Turn Back to the LORD!

And now, too, said the LORD, turn back to Me with all your heart, in fasting and weeping and mourning, and rend your heart, not your garments, and turn back to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in kindness and relenting over evil [Joel 2:12-13, THE HEBREW BIBLE, tr. by Robert Alter, a portion of the OT reading appointed for Ash Wednesday, RCL, Year C].

The Revised Common Lectionary’s OT reading for Ash Wednesday is always the same: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17. Although its use on Ash Wednesday enjoys a long tradition, that use is not without contextual issues. For example, the explicit words of the Joel text [2:12] form a strong summons to confession and repentance—“fasting, weeping, and mourning”—yet a careful reading of the first two chapters of the prophet’s writing reveals that the context for Joel’s remarks was not so much the people’s sin as it was their predicament; their world had become subsumed within an ecological, natural disaster—a locust plague—followed by a drought.

The combination of plague and drought had put an end to their crops and, in turn, had led to widespread death among their livestock. It seems that although the LORD looked at His creation and pronounced it “good” [see Genesis 1:31], He nevertheless crafted that good world with a potential for natural [and/or man-made] disasters.

Joel uses vivid imagery in his description of the people’s predicament. The sky is dark; the swarm of locusts is so massive that the view of the sun is obstructed. The locusts are so menacing that Joel refers to them as “a large and mighty army” [Joel 2:2].

One cannot help but draw a parallel between the predicament faced by Yahweh’s people so long ago and the calamity we face today. While COVID-19 doesn’t fill our skies with darkness—it’s invisible to the eye—nevertheless, it acts as a potent pall, covering our hearts with distress and longing. Just as the plague in Joel’s time took what amounted to a second garden of Eden and turned it into a wilderness [Joel 2:3b], so our viral enemy has taken our so-called advanced and modern culture, with all its science and apparent knowledge, and rendered it virtually impotent. And just as the locust plague, together with the drought that followed, had not been brought about by humanity’s sin, so also the threat that each of us faces in the form of COVID-19 is not based here because of our sinful nature. Oh, we are sinful, to be sure, but that’s an issue separate and apart from the plague which currently resides among us.

It’s Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, and although the Joel text is traditionally designated as a call to repentance, Joel’s listeners need more than forgiveness; they need deliverance. They are defeated. Gone are their careful plans, their crops, and their foodstuffs. Gone also is their hope. How can they effect the defeat of the locusts and drought? How can they craft a path away from their disaster? In a word, they cannot. Try as they might, they cannot assemble enough human power or enough worldly ingenuity to defeat their enemy.

And so, Joel calls instead for something else. He tells the people to focus, not on themselves, but on the LORD. Using an action verb that many centuries later will become central to Lenten theology, Joel admonishes the people to “turn” to the LORD in prayer. If they turn and pray, perhaps the LORD will save them from the continued destructive effects of the plague. If they turn to the LORD, perhaps their LORD will restore some measure of normality to their lives. Their hope resides in their LORD. It’s a timeless message.

The young father rises each weekday morning at 5:00 a.m., and shuffles toward a small table that sits in one corner of the master bedroom. For more than two years now, this table and chair have served as his makeshift workspace. The arrangement lacks ergonomics, but there’s just nowhere else to set up his workstation. He used to commute 15 or so miles to a beautiful, modern office building. These days the young father’s commute isn’t measured in miles or minutes. Tethered as he is to his employer’s computer system, his traverse is now quantified in steps; three of them take him from his bed to his desk. His reason for rising so early? He hopes to get two hours of work completed before the children awake to begin their day.

The father recognizes that he is exhibiting some mild signs of depression. All too often, he snaps at his wife or the kids for no good reason. Sometimes, as he stares at his business laptop, his mind begins to wander. By early afternoon each day, the muscles in his neck begin to tighten. He feels weighted down by responsibility and uncertainty. Like so many others, he feels isolated. Life seems so out of control. How long can he continue to function productively? How long will be be able to juggle his private life with that of his employer? He doesn’t know and it discourages him. As his heart is saddened, he also feels guilty.

His guilt derives from the fact that he and his wife are relatively fortunate. While their work conditions have been affected by COVID-19, their income has not suffered. True, for more than a year they had to serve as part-time, unpaid IT technicians, monitoring their children’s laptops and school “apps” as the kids were “remotely” educated. But even here, they were lucky and, accordingly, they felt guilty.

The father feels guilty because while he and his wife can adjust and juggle their schedules, rising early to get a start on the day in order that they can later supervise the children’s home-based education, single working mothers in East Durham, of course, have no such luxury. They go to work and hope that somehow their children won’t fall further behind. The young father recognizes that while COVID has taken a toll on his children’s learning processes, that cost is pale when compared to the externalities imposed upon Durham’s children of color.

The young man thinks to himself, “What can I do? Things seem so hopeless.”

The young man is not alone. Indeed, what can any of us do in the face of our predicament? How can we move forward when we are so weary? How can we face tomorrow when we are so weighted down by the burdens of yesterday? What hope lives in tomorrow when pessimism lives today?

Well, perhaps on this Ash Wednesday, and for the remainder of Lent, we can heed the words of the prophet, Joel. We can turn back to the LORD. We can admit that our hope is never found in human form. We can acknowledge our predicament and turn to the One who has crafted us from dust. He is the One who loves us.

What will be the LORD’s reaction? Joel says, “Who knows?” [Joel 2:14a]. You see, the prophet is not so presumptuous as to assume that the LORD will always favor us with release from our predicaments and calamities. Indeed, the LORD is sovereign. As I euphemistically mentioned a few weeks ago, the LORD is not an ATM. Yet, as Joel reminds us, if we turn to the LORD, the LORD may “turn and relent and leave behind a blessing” 2:14b].

Why would the LORD do such a thing? Why would He reach toward us and pull us out of the abyss? Joel reminds us that the LORD may provide us with the necessary relief because that is the LORD’s intrinsic nature.

For He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, steadfast in His love, and quick to relent from doing harm [Joel 2:13].

If that description of our sovereign LORD sounds familiar, it is because it is drawn from the LORD’s oft-quoted self-identification to Moses on Mount Sinai [Exodus 34:6].

Everything we know about the LORD tells us that He desires our salvation, not our destruction. The LORD’s message is clear and resounding over the many centuries, Yahweh’s love and concern for us is unbounded. God the Father sent the Son to live for us, to die for us, to be resurrected for us, and finally to ascend back to the Father in Heaven, where He reigns forever. As we contemplate the cost that has been paid for our redemption, may we heed the words of the prophet, Joel. May we turn back to the LORD. Amen.