Return with all Your Heart — Joel 2:12-18

I believe we need to read our biblical texts in dialogue with the issues and the challenges rising up in our world today. Over recent decades Christian communities have done this in relation to a range of liberation issues, feminist concerns, postcolonial perspectives and other contemporary challenges. But now we must read scripture in dialogue with the most urgent and comprehensive issue of times — the ecological.

Almost daily we hear the cry of the Earth confronting us. Extreme weather patterns wreak havoc across the globe, causing devastation and suffering to the most vulnerable in the human and Earth communities. In many places Earth’s temperatures are the highest on record as are those of our oceans. Ice sheets are shrinking and glaciers are retreating. Arable lands that support the livelihood of Earth’s people are becoming deserts. It’s with these cries around us that we seek to read our biblical texts ecologically so that those texts may shape a new ecological consciousness in us.

Critique and Reclamation

Together with other liberation perspectives, an ecological approach holds two stances in tension: critique and reclamation.

At the critical phase, the reader is attentive to the ways in which Earth might be obscured by focusing only on people in the biblical text itself; the other-than-human may be represented in a subordinate relationship with people; or the materiality of the other-than-human might be completely absent from the text.

In the reclamation phase we attend to the voice of Earth and all Earth’s constituents as these function either explicitly or implicitly in the text.

Joel, First Testament Prophet

Joel 2:12-18 is the first reading on Ash Wednesday (14 February) the beginning of the Lenten season. Joel is one of the 12 minor prophets in Israel but as we know nothing about him, his time or his context we will focus on the text.

12 Yet even now, says our God, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
13 Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to your God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.
14 Who knows whether or not to turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind, a grain offering and a drink offering for your God?
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly;
16 Gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged;
gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.
17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of our God, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O God, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples: ‘Where is their God?’
18 Then God became jealous for the land, and had pity on the people.

At First Seems Human-Centred

We can see in a first reading that the text’s perspective is anthropocentric or human-centred. The divine voice is speaking to the human community, inviting them to re-turn to God — a fitting invitation as we enter into the Lenten season. And the return is to be shown in the human body — fasting, weeping and mourning and in the rending of hearts and not clothing. This is accompanied by a gathering of the human community, identified specifically with the aged, the children, even infants at the breast — the least powerful in the community. It is this vulnerable group whose plight cries out to God to restore justice or right relationships. Lent is a time when we listen to these cries and endeavour to respond.

Reading More Deeply

A critical phase in our ecological reading is recognising the faint voice of the material in the text. In Joel 2:13 there is a passing reference to clothing, which could be torn to indicate mourning, and mention of “a grain offering and a drink offering” (Joel 2:14). The materiality, or material things in the text — a grain or a drink offering (Joel 2:14); the bridegroom’s room and the bride’s canopy (Joel 2:16); the vestibule and altar (Joel 2:17) — give a context for the human interrelationships.

In order that the biblical texts can inform and inspire us we’re invited to hear the text as addressed to the entire Earth community — the human community being just one participant in that wider community.

Invitation to Return

The divine voice first invites us (Joel 2:12) to turn or to re-turn, suggesting that a relationship is broken and needs to be righted. The broken relationship can be multi-dimensional: between Divinity and the Earth community — which includes people, animals, and all other communities of being. The call is to re-turn, meaning to turn from the current relationships to a prior one. And the call is coming not only to the human community but to all groups within the Earth community. It is a comprehensive call to right relationships between Divinity and Earth. Within the call is the recognition of many broken relationships not only between the Divine and people but within the multi-relational world that we now know.

Joel 2:13 characterises the Divine as multi-dimensional and relational: hanan, raham, and hesed are three key terms describing the merciful love of God. God, gracious and merciful abounding in steadfast love, invites the whole Earth community into right relationship. Joel 2:14 recognises that the human community is ambivalent towards repentance: Who knows whether or not to turn and relent? But as the text unfolds it assumes that we do repent, that we do make the change to right relationships.

Invitation to Restore Relationships

We can read Joel 2:15-16 in terms of the right relationships that need to be restored. Lent is a time of fasting — fasting in order to restore relationships. Today our fasting can have an ecological face. For example, we might concentrate on a just way in which we use water and power; on growing our food or accessing what is local; on joining action for justice so that all the Earth’s people can access clean water, power and local food supplies. The trumpet blast of Joel 2:15 can refer to such critical actions reminding us that repentance is a communal activity (Joel 2:16). We can look around for others with whom we can gather during this Lenten season to expand our own consciousness of ecological conversion.

God in All Relationships

Conversion is not only about restoring right relationships between the human and other-than-human but also noticing God’s engagement in these interrelationships. The question: “Where is their God?” (Joel 2:17) recognises that in participating in interrelationships we are led to further recognition. The prophet then acknowledges God’s care or even, God’s jealous care for “the land” — which we know includes the entire Earth community. We can read the final statement: “God had pity (merciful compassion) on the people” (Joel 2:18), as also extending to the whole Earth community.

During Lent we can take Joel’s invitation to restore right relationships as our own. And we can think of the invitation as including relationship among Divinity, humanity and Earth. It’s an invitation into adventure. 

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 223, February 2018: 24-25.