Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church
Auburn WA, February 25, 2009 – Ash Wednesday
by Gregory S. Kaurin, Senior Pastor
Texts: Joel 2 and Psalm 73
“Locusts and Ashes”
Every year I find it jarring that—just after we put ashes on our heads—we always read these passages from the Bible against practicing our piety for everyone else to see. And there it is!
Seems a bit ironic, maybe even like we’ve been set-up. There may be a witness, or evangelical, value to wearing visible crosses, but that's not the point, not why we do it. Instead, these are mainly meant to be personal reminders, yes, of our mortality, and also reminders of the eternal promise and mark God placed on us. We face our honest humility, and place ourselves in God's hands.
We talk about the symbol of the ashes, but you might know what makes those ashes stick: we mix the ashes with olive oil, an ancient healing balm. A week and a half ago at the healing service I mentioned that one of the reasons we use olive oil for anointing is because of how readily our skin tends to absorb it.
So, mixed with ashes, in the form of a cross, it's meant to run deep, call us to real honesty, so that we can find forgiveness and healing by being more honest with ourselves, and God.
Back to this lesson from Joel, and the specific context: he preached some time after the exile. The people had returned to Israel and rebuilt Temple, about 400 BC. And even more specifically, Joel’s message comes after or during a plague of locusts, not just one, but several waves and different stages of development.
Listen to Joel 1:4 - "What the nibbler has left, the grown locust has eaten, what the grown locust has left, the hopper has eaten, and what the hopper has left, the shearer has eaten."
But even before this description of the locust invasion, Joel commands them, "tell your children about it and let your children tell their children, and their children the next generation!" (1:3). And they did, so that now, we're still reading about some locust invasion that went through Israel close to 2400 years ago!
Why? What's the value in hearing about this ancient locust invasion and Joel's view of it? Most of us don't buy into his idea that God uses natural disaster to punish us for individual or national sins.
We don't buy into it, but when something happens, it does cause us to pause a bit, doesn't it? Sometimes it hits very close to home, and we think, "That could've been me; could have been my son or daughter on that plane, or in that wreck, or storm?"
Or sometimes things do hit home. We lose, and lose, and physically or emotionally, we feel close to bottom. Times like that we can get very introspective, when faced with tragedy, or death, and a search for meaning: why?
And this is where the prophet Joel comes in, especially these first two chapters. Because, aside from seeing the invasion as a judgment, and a sign of the end times, more important, he saw it as a time to get real with God and faith.
Rend your heart, not your garments. Take this as a chance, a time to “change your life, not just your clothes.” So that your life, and how you use it, is more in tune with what you say you believe.
Honest prayer; let’s start there. Once in a while, Pastor Jon or I have made you start over when you're reading one of the psalms. When our voices aren’t matching the words we're saying, it becomes clear that we're just reading. Worship and liturgy is not just a bunch of words that we recite, but a message that we express as if we actually believe what we're saying.
When we're saying the confession and absolution, I pray to God, that once in a while we actually feel guilty, maybe even near tears, so that his forgiveness and grace actually gives relief.
In our Monday night Bible study we've been talking about the honesty, and the raw human emotions in the prayers of Psalms. The same should be brought to our prayers and liturgy.
“Unless we know how to approach a word with all the joy, the hope or the grief we own, prayer will hardly come to pass” -Abraham Heschel.
Make it real.
Maybe the best and most helpful words from this Old Testament passage in Joel, are found as you read on. After the locusts have eaten, after you've been hit and hit again by life what does God have to say to you?
Sometimes it just doesn't match. Young good people get hit with tragedy, and that doesn't seem fair. And those who live long lives watch their friends get sick and they go to all their funerals, and that can get depressing, lonely.
Some people use a saying, right out of Joel, chapter 2, verse 25: "the years that the locusts have eaten." "The years." You see, Joel was not just talking about locusts that tore into their crops one year, but a series of hardships, tragedies, losses.
People use this phrase to talk about hard times, in business or personal losses, lost dignity, jobs, health, cancer, lost pregnancies and quiet empty grief, depression: the years the locusts have eaten. But that's just half the first line. In verse 25, God says, "I will repay you!" "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten."
Now he's not talking about replacement. He's not saying that for every friend you lose he'll give you another just as good. He's talking about a life with him now, and someday in full glory. It doesn't end here, this isn't the last word.
Monday night in our Bible Study we were looking at Psalm 73 in which the writer talks about his frustration that all the greedy and slanted people seem to have it made. They get the clothes, the recognition. Why do so many good things happen to the scoundrels around us?
Psalm 73:16-17, he says, "When I really tried to understand this, all I got was a splitting headache ...until I entered the sanctuary of God." And then I remembered: destiny. One day, evil will end, unfairness will be wiped out, emptiness… filled. Even now, God walks with me, gives me a peace others don't feel.
Verse 23 - "God, I am beside you, you hold me by my hand. You wisely and tenderly lead me to new places, and afterwards, you take me to your glory."
I enter the sanctuary with God's people, and it dawns on me that I don't have it so bad. If the eternal God is holding my hand now, and promising me a place with him and life forever? That’s the mark, the mark of promise on your forehead.
You are free to clean that cross off your head, whenever you feel good and ready, but already the healing oils of that cross have been absorbed into your skin and body.
Scars will remain, loneliness and loss ache, guilt still bites, but there is room for healing and faith, because it is this God, the same God who did more than put an ash-cross on his forehead, but wore it on his back, nailed it to his flesh and image forever, died with it, but rose.And then he said, "Neither will I leave you there, never will I leave you. I will repay all the years the locusts have eaten."
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