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1 Sermon Text: Joel 2:23-32 October 24, 2010 Rev.

Jana Reister Knox Presbyterian Church Cincinnati, Ohio

We dont know much about the prophet Joel. Unlike other books of the prophets, Joel contains no call story and no account of a prophets usual resistance to the call, claiming for one reason or another to be ill-equipped for the task. We do know that Joels name means, Yahweh is God. In chapter one, verse one Joel immediately gets down to the business of a prophet, bringing the word of the Lord to Gods people, moving them to return to living out the truth that the Lord is God. At the time of Joel, the people of Israel were living with devastation of history-making proportions. A great locust swarm had descended upon the land and devoured all vegetation in its path. No food for people or animals remained. The granaries and wine and oil vats had been depleted. The people were crying, the animals were crying all were gripped by hunger, despair and fear. They were dark times. The task of the prophet is one who comes forward at such catastrophic times to clarify who God is and how [God] acts. Joel used Israels devastation to proclaim to the people about the coming Day of the Lord, to describe to them what The Day of the Lord would entail that it was a day not to be feared but to be embraced because Gods plan was ultimately to set the people free from the results of their sin and separation from God and set them free for God (Peterson, The Message). The theodicy question If God is good and all powerful, then why does God allow bad things to happen? was not a part of ancient Israels core theological concerns. They knew God to be all powerful, they knew they were in covenant relationship with God that God was their God and they were Gods people so when disaster hit, the Israelites knew something in the relationship was off. Joel makes it clear that it was God who delivered the devastating locusts to Israel in response to the peoples faithlessness. For some of us moderns, this theology is hard to stomach. Suggesting all tragedy is Gods punishment is dangerous. Harm results when humans replace God in the judges seat and decide that an entire city deserved a hurricane due to her sin, or that its Gods will when killer epidemics strike certain demographics. When tragedy strikes humans naturally ask, Why? The people in Biblical times did, we do still. When destructive swarms descend and devour our lives, homes, and livelihoods, people who havent given God a thought in years become instant theologians, entertaining the ideas that God is absent God is angry God is playing favorites, and Im not the favorite God is holding a grudge from a long time ago, and now were paying for it (Peterson, The Message). We need someone or something to blame for bad news. But this quest keeps us focused on the bad news and keeps us in the darkness of our circumstances. Given our culture, is it any wonder we get stuck there? Bad news is sold everywhere we look. The media make the bad and fearful news alluring. We grow accustomed to scanning our surroundings for danger, quick to see the tragic, becoming blind to the beauty in its midst. Our losses and the troubles in the world threaten to devour us and we cant find God anywhere. At times we feel alone against the swarm.

2 A friends job loss has forced his spouse to take on a second job in order to make ends meet for their family, while he has tried for months to find work to no avail. As the loss devours their resources, it threatens his faith and hope. He finds himself chasing after what chases us in our culture the right job with the right income in order to maintain the right house and give the right things to our kids. As he tries to keep up the pace, he observes that while chasing after things with the good intention of providing for his kids, what is devoured in the process is the one thing they may desire most his time. Caught up in the swarms of life, we lose sight of the light. Darkness grips us when we hear months of coverage of the oil that devoured so much of the Gulf of Mexico and the life within it, or when we hear of the earthquakes and the cholera outbreak that devours lives in Haiti, when we learn of mines around the world collapsing in on their workers, when illness and addiction deplete those we love or ourselves. With all the fear and bad news peddled all around us we become prone to predict trouble, but the prophet Joel tries to convert us to predicting possibility (Schaper, Feasting on the Word). Joels message is apocalyptic; its a message of hope and salvation to a suffering people (Cooper-White, Feasting on the Word). Its a message that the God of Israel, who has the power to devastate, is the one with the power to save and restore. Joel calls for the people to rejoice, proclaiming that, yes, bad has happened, but joy will return, that there will be a good ending to the terrible plague. God will abundantly restore, bringing rain and more rain. The granaries will be filled, the vats will overflow. We will eat again! We will be satisfied in the Day of the Lord! Joel proclaims. Joel reminds the people that God is in their midst always in the bad, in the good, in everything. Joel continues prophesying that after Gods restoration, the Lord will pour out the Spirit of God on all flesh. Without exception, all will receive the young and old, male and female, slave and free. The people will see visions, dream dreams, and they shall prophesy. And all who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Visions, dreams, and prophecy were all vehicles of Gods communication with Gods people. When people receive Gods Spirit, they will be brought into direct communication with God and, therefore, into intimate relationship with God. The biblical story is one of God restoring people to covenant relationship. God desires for us to live a life in abundant love and light, which is only sustained through a relationship with our God of love and light. Without the God-connection, we may veer toward fear and darkness. Author Henry Bester wrote about his year living in the outermost house on Cape Cod. One of his favorite rituals was to go out at night and simply stare at the night sky. Through this he learned the value of reverencing the night instead of fearing it. The apocalyptic message of Joel teaches about the fear of the night. So often we overdo tragic interpretations when all around us beautiful stars exist in the dark (Schaper, Feasting on the Word). We can live in the darkness of the bad or we can shift our focus to the light of the good. The Gulf oil devastation is horrible, but consider the miracle of being able to plug a leak a mile beneath the surface of the sea and stop the gushing oil from further devouring the sea and its life. Collapsing mines are tragic, but remember the miraculous rescue in Chile, bringing nations around the world to joy and thanksgiving. Diseases ravage, but gifted people are looking for cures. Researches have recently discovered a drug for MS that may bring the disease to a halt in the near future.

3 Joel calls us to rejoice. The apostle Paul echoes his call in Philippians as he says, Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoicethe Lord is neardo not worry about anything (NRSV). In the good and the bad, God is with us, desiring to bring us out of darkness, to walk with the Lord in joy and light. Joels prophecy gave rise to the first Christian Sermon when in the Book of Acts Peter proclaims in a Pentecost sermon that his prophecy was fulfilled. That day, tongues of fire descended upon the disciples and they received the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages and prophesying. The gift of the Spirit was given, the Church was born, and the apostles set out proclaiming the good news of the light that God sent into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. They told of how he walked the earth and revealed Gods saving activity in the tragedies and joys in ordinary lives. They told of how he died but that God freed him from death, showing the world that we belong to a God of the living who has an eternal kind of life in store for us through Christ. It is Christ who reminds us over and over that we have nothing to fear. It is Christ who proclaims to and for us, Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age (NRSV).

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