of hearing that line; so he grabbed the chance for pay-back when the Texan saw his first kangaroo, and asked what it was. “What, don’t you get locusts in Texas, then, mate?!”

OK, it’s not a great one: but what I discovered was that Google’s claim to link to over 2 million jokes about locusts was well wide of the mark. And that brings me back to the shortage of jokes in this series. That does accurately reflect the reality that we have been, and are, dealing with subjects that are a long way from funny. Here’s a link to a YouTube clip that shows just what a swarm of locusts can do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KDyecfIvy4 Do check it out if you’ve never seen it before: what you’ll see is how in barely a minute most of a field literally disappears! Mind you, it has been calculated that 1 square mile of swarm is made up of about 120 million locusts; and some swarms have been estimated at 2 000 square miles! Imagine what damage about 24 billion hungry locusts could do in seconds: there would literally be nothing left! And, if you lived in a society where you had to grow what you ate and drank, the word ‘devastating’ wouldn’t get close to what you then had to face.

“A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army 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.” (NIV) This was – and is – no laughing matter. As Joel laid out in full detail, nobody and nothing, could escape the impact of what had just happened in his land. It was literally beyond-words awful: so what are you going to do now? For Joel, the answer was clear and obvious – because he was prophet; and this was the word of Lord that had come to him, after all, as he said at the beginning his short but dramatic book.

It’s worth saying again at this point that prophets in the Old Testament had two main callings. The one that might be more fixed in our mind is what’s known as fore-telling; as in, what God said was going to happen, at some point in the future. That was usually, often even, based on what was going on in the present, though. The technical term for that aspect of prophecy is forth-telling; as in explaining how God saw current reality. Of course those two strands intermingle, and it can be hard to tell them apart at times, especially when we live so long after the events. But the central calling of any genuine prophet was two-fold: it was to explain both the place and work of God in the present, and the future.

Next a word about Joel, and his particular place in the wider story of God’s work. The headline is that we know next to nothing, really! We don’t even know if this was a name he was born with, or took on when he became a prophet. His father isn’t mentioned elsewhere, so that’s no help either. There isn’t a name of any particular king, or ruler, in his book; nor even if the northern kingdom was in existence at that time. Scholars have dated Joel anywhere between the 9^th and the 4^th Centuries BC; but none of them can know for sure. And, in one sense that comes readily to mind, it is that lack of detail which makes this book so applicable, to just about any person, or people: in just about any, or all, circumstances.

You see, there isn’t any particular work of interpretation to do here. We don’t have to decode any events or put them into any context first. We ‘just’ have to work out what we are meant learn from reality when life has gone spectacularly wrong; in whatever way it has done. Locusts were nothing new for God’s people: the fact that Joel ‘only’ used 4 of the 9 available Hebrew words for them says just how common a problem this was. The same could also be said of the drought and the fire that Joel also forth-told about. It was a devastating combination of just about anything that could go wrong having gone wrong all at once that resulted in this unfixable mess that God’s people were in. Joel’s questions were: what was God doing and saying in and through this mess.

Now I know that sermons traditionally leave the application of a passage to the end. But I think that our learning from this lesson really can’t wait for then. For many of us in this parish, Nicky Tinegate’s recent death is a huge blow, on top of many others that we have experienced. Death is part of life, of course: we know that; but we have had what feels like too many, too tragic, too young; and there has been too much else besides: one thing after another, for too long time. It may not surprise you to hear that I have been reflecting on this painful reality rather a lot again in recent weeks, after losing a mother of young children still only in her thirties. And I’ve found Joel a really helpful reminder of the essential choice that has to be made in times like this. Once he’d laid out the facts of present reality in their full messiness, Joel offered his hearers a choice.

Now it may be more accurate to say that he told them what they had to do; but of course they could then choose whether they were actually going to do it; or not. “Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord”, urged Joel in 1:14 (NIV). That’s probably an expected message for a prophet to deliver to God’s people in trouble. It certainly makes sense of the name he had, or took, which means “The Lord is my God”. What Joel longed for was for all people to engage meaningfully with that reality: that God is God; always wanting people to turn to Him, in any and all circumstances; even if was to re-turn.

More on that aspect of it shortly. For now I want to focus on the pure and simple fact: in times of trouble, of whatever nature, all people have one basic choice to make: do we turn to God; or turn from Him. Put like that, it might seem a no-brainer: turn to the creator of the universe for help, support and everything else we need in times of trouble that are way beyond our ability to fix or understand; or blame Him for the mess we can’t get our heads and hearts round? But the reality for many of us is that this is an option for what we do with all our pain and confusion at such times. Hopefully it is – as it can be – an expression of faith and trust, though; that God is able to deal with our doubt, our anger, and fear; and to go on loving us, holding us, and helping us right through it.

Now there may be some personal, and/or Post-modern projection in there. Just to be clear, I’m not claiming that such ideas originate in the book of Joel; because they don’t quite! We only have to read on a few verses to see where Joel crossed into the realms of fore-telling, based on his forth-telling. There was no time to engage with pain, or loss, or anger with God in Joel. His prophetic message to God’s people was that so much worse lay right ahead. If you thought that locusts, drought, and fire were bad, those were nothing compared to the coming Day of the Lord. Joel is one of primary sources for this idea in the whole Bible, with other writers picking up both his theology and imagery (minus the locusts!) But, as ever, we need to engage primarily with what is actually here, in Joel; and in order to do that properly, you will have to read, and pray, this whole book for yourself!

Here’s another sample of what’s in there: ‘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.” (NIV) The latter part of that sounds, and is, wonderful; and many of us could do with such a reminder of who God is and what He’s like when we feel as battered as this. But! But: see where God starts in Joel – with a demand for repentance. The most obvious reading between the lines here is that the locusts, drought and fire had come because God’s people had sinned against Him.

Again we don’t know the detail of that; but again that doesn’t matter. There is a very important principle that we need to take heed of in here, though. It is possible that a disaster we’re facing is, to some extent, on our own head. To be completely clear about it, I’m not saying that this is what happened with Nicky, or anyone else who we know. But it is still a question that we always need to ask honestly, and openly. Even if that’s not the case, it may still be that there’s other stuff that we need to repent of, to turn away from. Times of trouble can easily highlight areas where our attitudes and behaviour have been less than Godly. There usually are ways in which our hearts need rending – tearing, and then remaking into more Godly shapes in what we say, and think, and do, and are. Today, hearing these words of God in Joel, should prompt each of us to take a long, hard, look in a mirror, in all of these ways; even if what we see isn’t pretty.

Today is, in fact, an excellent day on which to do just that. You’ll not be surprised, then, to hear me encourage us all to do it, then. So: “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love”. Any day is a good day to know, to remember, and act on that, of course; but today is most especially one because it is Pentecost. On this day it was words of God from Joel that Peter used to explain what was going on. God was keeping His promise, pouring out His Spirit on everyone. But that was a promise which God made in Joel after His people had returned to Him, repented, and been put right with Him.

On this day of Pentecost, what is it that God’s Spirit says to you? Do you need to make that fundamental choice, to turn to Him rather than from Him in times of great trouble? Do you need to re-turn to Him to in some way? Is that either because you’ve brought that trouble on yourself; or because you’ve responded in unGodly ways as you’ve gone through them? Does your heart need fixing in other ways, so that you can be remade into a more Godly shape? Or do you ‘just’ need to remember that God really “is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love”; and that you are to live in and for that truth? Whatever it is, hear the word of the Lord that comes to you through Joel today; then obey that word, and live it; in the power of God’s Spirit, this Pentecost; and each day beyond. And now let’s pray ...