Ash Wednesday

Jesse Jacobsen

Time-stamp: <Wed Feb 9 18:31:52 2005>
Printed

Joel 2:12--19

``Now, therefore,'' says the LORD,
``Turn to Me with all your heart,
With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.''

So rend your heart, and not your garments;
Return to the LORD your God,
For He is gracious and merciful,
Slow to anger, and of great kindness;
And He relents from doing harm.

Who knows if He will turn and relent,
And leave a blessing behind Him ---
A grain offering and a drink offering
For the LORD your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion,
Consecrate a fast,
Call a sacred assembly;
Gather the people,
Sanctify the congregation,
Assemble the elders,
Gather the children and nursing babes;
Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber,
And the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the LORD,
Weep between the porch and the altar;
Let them say, ``Spare Your people, O LORD,
And do not give Your heritage to reproach,
That the nations should rule over them.
Why should they say among the peoples,
`Where is their God?',''

Then the LORD will be zealous for His land,
And pity His people.
The LORD will answer and say to His people,
``Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil,
And you will be satisfied by them;
I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.

Return to the LORD, your God

God's Word is timeless. Isaiah wrote, ``The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.'' The text before us from God's prophet Joel was written for our benefit, but it was written to the people of Judah. Elishah lived near the same time, but worked more to the north. There had been a great natural disaster in Judah, so great that it led them to question whether God still held them in His favor. Everyone was affected, even the livestock. A plague of locusts had decimated the land. Food was simply not there.

How do you respond when things look so bleak that even God might have it against you? Where do you turn? Joel gave an answer as God's prophet, and it applies to us as well. When God has struck the congregation of Israel, it is not the time to try the kind of things that please men. It's not the time to join with those you know are not believers but pretend to worship God with loud voices and extravagent motions. It's not the time to rely upon whatever ounce of strength you think is left in your bones.

When God afflicts you, it reminds you of your guilt before Him. I know, you're thinking, ``Of course I'm not perfect. I don't need anyone to tell me that!'' So you already know it. Then why does God keep reminding you of your faults? And where on the infinite scale between utter evil and holiness would you put yourself? You say you're not perfect, and that's true. But on a scale of 1 to 10, would you give yourself a 5? Or maybe you're not that good. A 3, then? A 1? No, God says. ``If you have broken the smallest part of My Law, you are at 0. You are utterly evil, and deserve nothing more or less than hell.''

These are the thoughts that God wants to remind us of when we see the swarms of locusts filling the sky and blotting out the sun like the people of Judah saw in Joel's day.

What should we do? Joel gives us the answer: Return. Return to the LORD, your God. Return with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Return with hope in His grace and mercy.

With fasting, weeping, and mourning

God speaks to us across the years through His prophet: ``Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.'' Those who like to think spiritually will point out that fasting, weeping, and mourning are neither commanded nor forbidden to us in Holy Scripture. They are called ``adiaphora,'' or indifferent things. They are actions of the body, not necessarily connected to godly repentance.

But still, God calls for such things in our text, and that is exactly His point: ``So rend your heart, and not your garments,'' He says. There had been enough empty shows of repentance. Usually, when things go badly for us, we are sorry about it. But why are we sorry? Because we don't like to suffer. We miss our conveniences. We want things the way we want them, and we are unhappy when we don't get our way. But that is not godly sorrow. Connected with that kind of sorrow, fasting, weeping, and mourning are a sham. And when we conveniently tell ourselves that we don't even have to go through the outward motions of repentance because they are adiaphora, then our sorrow easily becomes a mockery of God's true purpose.

God wants a deeper kind of repentance from us. When we are confronted with disaster or even hardship, we should all be reminded that we are not innocent. What we truly deserve is much worse than we can even imagine. We ask the question ``why?'' thinking that we had nothing to do with it, but the hard fact is that we bring every calamity upon ourselves. Maybe not directly, but what else would you expect for natural enemies of God? Because that's the kind of people we are at heart.

So through His prophet Joel, God would have our repentance penetrate as deeply into us as our sin. We are saturated with sin. God wants us to be just as saturated with true repentance. We couldn't possibly hide such a deep, godly sorrow over sin. So how will we express it? In Joel's words, ``With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.''

Consider what Joel called upon Judah to do. We'd call it nationwide fasting and prayer. ``Blow the trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes.'' (He's not done yet!) ``Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the LORD, Weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, `Spare Your people, O LORD, And do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ``Where is their God?'' ' ''

God wants us all to repent deeply. Not of some specific sin that He knows of. He knows them all! He wants us to recognize the utter depravity of our nature, and own it before Him. Only then will He be satisfied that we have really repented. If we disown any part of our guilt, then we have not truly repented. That's why Joel called for such a public expression of remorse from the entire nation of Judah.

Think of the sinful woman who came to Jesus in the house of the pharisee. Did Jesus know that this woman was a sinner? Of course He did. But He also could see her heart and know that she was deeply sorry for her sins. Yet what she believed led her to wash Jesus' dusty feet with her tears and dry them with her long hair. Someone else may have called her a hypocrite for such a remarkable outward display, but she was no hypocrite. Her acts of worship were necessary --- she could do nothing else --- because she knew her sin.

Do we need to take Joel literally? Must we fast, weep, and mourn? If that is what your repentance calls for, then yes. But I cannot judge your repentance by your outward acts. It is God who moves the heart to repent, and your repentance is between you and God. Even private confession and absolution is between you and God. In the end, it will be God who must open or close the door to Paradise. He is a stricter Judge than I could ever be, because He is holy.

Therefore, let us return to Him, as He says, in some kind of fasting, weeping and mourning. Let us hold nothing back from Him, but acknowledge that He is right about our guilt. Let us acknowledge this not only in thought, but in word and in deed.

With Hope in His grace and mercy

Return to the LORD, your God, with hope in His grace and mercy. Joel wrote, ``Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm.'' (He's not done yet!) ``Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him --- A grain offering and a drink offering For the LORD your God?''

It is in our fallen nature not to turn to God. But sometimes He leaves us with no other choice. We must fall upon our knees and repent. But there is another, stronger reason to turn to God: He promises salvation to those who repent. God is merciful.

Through His servants, God is always calling upon us to repent. In fact, the confession of sin has become part of every Divine Service as a preparation for the spiritual meal that follows. As Christians, we do repent, in spite of ourselves. We still have that evil nature, but faith in God's promise of forgiveness provides us a new and godly nature. This is what provides the motive to kneel before Him daily in repentance.

Years ago, the practice of private confession and absolution was more common in the Lutheran Church than it is today. Just from looking at recent hymnals, you can see that it's making a comeback, but the return is slow. There is a reluctance in us to confess what may be bothering our consciences, because to us, they are the darkest deeds that could separate us from God. But as we have learned from Joel, God wants us to confess those sins. Now, there are other ways of confessing our sins to God, but there is something about private confession that makes it harder for us to face. It's like the fear of the dark, or the fear of the unknown.

But if you consider what God is really offering you here, you will see that there is really no reason to avoid it. In private confession and absolution, God is offering every repentant sinner a formal pardon. He doesn't want us to confess in order to hold our confession against us! He wouldn't need that anyway, because He already knows our guilt. God wants our confession in order that our sins might be laid upon Jesus Christ, who was crucified for them. And He wants our confession so that He can personally say to us, ``You are forgiven.'' Of course, He says it in other ways. He says it now to you: You are forgiven! But if you ever want to hear it for your ears alone, that's exactly why our Lord Jesus gave us private absolution. He wants to take from us the sins we own, and set us free forever.

Consider the sinful woman again. Jesus knew that she was not only sorry for her sins, she was joyful, knowing that they were all forgiven. She was washing the feet of the very Man who lifted the burden of guilt from her shoulders, and He does the same for us.

If our deep repentance is shown outwardly, then it is no wonder that God wants to give us forgiveness outwardly too, and that we show our thanks to Him outwardly. Our sin and God's grace are not just on the surface; they permeate our whole being: body, mind, and soul; thoughts, words, and deeds. So God-pleasing worship has a structure and order. We confess, and God forgives, and then we thank and praise Him. The pattern repeats over and over again. Hearing the Word produces repentance and faith, which leads to the gift of Baptism, and then to confession and absolution. This continues onward and culminates in Holy Communion, but then the whole cycle repeats again.

Our Small Catechism says, ``Such baptizing with water means that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lists; and that a new man daily come forth and arise, who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.'' This is exactly the sort of thing that Joel was writing about, over 700 years before Christ.

God knows that we are flesh and blood, and that we have a soul. That also describes Jesus Christ. In His holy flesh and blood, and in the depths of His perfect soul, He lived a perfect life in our place, and suffered for our sins. As we search the deepest places of our own hearts, let us honestly come before our merciful God in true repentance every day. Let us confess our guilt freely, so that when we have been forgiven again, we may also confess our Savior just as freely. Let us heed the voice of God's prophet, and return to the LORD our God with fasting, weeping, and mourning, and with hope in His grace and mercy. You stand forgiven. Amen.

This document was translated from LATEX by HEVEA.