Doug: One of the valid criticisms of the Christian church in the US is that it is often too "smiley" and happy.
Doug: What I mean by "too smiley and happy" is that we often come across as inauthentic, superficial, or ignorant of reality.
Doug: In fairness to the church in the US, this is a similar critique of those in the US in general, especially those who travel abroad. We as a people are generally far more gregarious, outgoing, and smiley than other cultures.
Doug: So Christians in the U.S.
Doug: come about some of this persona fairly naturally.
Doug: Still, this persona has been augmented in the church by a lot of dynamic personalities with bad theology.
Doug: There are preachers and teachers who proclaim that if you just believe and trust in Jesus, everything will go well for you.
Doug: "You will be blessed beyond your wildest imagination." That theology is not at all biblical.
Doug: Jesus, the one whom we are supposed to emulate, to follow, was tortured and then executed on a cross.
Doug: But even worse than this un-Biblical theology is when those who grieve and mourn, those who are sad and cry, are judged as "unfaithful" or as "not trusting enough." I will admit, that some of my frustration and anger over this unbiblical theology is personal.
Doug: I resonate far more naturally with sadness and depression than happiness and optimism.
Doug: But I believe that even more than my natural predilection, biblical theology profoundly affirms not only the acceptance of grief and tears as part of our humanity, but God's blessing of our grief and tears as essential to our relationship to God's divinity.
Doug: This morning, we begin a short series of sermons focusing on the writings of the prophet Joel.
Doug: Joel was not only a prophet, but also a poet, familiar with grief and tears.
Doug: Through his powerful and profound words, his God-breathed words, Joel reveals that grieving is an important response to the suffering and pain of this world and our lives.
Doug: And from our other two readings, we see that Jesus himself embodied this same essential response to the pain and suffering of this world.
Doug: The book begins with the briefest of introductions, "The word of the Lord that came to Joel, son of Pethuel." We never receive from Joel any further information about himself or the specifics of his situation.
Doug: No geographic information, no historical information, no king's reign, nothing.
Doug: In a way, that's even better for us because it reminds us of the foremost reason that we read these writings at all centuries and centuries later.
Doug: This is, as it says in the introduction, "the word of God." The general anonymity of the author, the time and the place, allows us to focus then entirely on this message from God.
Doug: What does it say and why?
Doug: Initially, we don't know what the problem is.
Doug: Verse 2, "Hear this you elders, listen, all you who live in the land, has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors?" We don't know what the "this" is, but it is clearly dramatic.
Doug: Joel questions the oldest among the people if they can remember anything else like it, or even hearing stories from their elders about anything like it.
Doug: And whatever it is that has happened, Joel believes it must be remembered always.
Doug: "Tell it to your children and let your children tell it to their children and their children to the next generation" (verse 3).
Doug: This must be remembered.
Doug: And then we hear what it is, what "this" is: "What the locust swarm has left, the great locusts have eaten.
Doug: What the great locusts have left, the young locusts have eaten.
Doug: What the young locusts have left, other locusts have eaten." Joel uses four different words to describe locusts; but the words that he uses are all very obscure Hebrew words.
Doug: So scholars have different theories for what Joel was after with all this.
Doug: My personal favorite explanation is expressed by Elizabeth Achtemeier.
Doug: She's a contemporary US scholar.
Doug: She writes, "These four words for locusts indicate successive waves of insect attack and highlight the intensity of destruction as the poetic chain suggests." A 19th century German scholar, Carl Friedrich Kiel, believes that the number four, the four locust waves, expresses "...the spread of judgment over the whole of Judah in all directions." North, south, east, and west, they come from everywhere.
Doug: Thankfully, to my knowledge, we've never experienced locust swarms here in the Puget Sound area.
Doug: But they can be astonishingly destructive.
Doug: Elizabeth Achtemeier gives two examples.
Doug: One, "a report of a locust swarm in Palestine covering 2,000 square miles and comprising an estimated 24 billion insects.
Doug: In the 1950s, a grasshopper horde attacked California and was described in the newspapers in terms reminiscent of Joel.
Doug: In one county, 200,000 acres were covered with insects 'over every inch and in some places stacked on top of each other." Joel adds, verses 6 and 7, "A nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number.
Doug: It has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness.
Doug: It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees.
Doug: It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white."
Doug: On top of all of that devastation, a drought followed the locusts.
Doug: We hear in verse 10, "The fields are ruined.
Doug: The ground is dried up.
Doug: The grain is destroyed.
Doug: The new wine is dried up.
Doug: The oil fails." Verse 12, "The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered.
Doug: Pomegranate, palm and apple tree, all the trees of the field are dried up."
Doug: Joel notes then one deeply significant consequence of of all of this destruction in verses 9 and 10.
Doug: He writes, "Grain offerings and drink offerings (which were done in the temple in Jerusalem) are cut off from the House of the Lord.
Doug: The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the Lord.
Doug: [Because] the fields are dried up, the ground is dried up, grain and new wine and oil, all dried up." David Allen Hubbard, who was a former professor at Fuller Seminary, helps us understand the impact that all this had on the nation.
Doug: He writes: "Verses 9 and 10 give the reasons for the awful anguish.
Doug: The cause is that the fellowship with God expressed in cereal and drink offerings...
Doug: had to cease.
Doug: Grain, new wine, and olive oil are the ingredients in the cereal and drink offerings.
Doug: These offerings, rather than animal sacrifices, are mentioned because they would be more directly affected by the locusts and the drought.
Doug: And these offerings made up the daily offerings, the daily offerings in the temple." So Hubbard concludes, "Israel could not suffer any greater calamity than the suspension of the daily sacrifice, for this was a practical suspension of the covenant relationship with God."
Doug: Every aspect of life for those living in the land has been horribly affected by these events.
Doug: People are hungry, thirsty, displaced and without hope because they feel cut off from God.
Doug: Now, notice how Joel commands the people to respond.
Doug: Verse 5 "Wake up, you drunkards, and weep (we'll come back to that).
Doug: Wake up.
Doug: Wail, you drinkers of wine.
Doug: Wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips." Verse 8, "Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth, grieving for the betrothed of her youth." Verse 11, "Despair, you farmers.
Doug: Wail, you vine growers.
Doug: Grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed." Literally, it translates, "the harvest of the field mourns."
Doug: This is what Jesus himself did many times.
Doug: In our gospel passage, we read that, "As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept.
Doug: He wept over it.
Doug: " This is Jesus weeping over the city.
Doug: And then we hear in Hebrews that, "...throughout his life, during his days on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears." This is what Jesus did in response to these things.
Doug: And Joel closes our text with these words of bereavement.
Doug: "Surely, The joy of humankind is withered away" (verse 12).
Doug: Joel and Jesus both reveal that grieving is an important, even holy, response to the pain and suffering, the catastrophes and the horrors of our lives and our world.
Doug: We even have a whole category of psalms in the scriptures for this purpose.
Doug: Psalms that have been used by God's people for centuries as prayer, both individually and when gathered together in worship.
Doug: They're called the Psalms of Lament, and there are many.
Doug: Walter Brueggemann helps us see how vital these expressions are.
Doug: He writes, "This language represents honest address to God that moves the relationship to new possibilities of faithfulness that can only be reached through such risky honesty.
Doug: In the full relationship with God, the season of grief must be taken as seriously as the season of praise.
Doug: Such language accords well with the theology of the cross.
Doug: It militates against every theology of glory, against every theology that imagines that all things can be resolved, that there are answers, and that we go from 'strength to strength' (which is a biblical quote that is often given by smiley, happy pastors).
Doug: It stands as a mark of realism for biblical faith.
Doug: It is vital because there are situations in which easy, cheap talk of resolution must be avoided." Grieving is an important, even holy, response to the pain and suffering, the catastrophes and horrors in our lives and in our world.
Doug: But first, we have to be awake, and to acknowledge the truth.
Doug: Notice how much Joel tries to get the attention of the people.
Doug: Verse 2, "Hear this, you elders, listen, all you who live in the land." Verse 5, "Wake up, you drunkards and weep." Elizabeth Achtemeier asserts that drunkards are addressed not because they are the worst of the sinners; rather, because they will be some of the first people affected by what's happening.
Doug: Because, she notes, "...their source of happiness is dependent on the fruit of the vine," and it's been wiped out.
Doug: Her reference to that brought to my mind those who vote for politicians who will take away their support for life, their own sources of support.
Doug: Notice as well the despair in Jesus' words that people wouldn't wake up to what they were missing.
Doug: In that gospel passage, as he approached Jerusalem, saw the city, he wept over it, "If you had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes.
Doug: [These horrible things will happen because] you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you." You didn't wake up to what was going on, what was true.
Doug: We ourselves live in a time in our nation when we can legitimately ask, as did Joel, verse 2, "has anything like this ever happened in our days, in your days, elders, or in the days of our ancestors?" A time when we can see horrific pain and suffering, catastrophe and horrors in our lives, in our world, already - and more on the way.
Doug: What the billionaires have left, those with weapons and power have eaten.
Doug: What those with weapons and power have left, the corporations have eaten.
Doug: What the corporations have left, the corrupt judiciary has eaten.
Doug: God's prophets are calling to our world, "Wake up! Look with your eyes; listen with your ears! Wake up!" And for those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear, Joel and Jesus say to us, "weep, wail, mourn, despair, grieve." It's not only okay, it's holy.
Doug: This is what God is calling us to feel and experience with what is happening to human beings and to creation itself.
Doug: Weep, wail, mourn, despair, and grieve! The only caveat I will add to this, for now at least, is do this within a community focused on loving God, loving one another, and loving our neighbor.
Doug: It is safer, it is better to weep with others.