Sermon on Joel 2 Feb. 21, 2010. First Sunday in Lent
Today is the first Sunday in Lent and I know that not everybody is familiar with Lent so I'd like to take some time this morning to explain what we are up to during Lent. The season of lent is a period of 46 days of preparation for Easter. It is a season of self-inspection and self denial and that's why you always hear of people giving things up during lent. This self-denial that is meant to model the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. In the gospels, before Jesus began his ministry, he spent forty days in the wilderness preparing, fasting, praying, and facing down temptations. All in preparation for the journey ahead of him. In the same way during lent we take forty days and fast and pray and face down our own demons in preparation for Easter.
All of this makes Lent a kind of a downer of a season. Christmas has a baby Jesus, and Easter has a bunny rabbit but lent has Ash Wed. where we rub ashes on our face while someone looks us right in the eye and says "from dust you came and to dust you will return. Repent or else…" Not exactly the way to kick off a party. But even though lent is kind of down cast, its very important for us to walk through this season because it takes time to get ready for Easter. If we are going to really celebrate Easter as the ultimate sign of new life, we have to first see that we need new life. We can't really appreciate the joy of Easter until we have been honest with ourselves about the depth of our own sin. In other words, if your really not all that bad in the first place then you really don't have much to be saved from. So to prepare for Easter we must start by being honest with ourselves about our situation.
Our reading today from Joel is the reading that we use every year for Ash. Wed. and at first that may seem a little odd. If the point is for us to face ourselves as sinners you would think Romans would be a good place to start, we could hear the familiar Romans 3.23 "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." But instead, the church in her wisdom hands us the very unfamiliar book of Joel. Just as a question, has anyone read the book of Joel in the last year? I didn't think so. It is a very unfamiliar word that we hear this morning. Still, we read from Joel over and over again because Joel helps us to see our coming judgment and what we need to do about it.
Joel really fits lent well because it is kind of a doom and gloom book. All of the prophets have places where they get kinda dark and predict God’s judgment but Joel is really revels in it. Basically, most of the book of Joel is an announcement that the day of judgment is dangerously near. Joel calls us to sound the alarm and tremble because a mighty and terrible army stands at the door. Listen to the gloom of Joel chapter 2.1-2.
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near— 2a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old,nor will be again after them in ages to come.
This army that brings God’s judgment, this army that blacks out the sky is an army of locusts. To understand that we are speaking of locusts we need to go back to chapter 1 and read vs. 2-4.
2Hear this, O elders, give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? 3Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children and their children another generation. 4What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.
When Joel begins to describe the day of the Lord, the day of God’s judgment, he speaks of a mighty army of Locust who have come and left utter destruction in their wake. Now this may sound unfamiliar to us, but to this day, swarms of locust still plague certain parts of the world. For instance, in 2004 locusts swarmed across North Africa and left 4 hundred thousand people in need of food aid. These swarms number in the hundreds of millions and black out the sky as they pass through the land. People who live off agriculture are terrified of these swarms. The locusts eat the crops which feed the farmers and their families but also ruin the farmers economically. I found an interview of an African fruit farmer who said his whole crop for the year, worth 7,000 dollars disappeared in three days. This is total ruthless devastation. These things eat the crops which is bad, but they also eat the same food as the livestock, so the fruit farmers have no crop and the cattle farmers have starving live stock. In the world we live in, our terrible science fiction movies give us aliens descending and destroying the earth. but in many parts of the world, their worst nightmare is not aliens but giant grasshoppers numbering in the millions.
Joel names the devastation left by the swarms in the strongest terms. In the first chapter Joel calls upon the drunkards to weep, the priests to wail, the brides and grooms to leave their celebrations, the famers to put on sack cloth and lament. The cattle moan and even the sun and moon are blackened out. Everything has been laid to waste.
Now we could very easily look upon this and say "So what?" Why should I care about an agricultural crisis from 5,000 years ago? Well, we should care because this reading is not about an agricultural crises. Remember Joel is speaking all this to describe the coming day of God’s judgment. This terrible scene of locust and crop devastation is a metaphor. Joel the prophet is trying to warn us that when the day of the Lord comes it will be like this.
We don’t think much about God’s judgment. For one thing, it’s really just not polite to talk about it. It’s one of those things like money or divorce that we just avoid talking about if we can. And especially as Christians we like to think that once we are saved we are free and clear once we get to know Jesus we can skip that whole final judgment thing and go straight on in to glory. But Scripture says that we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For example, in Romans 14 Paul’s says “ Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11For it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.’ 12So then, each of us will be accountable to God.”
Or again from Paul in 2 Cor. 5 “For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.” We may not like to talk about it but a day of reckoning is approaching and Joel wants us to understand that it will be terrible.
Now don’t you just love Lent. Can you see why Joel fits lent so well. Lent is a season of brutal honesty and Joel is not pulling any punches. But the honesty of lent has a certain end in view. The point of lent is not doom and gloom so we all go home feeling guilty and a little nervous. The point of this brutal honesty is to lead us to repentance. And that is really why I wanted us to hear these words from Joel today. Because Joel contains a beautiful call to repentance.
Chapter 2. verse12 begins by saying “EVEN NOW.” Even Now. Does anything else really even need to be said. This picture of doom and gloom that Joel is painting, this is something we have coming to us. This judgment is something we have earned through our sin, through our failure to live into God’s image, through our rejection of Jesus as God’s only Son. And yet EVEN NOW SAYS THE LORD.” Even now, return to me with fasting and weeping and mourning, tear your hearts and not your garments.” Has there ever been a call to repentance so powerful and perfect as those two words. Even Now.
These two words are so important especially for us Christians. We are all saved, we have all given our life to Jesus Christ. And yet, we all, everyone of us, continue to sin. All of us who are in relationship with Jesus Christ, we always keep some sin hanging around. We always have some sin in our back pocket that we just haven’t been able to give to god yet. No doubt we’ve tried, perhaps we’ve left it at the foot of cross more than once but somewhere along the line we always pick it back up. The whole point of giving something up during lent is a recognition that we have a lot that we need to give up and hand over. How many long years have we walked with Christ and still been unable to give up lust or anxiety or judging others or gossip. How long will we serve two masters? Hear these words. EVEN NOW. This is the message of Lent. We deserve judgment. Even us, even the good hearted religious people who have put our hope in Christ even we continue to turn from him to sin against him, to reject him at every turn. If God were not God he would have abandoned us long ago. We certainly deserve it. And YET EVEN NOW. God offers us this season of Lent to tear our hearts and not our garments, to fast and mourn our sin and to prepare our hearts for starting anew at Easter.
This morning, you’ve got yourself a cup full of dirt. I know you’ve been wondering this whole time “Why in the world did he give us all a cup full of dirt, and what is going to happen if someone spills it.” All of us have sin in our lives and as we enter this Lent we all have things we need to hand over to God. So I want you to name your cup of dirt. When you hear these words from Joel “Even now, return to me says the Lord.” Whatever it is in your life that you know you have to hand over before you can return to the Lord, When God speaks to you personally “EVEN NOW.” Whatever it is that he is speaking of, name it, and put it in that dirt. In a moment Jimmy is going to play some music and we are going to have some time of reflection and during that time, I want everyone to name their dirt and then get up and walk up hear and pour it out on the alter. If we are going to hear this call to repentance “EVEN NOW.” We have some things we are going to have to lay down. So name your dirt, and pour it out.
Sermon on Luke 9.28-36 Feb. 14th, 2010 Transfiguration Sunday
Who is Jesus? This is an essential question that every Christian must answer. At some point in our walk with God, maybe at many points, we must all wrestle with this question who is Jesus. It’s a question that Jesus put to his disciples in the reading just before today's. Just a few verses before the transfiguration, Jesus asked his disciples "Who do you say that I am." Head strong Peter offers up the answer, “you are the messiah!” Now at first glance, that is the correct answer. But as we have come to know, the word messiah meant different things to different people. You’ve probably heard me say this enough times that it should be becoming common knowledge. The people of Israel, including the disciples, wanted a powerful political messiah, a kind of a knight on a white horse to save them from their Roman overlords. When Peter calls Jesus the messiah he is thinking something along the lines of King Arthur mixed with Rambo. This is Peter’s answer to question ‘Who is Jesus?’
Jesus knows that Peter and the other disciples are confused about this whole messiah thing, and so in chapter 8.vs. 20 when Peter Answers, 'You are the Messiah' Jesus launches into a pretty specific explanation of what Jesus means by Messiah. Jesus says that he must suffer and be rejected, and that he will be killed and raised from the dead on the third day. Jesus puts it in no uncertain terms that he will die and if they are going to follow him, it probably won't end to well for them either.
But no matter how plainly Jesus explains it, the disciples just don't get it. We can see their confusion over and over in the Gospel of Luke. In chapter 8 Jesus explains that he must die. In chapter 9 he explains it again. In Luke 9.44-45 says this. "Jesus said to his disciples, "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you. The Son of Man is going to be delivered over to human hands." But they did not understand what this meant…they did not grasp it and they were afraid to ask him about it." In the gospel of Luke, Jesus explains to his disciples 3 times that he will suffer and die but that he will also be resurrected. And three times we are told, that they still didn’t have the answer to this question ‘Who is Jesus?’
There are some things that just can't be explained. Jesus tells them and tells them and tells them, but there are some things that just can't be explained. Its kinda like that with Jesus. Its very hard to explain to some one who Jesus is. We can tell people about Jesus, and we should tell people about Jesus, but we can explain who Jesus is to non-believers all we want but no one ever converted to Christianity because of the power of our explanations. People convert because they encounter the risen Christ. And an encounter with Christ is not the kind of thing you can explain. There are some things that Just can’t be explained.
Which brings us to the transfiguration. The transfiguration is one of the hardest stories in the whole bible to preach on. You know a big part of what people expect me to do as a preacher is help them understand the bible. And that makes sense. In my life I have been given a gift that no one else in this room has been given. I was blessed by God to be able to go to seminary to take 3 years worth of graduate level course work. All so that on this day I could stand up and explain to you the Transfiguration.
Well I got news for you…Three Years isn’t enough time. If you stop and think about it, it really sounds kinda silly. I went off and got a degree called a Master of Divinity. Just the title of the degree tells you that we preachers think higher of ourselves than we ought. So I’ve gone to school and in three years mastered divinity, and now I am supposed to stand up here and explain the transfiguration. The transfiguration is hard to preach on because like few other stories in the Bible, the transfiguration shows how vain and empty human wisdom can be. Or at least my wisdom….because I cannot explain the transfiguration. I can't explain it.
Or maybe I should put that a different way. It can't be explained. The Transfiguration can't be explained. And that’s the point. Up until the Transfiguration Jesus has been trying to explain that he must die and be resurrected. Up until the Transfiguration, Jesus has been trying to explain who he is. But there are something that you just can’t explain.
So at the Transfiguration Jesus stops trying to explain and instead he shows them. The transfiguration is something very much like looking at a piece of art work. It's very hard to explain art. The point of going to an art show or a museum is not to stand in front of a great piece of art and just stare at the canvas until you say "Ah ha! I get it! I understand now!" The point of Great art is not that we get it but that it gets a hold of us (Thanks to Bishop Will Willimon for this illustration). It’s the same way with the Transfiguration. Its not the kind of thing you explain. By the time we get to the transfiguration, Jesus is done trying to explain things to us. Instead he tries to show us.
And what is it that Jesus is trying to show us? The resurrection. The transfiguration is a preview of the Resurrection and we can see this in a couple of different ways. First of all, the event takes place on the eighth day. In Genesis God created the heavens and the earth in seven days. In Revelation we are promised that in the end, the dead will be raised and that God will re-create, God will create a new heaven and a new earth. This will be the eighth day of creation. The final perfection of the work that God began in seven days. At the end of the Gospel of Luke Jesus is resurrected on the eighth day after the Sabbath. By the fact that this transfiguration takes place 8 days after Jesus predicts his death, we are being told that what we see here is a preview of the 8th day of creation. A resurrection appearance before the resurrection.
The change in Jesus appearance also helps us to see that this is a preview of the resurrection. Verse 29 tells us that "while he was praying the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became bright as a flash of lightening." Every week when we say the Apostles Creed, we proclaim our belief in the resurrection of the Body. We don't know exactly what we mean by that. We haven't exactly had a resurrected body that we could poke and prod and study. But we do know that when Jesus was resurrected, his body was changed. After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to some of his followers on the Road to Emmaus and they didn’t recognize him. It was as if his appearance had changed. In the Gospel of John, after his resurrection Mary Magdalene found Jesus outside of the empty tomb and she mistook him for the gardener. It was as if his appearance had changed. When Jesus goes up on to this mountain to pray and his appearance is changed we are given a preview of the resurrection of the body that we claim by faith.
There are other ways that this transfiguration points to the final resurrection, and I could stand up here and try to explain all day but explaining it won't get us very far. The transfiguration, much like the resurrection it previews, was never meant to be explained.
Which means that its ok for us to leave here a little confused this morning. Like the disciples we gathered this day with a certain understanding answer to this question “who is Jesus.” We’ve heard of this transfiguration event and I hope we have allowed it to show us who Jesus is.
But the transfiguration also shows us something about ourselves. In the 6th chapter of the book of Romans Paul says that all who have been baptized have shared in Christ’s death. And if we have shared in his death we will also share in his resurrection. In 1 Cor. Chapter 15 Paul famously says “Listen and I will tell you a mystery. We will not all die but we will all be changed.” As we, the followers of Christ come to share in his life the events of his life become the events of our life. As he was baptized so are we. As he died to self, so must we. And as he was resurrected so shall we be transformed and transfigured.
Lately, I have been really into this tv show called Heroes. Its basically like a soap opera except that everyone has some kind of super power and the good guys are trying to save the world and the villains are trying to blow the world up. On this show there are some people who's super power is that they can paint the future. So what happens is they will go into a kind of trance and grab a paint brush or marker or whatever is handy and paint some scene from the future. It's usually something like they paint a plane crash but when they wake up they don't know what plane or where it crashes or how it happens. They get a vision but they don't get all the details. Then, for the rest of the show the other heroes are running around trying to stop this plane crash from happening.
Something very much like this is going on with the transfiguration. Jesus has given us a picture of our future, a picture of the kingdom of heaven and the resurrection of the Body. But he hasn't given us all the details, he didn't explain the when and where and how its going to happen. But he gave us this picture as an assurance that it will happen.
For Jesus and the disciples, dark days lie ahead. Later on in this very same chapter Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem where he will die on a cross. And for us as a church, later this week, we will enter the season of lent where we will journey with Jesus toward that cross. But before we set out toward the Cross Jesus gives us this gift. Not the gift of answers or explanations, but a vision of the life to come. A vision of the life that awaits each of us on the other side of Easter.
Thanks be to God who makes it so.
