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A SERMON ON THE PROPHET JOEL AND OBEDIENCE Mtr. Alexis Saunders, October 27, 2013.
The prophet Joel lived around 500 B.C. after the exile in Babylon. One year the surrounding country experienced the total destruction of crops from locusts. He saw in this event a way of declaring the word of God to his generation so that not only would God’s word be heard but also heeded. Joel as the prophets before him saw in the course of history, that human actions bring with them certain consequences. In fact one of the most persistent experiences of Israel in history was not truly hearing and heeding God but going their own way without regard to the consequences or forgetting their role in God’s creation. Joel perceived in the locusts a need for his people to look at their moral and ethical behaviour. Joel understood suffering could be a time of correction or testing to deepen their faith and so he called for a time of repentance; for a time of self-examination; a time to show their fidelity to the revelation of the law; a time to admit that God’s thoughts were beyond human understanding and that people cannot make God to conform to their own expectations. They repented as an expression of their complete trust and confidence in God. This act of obedience was understood to bring blessings and protection to them from God. In the passage we heard today Joel declares to the people in Jerusalem now they were to be glad and rejoice in God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication. God promises that they shall eat in plenty. There shall be bounty and their sons and daughters shall prophesy, their old men shall dream dreams and their young men shall see visions. Israel’s history was strongly oriented to the future, for their experience was that God would always act again at his chosen moment. While the nations around them were oriented to the past, Israel was a ‘people of hope’ looking to the future, knowing that suffering had meaning, that creation was good and orderly and under God’s control. That God had a plan for them and their purpose was to wisely and prudently live and work in this world according to God’s word and his laws. There is much for us to ponder in the book of Joel and what struck me this week was Joel’s cry to his people to hear and heed God’s word. Joel understood that God reveals himself to us through his word as spoken through the stories of the people, through the prophets, and through creation. The surprising and maybe uncomfortable word for hearing and heeding is obedience. So much of Israel’s history was a failure to hear. This is something Jesus declared many times, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Obedience seems to be an important virtue in the life of faith but has come into disrepute in the present time because obedience has been used to bind less powerful persons in harmful, abusive, overly dependent and codependent relationships. I think it is vitally important for us to carefully understand what is meant by obedience. The original purpose of obedience is to guide and protect us. Our obedience is to be directly to God through Christ who models and invites each one of us into a listening awareness of God and to a place of surrender to fully cooperate in God’s transforming action in the world.
Page |2 I understand my personal obedience is declared when I promise to love the Lord my God with all my heart and soul and mind and strength and my neighbour as myself and it is declared in my baptismal vows. I understand my obedience is expressed in belonging to a Christian community as it is an expression that the word of God is mediated through the rituals, teachings and symbols within the liturgy and through the people gathered here. Within our Anglican tradition we always have the ability and freedom to question and probe the faith. It is critical in fact to have a critical and questioning spirit. There is a need for open participation. It is a responsibility to be aware of our own limitations knowing that by listening carefully to one another, by being in mutual relationships that communal discernment is possible. Obedience is about transforming our relationships to one of attentiveness and listening and by being held accountable. In our parish right now, through the process of the Parish Review, we are being asked to listen very carefully to what God is calling us to be and do at this time. This is a communal act of obedience, of hearing and heeding; a time of listening and through experiment to move together to being a greater expression of God’s kingdom.