Joel 2:12-13
It is the time of year when the Church begins one of its most important seasons. The Lenten season begins with Ash Wednesday. Lent is a time of introspective, looking into our hearts and seeking what parts of our lives we are keeping from God. It is also a time when we try to relate to everything that Jesus experienced – from his 40 days in the wilderness being tempted to His death and resurrection. I will be honest and say that trying to find a fresh perspective on something that occurs year after year can be difficult. So as I was thinking about what to write about Ash Wednesday, I was looking through all sorts of passages. I looked at passages that had been earmarked for our church’s Lenten series and nothing was really standing out to me. Then I looked at the scripture passages that would be used for our Ash Wednesday service. I was surprised to find the prophet Joel. I have read Joel a number of times but had never thought of his words as speaking into this season.
As I read it this time the solemnness, the anguish - of Ash Wednesday, of Good Friday and yes even in the celebratory tone of the Triumphant entry - came screaming into my mind and heart. The passage above follows eleven verses of doom and gloom – of a plague of locust, that look like horses and leave desolation in their path, God’s judgement on a wicked and stiff necked people. But Joel doesn’t leave the people with this dreadful image in their heads – no God has more for him to share, a message that says perhaps all is not lost, perhaps the Lord God will reconsider and have mercy on the people.
In Biblical time is was a common practice when people were mourning or angry to tear their clothes – it was a way of expressing extreme and painful feelings. Joel tells the people that they needed to “rend their hearts.” The dictionary has this to say of the word “rend” – to separate into parts with force or violence, to tear apart, to tear ones’ garment or hair in grief or rage. Joel is telling the people that tearing their clothes will not be enough to show God that they are truly sorry for their sin and stiff necked behavior – no this time they must break open their hard hearts, to prove that indeed their hearts are broken over how they have behaved. Once they have rended their hearts Joel calls them back to God, assuring them that God is still filled with grace and compassion and love.
In a few short weeks we remember another solemn day, that today we call good. We will remember that Jesus rended His heart to restore our relationship with the father. The curtain that separated the most Holy place from everything and everyone will be violently torn from top to bottom as the Father grieves for His Son.
We are not so different from those of ancient times – we are all sinners doing things that separate us from a God who loves us. We can be stiff necked, not wanting to change – because that change might be uncomfortable, might make us more different from the world than we want to be. Joel is speaking to us though, as he did all those generations ago – encouraging us to rend out hearts and return to God, that we might receive grace and compassion, that we would feel His love restoring our torn hearts.
If we’ll rend our hearts out of sincere grief, He will make them whole again with His love.
A Prayer
Father – what powerful words your servant Joel spoke to the people. May his word echo though our spirits giving us the courage to rend our own hearts, that the work of your Son make restore them, making us whole and bringing us back to a right and loving relationship with the One who made us and calls us His child. May we have the courage to be who You want us to be, to be so different that others will see Jesus through the torn curtain. In the name of Jesus, who rended His heart so that we would be healed from our sin sickness – Amen.
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