The prophet Joel is one of
the twelve minor prophets. I’ve
always thought that title a bit unfair; I mean if you are going to be a
Biblical prophet wouldn’t it be much cooler to be in the starting lineup? To be
a major prophet like Isaiah or
Jeremiah or Ezekiel? How many minor prophets can you even name?
Well, for the record, they
are: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah,
Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
Joel’s prophetic challenge is
short and sweet; only three chapters long and therefore pretty easy to miss, practically
hiding in the Old Testament between Hosea and Amos. Virtually nothing is known
of him except that his father’s name was Pethuel. We know that because he tells
us that right up front. (Joel 1:1)
From a scholarly perspective
there isn’t much to say either, because Joel is difficult to date. (I’m not
talking about romance – I’m talking about trying to figure out when he lived
and wrote!) Most scholars see Joel as a post-exilic text, meaning that it’s
written sometime after the decades-long captivity in Babylon. But there are
some who argue it could be dated much earlier than that. So there you have it; we
just don’t know.
Having said all of that, however,
the truth is that both the lectionary and the New Testament writers notice Joel
a lot. For a minor prophet he has a lot of heart. He’s the Dustin Pedroia of
prophets, we might say. It is Joel, as you may recall, who literally gets to
speak the first words of Lent to us each year on Ash Wednesday:
Blow the
trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Blow the
trumpet in Zion;
sanctify
a fast;
call
a solemn assembly;
gather
the people.
Sanctify
the congregation;
assemble
the aged;
gather
the children,
even
infants at the breast.
Let the
bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride
her canopy.
I want to linger with you on
that promise for a bit, and suggest it is gospel work whenever and wherever this
happens, this removal of shame and the restoration of blessing.
We all live with greater and
lesser degrees of shame. Lewis Smedes has defined shame as “…a feeling that we
will never measure up…that we are broken.”
Candidates for shame, he says, are guilt spreaders, overly responsible
people, obsessive moralizers, compulsive comparers, approval addicts, people
who never feel deserving enough, people who are stuck in the shadow of a parent
and those condemned by bad memories or their dreams.
Did I miss anybody?
Shame can, and does, affect
us all! Smedes goes on to say that the three most common sources of shame are
our unforgiving culture, graceless religion, and unaccepting parents. (Well you
knew that was coming, right: in the end it is surely the fault of our parents,
especially our mothers!) More shame…
Shame is corrosive for the
life of the Spirit and yet oddly (and sadly) the Church in no small measure
seems to contribute to the shame that so many experience. I suspect that beyond
his arrogance and hubris that is what is going on for that Pharisee in today’s
gospel reading. Religion—the very thing that is meant to help us move out of
shame and into new and abundant life—very often heaps on more shame.
And then, just to be sure we heard that (because sometimes people
are not listening the first time) – he says it again one verse later for good
measure: And my people shall never again be
put to shame.
When
we let go of shame, or more accurately when we allow God’s amazing grace to
wash over us and claim us as a holy people and allow ourselves to be embraced
as God’s beloved, then the Holy Spirit’s energy is unleashed. Blessing is
restored. New and abundant life is possible.
Is it any surprise, then, that
when it comes to describing that great outpouring of the Holy Spirit on
Pentecost that it is once again to this minor prophet Joel that Luke turns—in
fact to the very words we heard this morning? I know it’s been twenty-three weeks now, but do
you remember that amazing day in Jerusalem, as the Holy Spirit comes blowing
through the crowd like a rushing wind and it makes Luke think about Joel, and
the removal of shame and the restoration of blessing:
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.
That vision, I submit to you,
is ever held before us. It defines who we are and who we are called to be as
one holy catholic and apostolic Church and as the Episcopal branch of the Jesus
movement. The truth is that while we may not have a lot of history about Joel
and the scholars call him a minor prophet, he has a lot to say. He has a lot of
good news that the Church in our day and the world around us really needs to
hear. The challenge of these words is not really in understanding them, I don’t
think. It’s in living them. It is not in
talking the talk, but in walking the talk.
Sadly this is what that pious
pray-er in today’s Gospel reading fails to see: his neighbor. He cannot see that
they are bound up together; that the work of the Spirit is always breaking down
walls. If men are raised up while women are put down, you will always find
shame, not blessing. If the young are disparaged at the expense of the old (or
vice-versa) you can be sure it is not yet the work of the Spirit. As long as
there are separate sections on the bus for white and black, or separate parts
of town, or an unfair “justice” system, then life is not yet what God intends
for it to be. All lives won’t matter until black lives really matter, too.
The work of ministry is about
tending to this new creation. It is about learning to let go of shame and
shaming, to embrace the new life that is ours in Jesus Christ.
Maybe Joel’s greatest gift to
us is an unintentional one: a reminder that ministry isn’t just about the big
guys. Wherever ministry happens—in large ways and in small ways—wherever women and
men, young and old, slave and free, gay and straight are being woven into this fabric
of God’s new creation, there is cause for celebration. This is what we dream
of, and pray for, and work towards.
None of us can do it all, or
alone—not a little prophet like Joel or a little church like this one or a
little diocese like ours or a little denomination like our beloved Episcopal
Church. But with God’s Holy Spirit working in us, we can do infinitely more
than we could previously ask or imagine.
You shall know that God is in the midst of
Israel (and Gardner too)
and that the Lord is God and there is no other.
and that the Lord is God and there is no other.
“And God’s people shall never again be put
to shame.”
Then afterward God will pour out God’s spirit
on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy,
the old shall dream dreams,
and the young shall see visions.
the old shall dream dreams,
and the young shall see visions.
Even on the male and female slaves,
in those days, God’s spirit will be
poured.
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