A Reflection on Joel 3
In the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan recounts in vivid detail a story concerning the debased acts towards a child saying:
This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they… shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy … they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her?
The words of Ivan are not new to us, we need only to look at the newspaper or the scars on our own bodies to know that events like these are not a thing of the past but happen in our own town, in our own neighborhood, and—may God forbid it—in our own homes and in our lives as the lingering scars of past trauma live on in pierced and broken hearts./ The pain of suffering, the cries of despair, and the beating of chests push us and push us to cry out “How long, O Lord?” We come to the foot of the cross and we find no shade, for where is God in the midst of this, the cross stands there distant and uninhabited. Where is justice, where is help, where is your mercy, O God? Shall your people be wasted away?
The voice of God breaks the silence in his Word through the prophet Joel; the Lord is Judge./ In the Valley of Jehoshaphat—that is the Valley where the Lord Judges—God brings judgement upon those who oppose his people. It is in this valley that God protected his people and it will be in this valley that God brings judgement upon the enemy. (2 Chor. 20). It is in the Day of the Lord that God calls forth the enemies of his people and calls them his enemies. O that God would hear the cries of his people. We are surrounded by those who wish to destroy us, they have formed that which is made for peace into weapons; in a prophetic reversal, plowshares and pruning hooks have been made into swords and spears. Truth is twisted, love is made corrupt, tolerance is hatred, and justice is synonymous with the cultural consensus./ We feel this pressure within our bones and it shakes us to our core, for we too are not immune to it. We have picked up the instruments of the Church, the tools of peace, and having been armed with self-righteousness, we lead the charge against God and his people. For we desire to feast on consumerism, rather than on the body and blood of Christ. We desire to pop the pills of apathy and cynicism than to help the low and hurting. We have severed the bonds of unity and called it holiness. And we stored up our treasures on earth and called it heaven. We seek the judgment of others only to find ourselves on trial.
“Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe…tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great. Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near...” None shall escape the judgment of the Lord. All of creation has been placed on the stand. The images of wine, bread, and oil as signs of peace and blessings have been placed upside down and are images of judgment. “The sun and the moon are darkened and the stars withdraw their shining.” Yet our judge is one who creates and all of creation is being undone, not undone unto destruction, but so that it might be redone. For as the Creeds proclaim: God is the “Maker of heaven and earth” and the one who “judges both the living and the dead.” The Creator is the judge, not so that all might be made to naught, but so that creation might be made whole; that it might be recreated to the glory of God. Judgement is real but we must remember who the judge is, he is Creator and he is Redeemer. The day of the LORD is for the glory of God, which is revealed at its midday in the crucifixion of Christ on the hill of Golgotha.
Yet, the very one who judges is also the one who saves his people. Salvation is found not by us climbing up but by the Warrior of God descending. God has descended to the mount of Zion and Christ has tabernacled among us in the valley of judgment and all who find themselves within his walls find refuge. For the chosen people of God are not so because of what they have done but because they are united to the Chosen One through the Spirit. Christ comes into our midst as he takes our place and becomes both the Judge and the one who is judged. He is our fortress not from afar but because he comes and dwells among us. He is our defender and our substitute. His weapons are not sword and spear but the fruit of pruning hooks and plows, wine and bread—the body and blood. The weapons of God are the symbols of peace and the body and blood of Christ. The “roar of the LORD” and the “shaking of heaven and earth” are answered in the cry of Christ on the cross and the shaking of the earth testifying, “Truly, this one was the Son of God.” (Matthew 27:45-56).
Judgement is real, for it is the glory of the Lord and recreation of heaven and earth. We who find ourselves at the foot of the mount find ourselves as Israel did at the foot of Sinai, trembling with fear, for the Lord is holy. Yet we also find ourselves at the foot of the mount that held the cross where Christ came and dwelled in our midst. As we gaze upon the uninhabited cross it is not our despair but our hope in the risen Lord./ Dostoyevsky did not seek to answer the question of why there is evil, but he answered Ivan’s accusations with a simple kiss. Joel does not tell us why there is evil but he answers that God will respond to evil and save his people—he has done this in the One Cross, as he welcomes us with the kiss of Christ. And it is within this embrace that God proclaims to us, in the midst of despair, “I am the Lord your God.”
God's Peace,
Fr. Aaron