Text: Joel 2:12-13, 21-29

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. In the liturgical calendar, it’s often the Sunday that centers the theme of Peace. And once again, it’s not obvious from the Biblical text and story how peace figures into it.

Did you all know that peace studies was my focus area in seminary? Or that I developed a curriculum about peace and peacemaking when I worked with youth? I used it with youth at camp and in Sunday school. I’ve led retreats. In  that curriculum I would talk about the idea – which I’m sure won’t be new to you – that ‘peace’ has a depth of meaning that goes beyond a simple cessation of conflict, or even beyond the calm stillness we might associate with personal or inner peace. 

Last week Linda reminded us of the inspiring story of the German and British armies that laid down their weapons and sang Silent Night together one Christmas night during the First World War. A brief pause in a brutal conflict that I’m sure was a relief and balm to the soldiers in the trenches. But it wasn’t peace. Those soldier returned to the trenches and to the war when the songs were done.

God’s vision for a just peace – or shalom in the Hebrew scriptures – includes peace between peoples (individuals and groups), like the conflicting armies and nations. It includes peace with creation, in which the earth is in balance and whole. And peace with God within the self. When I taught this curriculum I’d draw a triangle with these as corners with Jesus as  the center – the example and guide. But really a triangle isn’t adequate either but truly, shalom extends to all that is. Inhabits every area of being. Everything that lives and is has enough and is whole. 

So when you hear worship leaders using prayers that I wrote for the offering or for our peace candle, you may have noticed words like, “Bless us and bless our gifts, that your vision of a just peace may flourish.” A just peace, or a peace with justice, is a reminder that peace as God imagines and desires it, includes enoughness and a right-way-up-ness. There aren’t really enough words in English to get it all. But we see a piece of that vision in Joel’s prophetic text.

Unlike many of the other prophets that we’ve read in the last few months, Joel does not have a time stamp or a geotag. Even the experts think he could be writing anywhere from the 4th to the 9th century BCE. But what do see is that people have been hungry and the earth has been suffering. Joel is writing from a state of environmental crisis and devastation. The land has not been bearing fruit and anything that grows has been wiped out by locusts.

I think it’s fair to say that while we have not be plagued by locust, we are indeed in a place of environmental crisis. A crisis in which is feels pretty easy to be overwhelmed to the point of saying, well what can I even do. Or ask, isn’t it too late?

Joel is speaking for God when he says, “Even now! Return to me!” Begin with sorrow and lament. Let your heart cry over the way the earth is suffering. Over our own human contribution to the suffering.

God desires wholeness. In verse 25 we hear God say – in the CEB translation – “I will repay you for the years [of the locust].” But I’m not sure that’s the best rendering of the word, because it sounds quite transactional, when the word translated ‘repay’ is a version of the word  shalom – or just peace. 

It might be more accurate to say, “I will make peace with,” or “I will create wholeness,” or “I will make this right.” Because the description of what God is promising is one of abundance and enoughness, a vision in which every person has what they need.

Joel uses this image of a vine and fig tree – that they will bear a full yield. The prophet Micah also used this image for abundance, saying, each person will sit under their own vine and fig tree – in other words, every household will be able to produce enough for themselves and experience that abundance.

Apparently George Washington loved this image and often cited it – including in his parting address which is memorialized in the musical Hamilton – because he thought of Mt Vernon as his own ‘vine and fig tree.’ And yet Mt Vernon was farmed and tended by over 300 enslaved people, who probably did not see it that way at all.

The vine and fig tree, the restoration of the earth, the turning toward God and God’s vision of a just peace even now is what God is urging the people through the prophet Joel. And the resulting gift will be God’s spirit poured out on everything and everyone.

We most often hear these words on Pentecost because they’re quoted by Peter in Acts 2. In some ways I’m like, ho-hum God spirit for everyone. But it’s really pretty remarkable. God’s not reserving or holding back the gift of the spirit for prophets only or for chosen leaders or for elders only, or for men only. 

It’s very clear from this passage that it’s a gift for all:

After that I will pour out my spirit upon everyone;
your sons and your daughters will prophesy,

your elders will dream dreams,
and your youth will see visions.

In the new year I plan to host an online book group to which you will all be invited on So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis. This book is by Sheri Hostetler and Sarah Augustine, the latter of whom will be visiting us in March as a guest preacher. So I started reading the book this week to do some prep and it felt as if the Holy Spirit was moving in a couple of ways.

First, to start a book that spoke so directly about how we indeed turn toward God’s vision of a just peace for the earth on Sunday when I was also reading that prophetic call from Joel. And second, that part of the book is Sarah’s experience with receiving visions.

There is not a strong tradition of receiving – or maybe more appropriately said acknowledging and interpreting – visions among contemporary Mennonites but for Sarah, from the time she was a child, the experiences with visions have been a source of guidance and strength. (I say contemporary Mennonites because there is a stream of visionary Anabaptists that was very popular in the 16th Century!) Sarah and Sheri use Sarah’s visions and Sheri’s poems throughout the book.

Like Joel, they are prophets. The spirit has been poured out upon them! They write in the introduction:

We’ve diddled. We’ve dawdled. And we’ve been in denial. But the choice is clear, the report [from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says. We are heading toward catastrophe, and we must choose to imagine and do something different. Now. Today. 

(So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis. p. 25)

Even now, says Joel, return with all your hearts. I’m looking forward to reading more. To learn from Sheri and Sarah from their experience and from the experiences of other indigenous people. As in so many areas of justice I am feeling galvanized to engage in the ways that I am able. To practicing not just hope but peace-making for my neighbors and for the nations and for the earth.

I will end with Sheri Hostetler’s poem that begins the first section. That could also be a lesson from Mary’s experience with the pouring out of the Spirit on her. The poem is called, “Say Yes Quickly.”

Say Yes Quickly

 

Say yes quickly, before you think too hard

or the soles of your feet give out.

Say yes before you see the to-do list.

Saying maybe will only get you to the door,

but never past it.

Say yes before the dove departs for, yes

she will depart and you will be left

alone with your yes,

your affirmation of what you

couldn’t possibly know was coming.

Keep saying yes.

You might as well,

you’re here in this wide space now,

no walls and certainly not a roof.

The door was always an illusion.

(So We and Our Children May Live. p 29)

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Photo by Tom Rogers on Unsplash

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