Earth, Wind, And Fire
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Object:
While serving as a missionary to Madagascar with my family in the 1980s and 90s, I witnessed at least two locust swarms. On one level I was fascinated by the spectacle of a good portion of the sky suddenly becoming black with a thick cloud of locusts. There was something eerily beautiful about the shimmering light that managed to pass through the swarm to the ground as the insects passed overhead. Even a small swarm may cover several square miles of sky and weigh thousands of tons. Locusts eat the equivalent of their own weight in a day, and, driven by the winds, a swarm can travel some 300 plus miles a day during the late afternoon and evening. The largest swarm on record covered 400 square miles, consisting of approximately forty billion locusts!
However, I knew that my detached, academic wonder could not be shared by my Malagasy students, coworkers, and friends at the regional seminary where I taught for eight years. At the first sight of a swarm, the alarm would be given and the whole town would gather with shouts and whoops and the flailing of arms holding brightly colored cloth in an attempt to keep the swarm from landing in the area. The Malagasy knew all too well that the arrival of the locusts was a devastating life-and-death situation. This is so because locust swarms almost always occur in those marginal semiarid regions of the world often subject to frequent droughts as well; places where there is little margin for error when it comes to agricultural production.
Once the locust swarm moves on after having destroyed the young crop, there is the anxious wait to see if more rains will come. That precipitation is needed for a replacement crop or even for next year's planting. One crop failure is bad enough, but two in a row could spell disaster for an area. Verse 23 of Joel chapter 2 perfectly captures the level of joy that accompanies the arrival of that desperately needed and looked-for rain in areas impacted by locust swarms.
God's message through the prophet Joel acknowledges the harsh reality the people continued to experience in the land of Judah after the return from exile and even after the temple of Jerusalem had been rebuilt. Drought, as is often the case, had followed a devastating locust swarm that, God admits, had been sent against the people as punishment. What the prophet proclaims here is nothing new. The faith and theology of Israel was essentially a land-based theology, tied integrally to the promise of a land for the children of Israel. It goes all the way back to the story of the fall in Genesis, where the creator announces to the first humans that the affects of human sin will be manifested in the earth:
Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.
-- Genesis 3:17b-18
Therefore, it is not surprising to find that, for Joel, "the land is the barometer of Israel's relationship with Yahweh."1 The apostle Paul picks up on this divine ecology when he speaks in Romans, chapter 8, of the whole creation waiting and longing and groaning for the redemption of God's children (Romans 8:19-23). While today we may not be able to make the direct one-to-one association between our disobedience and specific events in the natural world as Joel did, the church has recently begun to recognize and acknowledge in a new way that the overall condition of our fragile planet is related to human sin. We have not been the faithful stewards of creation we were meant to be.
However, as important as our imprint on the land is, the focus of this text lies elsewhere. God, through the prophet Joel, uses the imagery of a restored and fruitful land as a barometer for showing the character and restoring activity of God. It is God's imprint on the land and on the people that matters in the ultimate sense, which will bring about the changes that are needed, changes that will help to heal the people of the psychological damage they have suffered. A change is in the wind.
After having consumed so much grain, locusts are not able to fly long distances on their own but wait for the late afternoon breezes to rise up, take flight, and spread their destruction. It is also the wind that signals the end to a drought. A fresh breeze comes up with the hint of moisture and freshness in it; the wind no longer has a dry, baked, dusty smell. A change, we say, is in the wind, and soon, that wind does bring the early and the later rains, the first, to soften the cracked and parched earth and make it ready for planting; the later rains to nourish and grow the crop. Those rains, borne on the wind, will mark the land as renewed in the immediate time of the original hearers of Joel's message. But those wind-borne rains also bring to mind for the prophet a future spiritual wind of change.
That change will be brought about by the outpouring of the Spirit of God. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Hebrew word for wind and spirit is the same, ruach. While the wind-borne rains signal a change in the physical living conditions of the people, the gift of God's Spirit ushers in a radical new stage in their life together; a stage that is far more inclusive and expansive. The Spirit will be poured out on "all flesh" -- not just a few spiritual leaders as in the past -- and there will be no barriers based on age, sex, or social status. The renewal of the land was one sign of God's presence; now the outpouring of the Spirit is an even stronger indication of God's life-giving and restorative presence. Whereas the people before were dependent upon political and spiritual leaders who, more often than not, lacked vision and discernment and led the people away from God's will, a change is in the wind. God promises a new day when the spiritual gifts will be so prevalent among the people that they will never again be put to shame because they will all have equal access to God's revelation.
Twice in these verses we are told that God is acting so that the people will not "again be put to shame" (vv. 26- 27). Shame is far more significant than just embarrassment. Embarrassment is a temporary emotional response to a specific situation. Shame is a condition that can become chronic, a state of being that affects our ability to function in the world because it eats away at who we understand ourselves to be. Shame can take a deep hold on us when we come to realize that we are not living up to whom we think we should be. Mistakes are embarrassing; chronic failures, that are the result of weaknesses of character or because we have allowed ourselves to be led astray by others when we should have known better, are extremely shameful.
The people who had returned from exile in Babylon knew they had not simply made a few mistakes. They had failed to live up to the expectations of their covenant relationship with God. Therefore, they had not just been embarrassed, but had been put to shame, and that shame made their future look bleak.
God addressed that shame with the surprising good news that though they had been punished and suffered greatly, God was still with them and would continue to bless them in and through creation. Salvation would be both a "now" and "then" experience: now through physical renewal of the land; later through a spiritual renewal of all flesh in the outpouring of the Spirit of God. The promise of God's presence, however, looks beyond the present and the future to the final consummation of "the great and terrible day of the Lord" (v. 31), a day of "fire and columns of smoke" (v. 30) as well. Only with the removal of their shame by God's promise of continuing presence could the people begin to face the future with hope.
It is the same for us. We are included in the message of hope, because the Spirit will be poured out on "all flesh." And in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ we know that our shame has been dealt with once and for all. Jesus took our shame upon himself and it was crucified on the cross with him. God in Christ took the greatest emblem of shame -- the cross -- and used it to break the power of shame over our lives through the resurrection (Colossians 2:12-15).
Contrary to what Satan would have us believe, our shame does not mean that sin and the fear of death have the final say over our lives; God's loving and restoring presence does. Therefore, God's people can be glad and rejoice because on that great and terrible, final day of fire, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Amen.
__________________________
1. D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, G. J. Wenham, editors, New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, 4th Edition (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 788.
However, I knew that my detached, academic wonder could not be shared by my Malagasy students, coworkers, and friends at the regional seminary where I taught for eight years. At the first sight of a swarm, the alarm would be given and the whole town would gather with shouts and whoops and the flailing of arms holding brightly colored cloth in an attempt to keep the swarm from landing in the area. The Malagasy knew all too well that the arrival of the locusts was a devastating life-and-death situation. This is so because locust swarms almost always occur in those marginal semiarid regions of the world often subject to frequent droughts as well; places where there is little margin for error when it comes to agricultural production.
Once the locust swarm moves on after having destroyed the young crop, there is the anxious wait to see if more rains will come. That precipitation is needed for a replacement crop or even for next year's planting. One crop failure is bad enough, but two in a row could spell disaster for an area. Verse 23 of Joel chapter 2 perfectly captures the level of joy that accompanies the arrival of that desperately needed and looked-for rain in areas impacted by locust swarms.
God's message through the prophet Joel acknowledges the harsh reality the people continued to experience in the land of Judah after the return from exile and even after the temple of Jerusalem had been rebuilt. Drought, as is often the case, had followed a devastating locust swarm that, God admits, had been sent against the people as punishment. What the prophet proclaims here is nothing new. The faith and theology of Israel was essentially a land-based theology, tied integrally to the promise of a land for the children of Israel. It goes all the way back to the story of the fall in Genesis, where the creator announces to the first humans that the affects of human sin will be manifested in the earth:
Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.
-- Genesis 3:17b-18
Therefore, it is not surprising to find that, for Joel, "the land is the barometer of Israel's relationship with Yahweh."1 The apostle Paul picks up on this divine ecology when he speaks in Romans, chapter 8, of the whole creation waiting and longing and groaning for the redemption of God's children (Romans 8:19-23). While today we may not be able to make the direct one-to-one association between our disobedience and specific events in the natural world as Joel did, the church has recently begun to recognize and acknowledge in a new way that the overall condition of our fragile planet is related to human sin. We have not been the faithful stewards of creation we were meant to be.
However, as important as our imprint on the land is, the focus of this text lies elsewhere. God, through the prophet Joel, uses the imagery of a restored and fruitful land as a barometer for showing the character and restoring activity of God. It is God's imprint on the land and on the people that matters in the ultimate sense, which will bring about the changes that are needed, changes that will help to heal the people of the psychological damage they have suffered. A change is in the wind.
After having consumed so much grain, locusts are not able to fly long distances on their own but wait for the late afternoon breezes to rise up, take flight, and spread their destruction. It is also the wind that signals the end to a drought. A fresh breeze comes up with the hint of moisture and freshness in it; the wind no longer has a dry, baked, dusty smell. A change, we say, is in the wind, and soon, that wind does bring the early and the later rains, the first, to soften the cracked and parched earth and make it ready for planting; the later rains to nourish and grow the crop. Those rains, borne on the wind, will mark the land as renewed in the immediate time of the original hearers of Joel's message. But those wind-borne rains also bring to mind for the prophet a future spiritual wind of change.
That change will be brought about by the outpouring of the Spirit of God. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Hebrew word for wind and spirit is the same, ruach. While the wind-borne rains signal a change in the physical living conditions of the people, the gift of God's Spirit ushers in a radical new stage in their life together; a stage that is far more inclusive and expansive. The Spirit will be poured out on "all flesh" -- not just a few spiritual leaders as in the past -- and there will be no barriers based on age, sex, or social status. The renewal of the land was one sign of God's presence; now the outpouring of the Spirit is an even stronger indication of God's life-giving and restorative presence. Whereas the people before were dependent upon political and spiritual leaders who, more often than not, lacked vision and discernment and led the people away from God's will, a change is in the wind. God promises a new day when the spiritual gifts will be so prevalent among the people that they will never again be put to shame because they will all have equal access to God's revelation.
Twice in these verses we are told that God is acting so that the people will not "again be put to shame" (vv. 26- 27). Shame is far more significant than just embarrassment. Embarrassment is a temporary emotional response to a specific situation. Shame is a condition that can become chronic, a state of being that affects our ability to function in the world because it eats away at who we understand ourselves to be. Shame can take a deep hold on us when we come to realize that we are not living up to whom we think we should be. Mistakes are embarrassing; chronic failures, that are the result of weaknesses of character or because we have allowed ourselves to be led astray by others when we should have known better, are extremely shameful.
The people who had returned from exile in Babylon knew they had not simply made a few mistakes. They had failed to live up to the expectations of their covenant relationship with God. Therefore, they had not just been embarrassed, but had been put to shame, and that shame made their future look bleak.
God addressed that shame with the surprising good news that though they had been punished and suffered greatly, God was still with them and would continue to bless them in and through creation. Salvation would be both a "now" and "then" experience: now through physical renewal of the land; later through a spiritual renewal of all flesh in the outpouring of the Spirit of God. The promise of God's presence, however, looks beyond the present and the future to the final consummation of "the great and terrible day of the Lord" (v. 31), a day of "fire and columns of smoke" (v. 30) as well. Only with the removal of their shame by God's promise of continuing presence could the people begin to face the future with hope.
It is the same for us. We are included in the message of hope, because the Spirit will be poured out on "all flesh." And in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ we know that our shame has been dealt with once and for all. Jesus took our shame upon himself and it was crucified on the cross with him. God in Christ took the greatest emblem of shame -- the cross -- and used it to break the power of shame over our lives through the resurrection (Colossians 2:12-15).
Contrary to what Satan would have us believe, our shame does not mean that sin and the fear of death have the final say over our lives; God's loving and restoring presence does. Therefore, God's people can be glad and rejoice because on that great and terrible, final day of fire, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Amen.
__________________________
1. D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, G. J. Wenham, editors, New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, 4th Edition (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 788.
