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The evening lesson is from the prophet Joel, a passage that is the Old Testament lesson in the lectionary for Ash Wednesday. We know almost nothing about the prophet other than his name and even his name is common for he shares it with a dozen other Old Testament characters. He probably lived sometime in the years 400 to 350 bc and he spoke as both a prophet and a priest. Joel believed that a locust plague which had devastated the country was God’s judgment on the people and a call to repentance. That judgment culminated in what he called “the day of the Lord.” Let’s read it in Joel 2.

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near —

their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.

Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.

Like a wailing police siren, this text screams CRISIS! “Blow the trumpet … sound the alarm … Let everyone tremble.” Why? Because the Day of the Lord is coming and it’s a dark and terrible day. We don’t know when the ancient Hebrews first started talking about the Day of the Lord. It probably originated in a historical context when Israel had won a mighty battle and acknowledged that its victory was from God’s strength, not its own military prowess. So the Day of the Lord became a day for celebration, a day perhaps like an Easter sunrise service when the light from the rising sun symbolizes the joy and salvation that come from God. Israel longed for and desired the Day of the Lord.[1]

But some prophets, particularly Amos and Joel, saw the Day of the Lord as a day of reversal.[2] Because of the many sins of the people, God’s judgment breaks out against the people and the day is dark and fearful. In other words, God declares war on God’s own people. That’s the crisis. Joel believed a recent and devastating locust plague was a sign of God’s judgment. But the real crisis was theological. The Day of the Lord is here. God is against us. Sound the alarm.

How do we respond? How do we respond if God is against us? We can deny it. We can pretend that everything is okay. We can ignore the doctor’s warnings, the preacher’s warnings, the Bible’s warnings. We can fool ourselves into thinking that the real problems are just from bad people, other people, “those” people.

Or we can get serious. Can anyone seriously look at our world and say “everything’s going to be okay”? AIDS, enduring hunger and poverty, war, ethnic cleansing, and drug abuse are but surface symptoms of a deathly sickness common to us all.[3] How do we respond?

The Bible’s answer, God’s answer, I hope our answer is “repent.” No more business as usual. There’s a crisis, my friends. “Blow the trumpet in Zion,” said Joel. “Sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people, sanctify the congregation.” In other words, you better get yourself to church or somewhere in God’s presence.

“Assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast.” It doesn’t matter how old or young you are. Repentance is more important even than feeding children.

“Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.” Repentance is more important than marriage or sex.

Repentance is not just religious practice. Repentance is remembering who God is and, therefore, who we are. Repentance is putting God at the center, not the periphery of life and we will either do that and find the power of life or not do that and be caught up in the power of death.

Is there any hope for us? Or is the crisis too big for us? Well, Joel thought there was hope. In spite of the crisis he said, “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful … Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him.” There is always hope with God. We can always start again with God.

Remember the story in John’s Gospel when Jesus told the Pharisee named Nicodemus that belonging to God meant being “born again.” I’ll be preaching on this in a couple of weeks. Nicodemus wondered how someone gets born again. Jesus responded that it’s something God does. Peter Gomes, minister of Memorial Church at Harvard, says that being born again means “literally to begin all over again, to be given a second birth, a second chance. The one who is born again doesn’t all of a sudden get turned into a super-Christian. To be born again is to enter afresh into the process of spiritual growth. It is to wipe the slate clean. It is to cancel your old mortgage and start again. In other words, you don’t have to be always what you have now become. Such an offer is too good to be true for many, confusing for most, but for those who seek to be other than what they are now, who want to be more than the mere accumulation and sum total of their experiences, the invitation, ‘You must be born again,’ is an offer you cannot afford to refuse.”[4]

Being born again is what God does and we connect to it by repenting. How repentant are we? Repentance means centering life in God not ourselves. It is our only hope.

One of the popular Christian music groups today, especially on college campuses, is Caedmon’s Call. The group says that they try to write music for Christians who are trying to be better disciples of Jesus. Their name comes from an ancient tale of the seventh and eighth centuries about an obscure figure named Caedmon, a man who could not sing. Whenever singing was required, he ran away.

One day, after running away, he heard the voice of God telling him to sing. He said “No.” Then the voice came again: “Sing.” This time Caedmon opened his mouth, and to his utter surprise he sang verses he had never heard before. These songs were so beautiful, singers and songwriters tried to imitate them. But no one could match the splendor and majesty, since the songs Caedmon sang came as a gift from God.

Friends, hope is young whenever we repent and turn again to God. Only that will make us a people who, because we are forgiven, are not afraid to love.

Ash Wednesday is not the end. It is only the beginning and the end is Easter. But we need to begin in ashes so when we get to Easter morn, we know why we are there.

[1] Marion Soards, Thomas Dozeman, Kendall McCabe, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A Lent/Easter (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992) 19.

[2] Amos 5.18: “Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light.”

[3] Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts For Preaching, Year A (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1995) 175.

[4] Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996) 188.

[5] Leonard I. Sweet, “How Possible?” Homiletics 11.1 (1999): 64-65.