Trembling [Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 - Ash Wednesday]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

 

Trembling

The forces of death are at the gate and so that is why the alarm is sounded.  Like air raid sirens on the dawn of war, the trumpeter placed his instrument to his lips and the hauntingly desperate sound came bursting forth.  On another day, in another time, a better time, it might have been a song, perhaps something beautiful or maybe even happy.  But on this day there was no song – because in the killing fields no one thinks of beauty and no one hopes for happiness.  On this day, the instrument was robbed of its greater purpose.  The trumpet sounded only the sound of a terrible nightmare. 

 

For two years, but probably much longer, we have lived with the oppressive drone of the alarm – until it became the background noise of our lives.  That a disease could sweep across the planet and kill almost six million people, almost one million of those in our own nation, still seems impossible.  And yet we lived it, and are living it.  And it proved, in some horrible way, that nothing is impossible.  Even terrible nightmares. 

 

The planet warms and storms brew and divisions grow and grief mounts and despair spreads.  And half a world away, even as the pestilence, we hope, begins to fade, another apocalyptic horseman rides.  And the sense of existential dread grows with each bomb dropped.  And the prophet Joel proves sadly timeless because the inhabitants of the land still tremble.

 

And how can we not?  Everywhere we turn there is another reminder that we are relentlessly stalked by the shadow of death – a shadow that in these latter days feels almost tangible.  It casts a chill that haunts our mortal life – a chill that sinks deep into our bones.  And so of course we tremble.

 

We try not to.  We try to stay alive and try to be happy and try not to think about it – all of it, every overwhelming bit.  We fill our lives with distractions that don’t work.  We search the corners of the internet looking for answers that never truly satisfy the questions that perplex our lives.  We scurry around, wiping away the dust that coats our surfaces like a grim reminder of our fate.

 

 But then we come to Ash Wednesday and we are told all of the things we never wanted to know and always try hard to avoid – about our sins and our flaws and our weaknesses and about death.  And the dust we try to scrub from our lives is replaced, our faces branded with a most unpleasant reality, a truth we know but desperately wish we could make untrue: we are citizens of a world intent on destroying itself.

 

Life is hard and so is living.  And that we do it in the shadow of death and with the alarms constantly sounding, always reminding us that the forces of death are at the gate, only makes it more exhausting.  And we cannot shake the shadows or silence the alarms.  And that is exhausting too.

 

And I think we carry this weight so long and so often that at times we forget we carry it, forget we are being crushed, forget we are saddled with a burden far too great for any one of us.

 

Maybe we were called here today to let go.  To stop carrying the weight of this world.  When the prophet Joel’s people trembled on the verge of utter disaster, Joel did not give them easy answers.  Because there was no quick fix.  There was no escape from the brokenness of the world.  They had pressed their shoulders against the gate for a long time but the forces of death did not go away. 

 

What Joel tells them to do is weep.  To fill a world of drought with tears. 

 

What we admit here today is that we are not strong enough to save the world.  But that’s OK; God is not asking us to save the world.  God is simply asking us to let our hearts break and let our tears fall, until they form an oasis for a world of desperate people.

 

The God the prophet Joel describes is admittedly too soft for this hard world.  In a world of greed, God is gracious.  In a world of war and violence, God is merciful.  In a world of rage, God is slow to anger.  In this world, this very world, God chooses to be abounding in steadfast love.  God is the beauty that grows in the killing fields.  God is the song that silences the alarm.  God is the circle of bread in the days of famine. 

 

You are too weak to save this world.  But you can plant a flower on the battlefield.  And you can water it with your tears.  And you can stand trembling in the midst of this violent world with your dusty cross on your tearstained face, and your clumsy prayer for peace on your cracked lips, and your merciful God in your broken heart.