Ash Wednesday
Joel
2:12-19
2/18/15
Well, I thought this might be the
year it finally happened. During the
eight and a half years that we have lived in Marion, I don’t think we have made
it through school year without the kids missing at least one day of school
because of winter weather. However, the snow
that fell Sunday night, Monday morning and Tuesday night caused all of the area
schools to cancel classes yesterday and today.
We really have no reason to
complain. So far, it has been an easy
winter – nothing like what we had last year. Yet even with the very cold
temperatures that we had last winter, it still was nothing compared to what the
New England area is currently enduring.
This past weekend another snowstorm
hit the Boston area. It dumped a foot of
snow on top of the almost six feet of snow that had already fallen in the last
month. This onslaught of snow has
created all kinds of difficulties for life in the city along with some unique
logistical problems.
It is one thing to remove the snow
in order to clear off roads, parking lots and sidewalks. The National Guard
from Massachusetts, along Vermont and Maine have been brought in to help. But
in order to do this, you have to have somewhere to put the snow. There is a limit to how high you can pile the
snow along roads. So the city has
created five “snow farms” on vacant sections of land in the city. Snow is brought there and then industrial
snow melters are used to melt the snow.
But even this solution has faced challenges as at different times the
various snow farms have approached the full capacity of snow they can receive.
When the weather causes great
hardship like this – or causes destruction – people don’t expect to find the
explanation for it in God and his judgment.
While as Christians, we don’t doubt that the weather remains under God’s
control, we also don’t try to connect specific events with God’s judgment
against sin because we have no way of knowing why things take place. We have no means of revelation from God about
what is happening, and so we can only presume that in some way it fits into his
will.
Things were different for ancient
Israel. In the time before Christ and
the Church, Israel was the unique people of God. They alone amongst all the peoples of the
world had been chosen by God to be his own.
They were the means by which God was working out his salvation for the
world, and Israel was intended to a light to the nations.
God dealt with them as a nation. He had called them to live faithfully in the
covenant with him. When they didn’t, he
punished them, as a father punishes his son.
And one of the things that was unique about their experience was that
God sent his prophets to explain this to them. There were times – like the drought during
the days the prophet Elijah – when God told them what he was doing because of their
sin. And there were times when Yahweh explained through the prophets that a
disaster Israel experienced was a call to repentance.
We find an example of this in our
text for Ash Wednesday from the prophet Joel.
The occasion for Joel’s prophecy was a terrible locust plague that had
struck the land. He writes about it in
the first chapter: “What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust
has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust
has eaten, and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust
has eaten.” Joel describes this swarm of
insects like a conquering army and you can almost see them jumping and eating
when you hear his words: “As with the rumbling of chariots, they leap on the
tops of the mountains, like the crackling of
a flame of fire devouring the stubble, like a powerful army drawn
up for battle.”
Joel tells the nation that this
locust plague is an act of Yahweh’s judgment.
In fact, he calls it the “day of the Lord.” At the beginning of this chapter Joel writes,
“Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the
inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; it is near,
a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!”
Joel says that in the face of
Yahweh’s judgment there is only one thing to do: Repent! He calls them to come to God’s temple. He says, “Put on sackcloth and lament, O
priests;
wail, O ministers of
the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because
grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate
a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders
and all the
inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the
LORD.”
Joel calls the nation to repentance.
And of course, tonight on Ash Wednesday we enter into Lent – a season of
repentance. If you have done this for
any length of time in the church, you know how it works. The paraments and vestments here in the
chancel are purple. On Ash Wednesday we
have ashes marked on our forehead. On
Sunday we cease singing the hymn of praise, the Gloria in Excelsis. On the Wednesdays during the rest of Lent we
have a mid-week service.
There is, however, the danger that
all of this becomes merely perfunctory.
It can become all about achieving a certain kind of feeling which makes
the Easter celebration seem all the more joyous and exciting. In the midst of “doing Lent” we can lose
sight of what Lent is really all about.
Through Joel, Yahweh warns against
just going through the motions. He says
in our text, “‘Yet even now,’ declares the LORD,‘return to me with all your
heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and
not your garments.’” Like Joel, the
Lenten season calls you to repent. It
calls you to confess your sin.
This requires that you consider the
Ten Commandments. You must honestly
examine your life and confess the things that you put before God. You must confess the ways in which you hold
hate in your heart and refuse to forgive.
You must confess the ways you lust and covet and steal. You must confess the ways you serve yourself
instead of your neighbor.
And in doing so you return to God. You
return to God, and in our text tonight Joel offers comforting words about what you
find when you do. He says, “Return to
the LORD your God,
for he is gracious
and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents
over disaster.” God is gracious and merciful.
He is slow to anger. He abounds in steadfast love.
Joel reveals this in words. And during the Lenten season we prepare to
remember again that God has shown this in action. He sent his Son into the world, conceived by
the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
Jesus Christ, the incarnate One, obeyed the Father’s will that led him
to the cross. There, because God is
gracious and merciful to you, Christ submitted himself in your place to God’s
anger. The Father did not relent of his
judgment but instead poured out his full wrath against your sin. The Lord Jesus cried out, “My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?” as he experienced damnation in your place
God is gracious, merciful and
loving. In the death of his Son he
provided for the atonement of our sin.
He removed the sin that separated you from him – that cut you off from
life and fellowship with God. And then
in the resurrection of Jesus on the third day, he defeated the death that held
you the sinner in its grasp. Death may
now claim your body, but it cannot keep it.
For by his death and resurrection Jesus Christ has claimed you – body
and soul.
He will raise your body up on the
Last Day to be like his. And in
preparation for this – in the guarantee of this – he has given you his Spirit
as the first fruits and down payment.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the end times. As the risen and ascended Lord, Jesus poured
forth the Spirit to carry out his life giving work. Peter said on the Day of Pentecost as he
quoted the words of Joel: “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that
I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.’”
You have received the washing of
rebirth and renewal by the Spirit in the water of Holy Baptism. The Spirit has
joined you to the saving work of the crucified and risen Lord. Because of this, you are forgiven and you
will be raised. And so in faith you
repent. You confess your sin. And you
return to Go because he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding
in steadfast love.
No comments:
Post a Comment