Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
March 9, 2017
I
am the mother of two teenagers. I’ll be accepting your condolences after
worship. Actually, I’m fortunate and extremely blessed to have two great kids.
But because they are teenagers, they are doing what teenagers do – namely
dating and experiencing the rush of first loves. But we who lived a few years
longer then they have know that with love comes the potential for heartbreak.
When
my kids were little, they would come to me with some sort of owie and
all it really took for me to fix it was a kiss. But one of the hardest lessons
I am learning as a parent is that there are some owies I cannot fix.
While I thought that being a mom when they were little and needed me 24/7 was
hard, being a mom and having to step back and let them make mistakes and get
hurt and have life happen to them, has been infinitely more difficult and
painful. Nothing hurts more than seeing your child hurt. And broken hearts
hurt.
Broken
hearts hurt, and I reckon most of us would do anything we could to avoid them.
It seems strange, then, that the prophet Joel declares that God wants the
people of God to rend their hearts.
“Yet
even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with
weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.”
Rend
your hearts and not your clothing. A sign of penitence was to tear one’s
clothes, and put on sackcloth and ashes. But God does not want that. God wants
them – and us – to rend our hearts. This is not a new message or one that is
unique to Joel. We hear this repeatedly from the prophets. Rend your hearts and
not your clothing.
What
does rend mean exactly? Rend means to break, to tear, to rip. When Jesus
breathed his last, the curtain of the temple was rendered into two. It was
torn, ripped. To rend something not only means to break that object, there is
the implication of violence. Clothes are not just taken off and neatly folded.
They are ripped. They are torn.
But
God does not want torn clothing. God wants torn hearts, broken hearts. Why
would God want such a thing? One of the ways I understand God is seeing God as
my heavenly parent. We pray to our heavenly Father. I know as a parent that the
last thing I want is for my children to hurt. When their hearts are broken, my
heart is broken. Their broken hearts make me long for the days when I could
just kiss away any hurts, any owies they might have. Surely, God our
Father, our parent, must hurt when we hurt. God loves us so much, God willing
to take on our flesh and blood so that we could find our way back to him.
Yet
Joel and the other prophets tell us that God wants our hearts to be rendered,
to be broken. Return to God, mourning, weeping and with broken hearts. It seems
to me that if you really want to love someone, I mean really love
someone, you have to be willing to have your heart broken wide open. That’s
what love does. It makes you vulnerable – not weak – vulnerable. The great risk
of loving is that you might get your heart rendered in two. But whoever said
that loving God, following God, living a life faithful to God, was without
risk?
Whatever
our denomination, and I know that there are many denominations represented here
today, we share one faith, and that faith is a risky one. Being faithful
implies risk, because being faithful calls us to love. We are called to love
God. We are called to love each other. This isn’t some safe, easy, cautious
kind of love either. Loving God and loving other people is risky. This love is
not a fleeting emotion; this is love with its work boots on. Maybe in order to
be truly faithful, to truly love God and others, we have to let our hearts be
broken. We have to rend our hearts wide open. We have to be vulnerable and
willing to give all that we have and are for the sake of God and God’s
children.
This
isn’t a feel good sermon, is it? How could it be when we are talking about
broken hearts? Broken hearts hurt. It would seem that God wants our hearts to
break, because when they are broken, rendered, completely open, then God can
fill them and us with God’s abundance, with God’s light and joy and hope and
love. So let us rend our hearts. Let’s break them wide open and turn again and
again to God, trusting that God’s love, grace and mercy will fill our hearts
with God’s love and make them, and us, whole.
Let
all of God’s children say, “Amen.”
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