Let’s be honest with one another. Joel is one of those books of the Bible that when it’s time to look for it, we just start a little more than halfway back, and just flip through the pages until we see the heading go back. I mean, unless you are one of those people who are blessed to have the order of the books of the Bible seared into your memory from some long ago Sunday School song or Youth Group challenge – I am not one of those – it’s a book that is both skinny and overlooked enough that we rarely turn right to it. Passages from Joel turn up regularly in two liturgical holy days – Ash Wednesday and Pentecost – but other than that we usually don’t hear much from Joel. It’s not a go-to book for most of us in our devotional reading, I’d suspect.
For that reason, it’s probably worthwhile to do a little recap of what this prophecy contains. First of all, it’s a really short prophecy, just three chapters long. That makes it really easy to flip right by when you’re looking for it that way. The author named in the text is “Joel son of Pethuel,” but we don’t have any other information about who he is. Nor do we have information about when his ministry took place. No mention is made of historical events, people, or the reign of kings and empires. We don’t get any details to help us with dating except maybe a slight reference to the presence of the temple and quotes from other prophets which hints that Joel came after them. That’s about it. Based on these things and not much else, we can guess that the prophecy came from Joel to the people of Israel after the return from Babylonian exile and after the rebuilding of the temple, some 400 or 500 years before Jesus.
The prophecy talks about a massively destructive locust plague that has covered the land where God’s people live. This isn’t just a few bugs that are more annoying than normal; this is an infestation of epic proportions – the kind where you can’t take a step without crunching layers upon layers of bugs under your feet, the kind where every leaf of every plant, every stalk of every crop is consumed to the ground. The locusts are likened to a nation that has invaded the land, or maybe the locusts are metaphorical and a nation has, indeed, invaded the land, but whatever it is their teeth are compared to those of the lions. The cutting locusts, the swarming ones, the hopping and the destroying pests, have done a number on the whole land, laying waste to vines and figs all the crops and livelihoods of the people. The very feeling of joy withers away among the people.
Joel calls the people to acts of worship, devotion, and lament. He interprets this plague as God’s way of getting the attention of the people, of both the initiation of and warning about the coming “day of the Lord,” a time in which God will decisively intervene in the life of Israel. Joel begs God’s people to gather in the house of the Lord, to fast, to repent, to return to God. Unlike many of the other prophets, he doesn’t speculate about what they need to turn away from; he just tells them what they need to turn toward.
Also unlike many of the other prophets, their worship and acts of devotion are not rejected by God, but are welcomed. The people are not criticized for hypocritical practices or going through the motions with no actual devotion. Instead their worship is answered with the promises about God’s restoration of the land. The insect armies will be driven away, Joel announces. The people will be spared, but not just the people. “Do not fear, O soil,” Joel reassures. Even the dirt can be glad and rejoice. The animals of the field and pastures, the trees bearing fruit, the vines giving full yield, none of them need to fear. For as we heard in today’s reading, the rains will come in vindication, abundant rains will replenish the fields. Grain will grow to fill the threshing floors, and wine and oil will slosh over the sides of the vats, there will be so much produced.
What a dramatic promise! What a beautiful depiction of divine presence and restoration! It almost gets me past my frustration that we don’t know when and what this prophecy is talking about.
As you may have figured out by now, I tend to read scripture with an eye and an ear bent toward the history behind the text. It’s important to me to understand the context of the story being told – what king ruled how while which empire was threatening where. How are God’s people behaving and what actions or inactions are drawing the divine response they are experiencing? Who was the first audience of these holy words? How did they hear them in the middle of their daily living, their worries and their joys? It’s important to me in discerning how to apply these ancient words to our contemporary lives to know what they were written about in the first place.
Here in Joel we don’t have any of that. Hmpf.
But maybe the lack of evidence to drive the dating of this prophecy is a blessing and not a curse. Maybe without specific crises of leadership or failures of the people to point to, this prophecy has more room to hold the whole breadth and depth of our human experience of devastation. Since it’s not anchored to a specific time, a particular political situation, the known acts and missteps of the people of God, maybe we can hear with different ears, each with our own ears, what the prophet has to say about our missteps, and more importantly God’s bold and generous restoration.
Maybe as one scholar found, we hear echoes of an indictment of our modern treatment of the land – a reading where we ourselves and our treatment of the environment as a disposable commodity are both the locusts and the people crying out for mercy.
Maybe in a society full of violence, where not one, but two Homecoming celebrations at historically black universities were disrupted by the gun violence of mass shootings this weekend, we can see how committing ourselves to the name and the way of the Lord will open us to be filled with a spirit of peace.
Maybe in a time in our nation’s history where the streets of some of our cities are being patrolled by those who have been sent to snatch up the very kinds of vulnerable people God’s law commands should be cared for, we can hear that all life, all people, even the least expected have value in the reign of God.
Or maybe without the overlay of kingdoms and leaders, war and international distress, maybe as we hear about the devastation wrought upon the land and the people, we are drawn to think of the landscapes of our own lives – as individuals and as the church. The gnawed crops may bring to mind the damage that we feel in our bodies or see in the failing health of a loved one. The despair about the viability of the future may bring up anxiety about the future of a church that doesn’t look the same as it did 5 or 6 years ago before COVID, or 20 or 30 or 40 years ago when this building felt more full. The barren land that doesn’t produce food for the community might compare to a time when finger-pointing and division drew energy right out of the fertile soil of our relationships, leaving us spiritually starved without sustenance for our souls.
Maybe the lack of context breaks open this text to hold all of our experiences, all of the despair and destruction we witness and carry. Maybe the applicability of this prophecy comes in its universality – the reality that all of us can point to some experience of feeling empty, hopeless, chewed up and spit out again, uncertain about the future. All of us can relate to a depiction of empty fields and remember a time when we cried out, “Where is our God?”, and when the words of the prophet that we needed to hear were “I will repay you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied.”
Maybe the blessing of the ambiguity is in the promise that the mercy and grace and renewal that God generously pours out isn’t for specific kinds of pain, but for all of it. God’s generosity heals and restores and is lavished on all of our experiences, all of our doubts, all of our devastations, not just a few – and it’s because of this blessedly indiscriminate generosity of God’s grace, for the ways it pours into the totality of our life, that we can answer the invitation to praise the name of the Lord, to see how God has and will deal wondrously with us.
For we see in this prophecy that God pours out God’s blessings and spirit generously. It’s baffling if we stop to think about why. Very little about our history as human beings has made us seem like reliable recipients of God’s trust. We have not proven ourselves to be a great return on investment. And yet again and again, God is gracious. Over and over, God looks at our potential, not our past, and decides to repay us what has been lost, to restore the soil of our hearts, to replenish our spirits.
God vindicates us with love like abundant rain on the parched lands. God enlivens us with the spirit that is poured out on all flesh. God emboldens us to call upon the name of the Lord, an action that isn’t just a verbal cry, but a worshipful commitment to identify with all that God’s name means and implies, all that God stands for and desires in the world. Calling on the name of the Lord, receiving the very Spirit that flows from God’s own being, we are not only equipped, but commissioned to be God’s emissaries in the world – people who can and must live with the same bold generosity of love, compassion, and grace as the One who sends us. People overflowing with justice, mercy, and peace on the least of these. People who pour out all that God desires for the world from all that we have been given to share.
When we call upon the name of the Lord, when we receive that gift of God’s sprit that flows over all of humanity, we are called to live as boldy as God lives, to give as boldly as God gives. Calling on the name of the Lord, we walk into unknown futures where we serve the world’s great needs by giving generously from God’s great abundance that has been given to us. We do so not because we are buying some sort of a product. Not because we expect a service or particular result in return. But we do so knowing that wherever God’s spirit flows in the world there is the potential for miraculous new life, surprising growth out of desolation. We do so because it is how we show and join in the grace and mercy of God.
In what ways does God’s generosity inspire your own?
Scripture:
Psalm 65:1-2, 9-13 & Joel 2:23-32
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown on October 26, 2025 by Pastor Stephanie Anthony