Back in the distant days of my youth, there was a kid in my church youth group called Joel. We called him Rolly Polly Joely. Children are cruel. Anyway, Joel went on to become a bodybuilder and here I am, rotund as ever. He really showed us.
The prophet Joel, or JOH-EL is one of the minor prophets, which is hardly a nice way to describe someone. There’s almost nothing we can know about him, and we have just three chapters of text attributed to him at the tail end of the Hebrew scriptures. He gets two moments in the sun, really. Firstly, Joel includes the text:
‘I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female slaves,
in those days, I will pour out my spirit.’
This of course makes an appearance at Pentecost in the story we read in Acts 2. The other time Joel gets a brief moment to shine is now and then on Ash Wednesday. Probably because, in Chapter 2, the prophet calls for a fast.
But it’s not just any fast. The purpose of Joel’s fast is to try to prevent The Day of the Lord. Now, you and I might imagine The Day of the Lord to be a good thing, but Joel makes it clear that we should be absolutely terrified of The Day of the Lord.
A day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
…Fire devours in front of them,
and behind them a flame burns.
Before them the land is like the garden of Eden,
but after them a desolate wilderness,
and nothing escapes them.
… Before them peoples are in anguish,
all faces grow pale.
7 Like warriors they charge,
like soldiers they scale the wall.
… They leap upon the city,
they run upon the walls;
they climb up into the houses,
they enter through the windows like a thief.
… The earth quakes before them,
the heavens tremble.
The sun and the moon are darkened,
and the stars withdraw their shining.
..Truly the day of the Lord is great;
terrible indeed—who can endure it?
It’s scary, aggressive, fear-mongering stuff, and the prophet Joel doles it out with a heavy hand. But he then goes on to explain, in the text we hear today, that if the people fast, and weep and mourn and turn back to God, if the priests and ministers in the temple pray to God to be spared, then God might just let them go.
If all we had was Joel, then what a monstrous God we would worship. Or, in all honesty, if all we had was Joel, what a monstrous God we would reject. A God who will bear down upon us with an army if we fail in our duties.
Fortunately we know the God revealed in Jesus Christ, so we can see in Joel’s writing (and others) a glimpse of truth, but not the whole truth. Because Joel is not a wholly wrong prophet, simply to be dismissed or ignored. We don’t know all the circumstances, but we can see from his writings that the People of God have strayed from the covenant, they have allowed injustice to flourish, they have not cared for the land, they have failed in their responsibilities. They have messed up, badly, and need to repent.
The ferocity of Joel’s warning about God’s wrath might be a bit over the top, but it is meant to shock the people into action. To wake them up and get them back on track.
And so might Lent be for us. A shock to the system might be just what we need. The shock might come in the form of a brisk walk or a long sit-down, it might be a book or some music, it might be denying ourselves something delicious or deliberately making ourselves eat something good. Whatever it is, it begins today. The church’s custom is not observed merely for the sake of making and following rules. The purposes of the Lenten fast or discipline is to snap us out of our destructive patterns and closer to the pattern of God’s love and justice.
The Lord Be With You