A sermon preached at the noon Ash Wednesday service at Holy Spirit Anglican Church, March 5th, 2014.
According
to Billboard charts, the most successful and popular rock band of 2013 was the
band Imagine Dragons. Although they have
been performing for a number of years, last year their songs took the charts by
storm and they claimed most of the top music awards for their genre. One of their current songs is entitled,
Demons, and it contains within it some important theological truth. One such
truth is contained in the end of the first verse and then on into the
chorus. The band sings,
I wanna hide the
truth
I wanna shelter you
But with the beast
inside
There’s nowhere we
can hide
No matter what we
breed
We still are made of
greed
This is my kingdom
come
This is my kingdom
come
When you feel my
heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons
hide
It’s where my demons
hide
Don’t get too close
It’s dark inside
It’s where my demons
hide
It’s where my demons
hide
All of us will admit that there is
evil in the world. We need little proof
and little convincing of that. But that
there is evil in ourselves, within us, that we might be the problem; to that
idea we give a considerable amount of resistance. Yet, this song pushes this very point. We’re told that the beast is inside, that the
evil around us is a result of our kingdoms come. When the singer hurts others, does wrong, he
tells the audience to look inside him, for that is where the problem is. That is where his demons hide.
I’m
not sure what kind of music the prophet Joel would have liked, but he would
certainly give a hearty amen to the message of this song. Joel and all Scripture agrees that evil is
within us, that we are the source of much of the problems in the world. Joel would indeed agree that we should look
inside, for that is where our demons hide.
Joel confronts us on this Ash Wednesday with the message that we are
sinful, and that because of these sins the judgment of God is coming. Yet, also in our reading we are mercifully
invited upon the path of repentance.
The
book of Joel comes to us right after the book of Hosea, another prophet of the
Old Testament. Both are a part of the
collection of prophets at the end of the Old Testament which are commonly
called the Minor Prophets. They are not
minor because their message is unimportant, however, but because they are much
smaller in comparison to the larger prophets of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. One of the unique things about this collection
of the Minor Prophets is that there are many markers that we are supposed to
read them as a single unit. And so, Joel
comes to us with a message of blowing a trumpet in Zion after Hosea has already
exposed our unfaithfulness to God. With
powerful and provocative images, Hosea lays our hearts bare. Listen to these words from Hosea 4; “My
people consult a wooden idol, and a diviner's rod speaks to them. A spirit of
prostitution leads them astray; they are unfaithful to their God. They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn
offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar and terebinth, where the shade is
pleasant. Therefore your daughters turn to prostitution and your
daughters-in-law to adultery.” And in
Hosea 6, “As at Adam, they have broken the covenant; they were unfaithful to me
there. Gilead is a city of evildoers,
stained with footprints of blood. As
marauders lie in ambush for a victim, so do bands of priests; they murder on
the road to Shechem, carrying out their wicked schemes. I have seen a horrible thing in Israel: There
Ephraim is given to prostitution, Israel is defiled.” And finally in Hosea 10, “Israel was a
spreading vine; he brought forth fruit for himself. As his fruit increased, he
built more altars; as his land prospered, he adorned his sacred stones. Their heart is deceitful, and now they must
bear their guilt. The LORD will demolish their altars and destroy their sacred
stones. Then they will say, ‘We have no
king because we did not revere the LORD. But even if we had a king, what could
he do for us?’ They make many promises,
take false oaths and make agreements; therefore lawsuits spring up like
poisonous weeds in a plowed field.”
It
is a sorry image. Lies, murder, deceit,
rebellion, and idolatry. The image which
is used repeatedly in Hosea, from which the NIV shies away, is of a
prostitute. Israel has made vows to God
as a bride makes vows to a husband, yet she has chased after other gods, other
pleasures, other lovers. And yet, are we
any better. How many of us carry deceit
in our hearts? How many of us have
openly rebelled against the demands which God has for our lives? How many of us, either overtly or covertly,
have replaced God with an idol in the altar of our hearts? Is it sex?
Money? Success? Fame?
“Our hearts are idol factories,” Martin Luther said; can any of us say
otherwise?
With
these words, Hosea cuts into us to reveal our sinfulness. We are sinful, we are sinners. In the word of Imagine Dragons, our demons
are inside of us. It is a hard message
to hear, and an even harder one is that, because of our sins, the judgment of
God is coming. We hear at the beginning
of our reading from Joel 2, “Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day
of the LORD is coming. It is close at hand—a day of darkness and gloom, a day
of clouds and blackness. Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and
mighty army comes, such as never was in ancient times nor ever will be in ages
to come.” If we can convince ourselves
that we are indeed sinful, the tendency is for us to wink at our sin. To say that it is not so bad, or even to say
that God is not so worried about it. But
the whole Bible, and especially Joel 2 contradicts these tendencies. Sin is very serious, and God is serious when
he says that he will judge it. The image
which Joel uses, which is a common one in the Bible, is the day of the
Lord. This was a day to which the
prophets looked when all would be made well, when righteousness and justice
would rule upon the earth, when God would intervene in his creation, powerfully
and dramatically. But they were not
looking at that day through rose colored glasses. They knew that God coming in justice meant
that he would judge all sin and wrongdoing, and that is a fearful thing. Joel calls it a day of darkness and gloom, a
day of clouds and blackness. These
aren’t the images one would use if God was simply going to wink at what we have
done. His judgment will come quickly,
like how quick the dawn rises upon the mountains. Joel speaks of an awesome army as the
manifestation of this judgment. In the
part of the chapter which our reading omitted, this army is described
further. Fire goes before them, and
behind, devouring the land, which tells us of the totality of destruction. Before them peoples are in anguish, all faces
grow pale, like warriors they charge, they scale walls, they burst through
walls, into houses, through windows.
Nowhere is safe from their grasp.
In verse 10 we find that so horrifying is this judgment, and so total,
that it is as if the created order is ripped apart; “The earth quakes before
them; the heavens tremble. The sun and
moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.” The God who cannot abide evil in his
creation, which he pronounced very good.
When he comes, he will exact true and just punishment.
The
message of God’s judgment is not popular, nor is it a relaxing one. But would we want it any other way? In our earthly judges, we expect that the
person will punish injustice when it is brought before her with the punishment
which befits the crime. Yet, somehow, we
expect that God who is perfectly just, will punish those we don’t like but give
us a pass. The reason often given for
this is that we are nicer people, we’re good, we’re not like them. Well, I would refer you to point one of this
sermon. We are all sinful, all of us
have transgressed. So what are we to
do? We have sinned and God is just; the
writing seems to be on the wall. Yet,
there is more to this story. The
character of God which Joel is revealing to us is not just one who is perfectly
just, but one who is perfectly merciful as well. And based upon this mysterious tension which
only God can make work, we are invited upon the path of repentance.
“Yet,
even now.” No words bring more relief
than these. Even now. Even in the face of our unfaithfulness, of
our spiritual adultery, of our sin. Even
in the face of God’s impending judgment which is quickly coming. Yet, even now, “return to me with all your
heart, declares the Lord.” One can hear the
call of the spurned lover, the Lord God who joyously wed himself to his people,
knowing our sins and faults. “Return to
me.” God reminds us of the depths of his
love. He uses the description of himself
which he first used on the holy mountain in Exodus when he first took Israel as
his own. “Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and
he relents from sending calamity.” God
is just, but he is also full of grace and compassion. He gives to us what we do not deserve and
withholds from us what we, in our sins, do deserve. And because of this, he calls us to repent.
He
calls us to rend our hearts, that place where our demons hide; open the darkest
parts of our lives to him through confession; bring it to him that he may shine
his light upon it. He calls for the
people to show their repentance through outward acts; through fasting, weeping,
and mourning. God does not want empty
ceremonies, bare ritual, but he knows that we are embodied people, and that
anything going on ‘inside’ of us, in our hearts or minds, will be shown
outwardly.
Traditionally,
Christians have observed Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent with various
practices. Today most of us will have
ashes imposed upon our foreheads. Many
of us will being Lenten fasts, abstaining from certain things for the 40 days
of Lent. Some will take up
practices. Historically, some went on
pilgrimages, others devoted themselves to prayer and contemplation. And while all of these are open to being
emptied of meaning, yet they can also be powerful outward manifestations of our
inward repentance. It is a sign to us,
to the world, and to the Lord God of the sincerity of our remorse and our
desperation for his mercy.
Perhaps
the most famous of Jesus’ parables is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. In this story, Jesus speaks of a younger son
who runs off from home with his inheritance and squanders it in a far off
land. He finds himself feeding pigs and
envying the pigs of their wealth and comfort, compared to the poverty which he
has brought upon himself. Jesus tells us
that he comes to his senses and decides to turn back and walk the path home,
there to entreat his humiliated father for mercy. Ash Wednesday reminds all of us that we are
in a pig sty. When we go our own way,
and who among us hasn’t gone our own way, when we have our kingdom come, we end
up in slop and misery. Ash Wednesday is
also that point of us coming to our senses and starting the trip home to our
father, hoping there to find mercy and grace.
So let us embark upon this journey, recognizing our sinfulness, and
God’s perfect justice; let us take up our merciful God’s invitation to walk the
path of repentance. And who knows, as we
near the end of this forty days, will we find a merciful God? As you all know from walking this path
before, yet, we will find mercy, and in measure beyond compare. For at the end of this trip, is a Holy Week,
a Way of a Cross, which gives us further insight into the justice and mercy of
God. But that is down the road. For now, we need to take the first step, to
remember that we are but dust, sinful, and in desperate need of God’s mercy and
grace.
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