“Tell the Children”

(Joel 1:1-14 and Joel 2:12-27)

            I don’t know how many of you have memorized all the books of the Bible in order? I had to recite the entire list – all 66 books – in order to earn a scholarship to church camp as a kid, and we also used to have regular Bible ‘drills’ in which we’d compete to see who could find a particular chapter and verse reference the fastest.  (Hold the Bible closed on your lap, and no fair slipping your fingers into the book of Psalms to get your bearings ahead of time.)  The stakes were high.  Even in regular worship services there was none of this announcing the page number business in the Baptist church.  We had to have it all up here (head).  I have a confession to make, though – once my grandma taught me a catchy little tune, it was really pretty easy to memorize the list.  My kids have learned a different tune, but the results are the same – all 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New come rolling off their tongues.  No big deal. You could do it too, I promise – I have a tape of the song I can loan you.

          But here’s what’s interesting– and go ahead and flip to the table of contents in your pew Bibles if you don’t happen to have all these crazy names floating around your brain.  Look at the list of books in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, for a minute.  For how many of them can you quickly associate characters, catchy phrases, or a familiar plot line?  Genesis, sure – creation, Noah, Abraham, all the way to Joseph.  The Exodus from Egypt led by Moses, we know something about that.  Joshua might be familiar (good old walls of Jericho), or Ruth with her mother in law Naomi and their friendship.  And somewhere in Samuel don’t we get the stories of David and Solomon?  We’d recognize some of the Psalms for sure.  We hear a lot from Isaiah round about Advent each year.  And some of you may have even read around in the Wisdom writings of Proverbs, Job, or Ecclesiastes. 

What’s left?  Well, quite a lot as it turns out. Lots of names here – a few of them like Jeremiah or Ezekiel may be a little bit familiar – but then we get to our buddies Joel, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. If you’ve never spent time with any of these guys, don’t feel bad.  I have a doctorate in biblical studies and they were pretty far down on my required reading list too.  But it interests me that all of the names on my ‘top 10 least familiar’ list are prophets, when some of the other prophetic books are among my very favorite parts of the Scriptures.

          Humbled by all that lies in these books I rarely open, I for one want to learn more. So we’re all going to increase our biblical literacy this summer one tiny prophetic book at a time. Orienting ourselves to just five of the lesser-known books of the Hebrew Bible, all of them quite brief.  We’ll approach every single one with the wacky assumption (also known as the Reformed understanding of Scripture) that there is something of value here, some reason these books were included in the canon, some word from the Lord not just for them then, but for us now. 

          Now that you know why we happen to find ourselves in the book of Joel this morning, let’s return to our text.

          First to those opening lines: “Hear this, O elders, give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors?  Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.” (Joel 1:2-3)  The first few verses of this book keep us guessing – what on earth has happened that is worthy of such telling and retelling?  When we think about the kinds of events in Israelite history that were worthy of such attention, the Exodus from Egypt comes immediately to mind. That pivotal event on which their history and identity hinged, so that biblical authors make reference to it hundreds of years later, and every generation, even to this day, retells and reenacts the story on Passover. For Christians the story of equivalent magnitude would be Jesus’ death and resurrection.  So pivotal, so foundational it needs to be told and retold, so that each generation becomes as familiar with the story as the original witnesses.

          But here in Joel, we find ourselves in the midst of an agricultural crisis: “what the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten.  What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten.” (Joel 1:4)  The entire land has been completely decimated, crops wiped out, people and animals left starving in the wake of these winged invaders.  A few of you grew up in farming country in the Midwest; it may be that you’ve witnessed locusts or cicadas arriving en masse. I understand the sights and the sounds associated with such a thing are unforgettable even in a regular cycle, and Joel is clearly referring to an event unparalleled in the people’s history. His language is so evocative that even those of us who have never witnessed anything like this can see that rush of locusts in our minds’ eye.

          Very little is known about the prophet Joel – we don’t even have a good fix on what century he lived in – so we can’t know exactly when this event took place, or where in Israel it happened. It’s even a possibility that the invasion of locusts could be a symbolic way of referring to wartime invasions by human enemies.  You can see how the wave after devastating wave that’s described here could be recalling that kind of experience in a poetic way. And certainly Joel does slide back and forth in these first couple of chapters between agricultural and military imagery.  I’m not sold on the wartime theory entirely, but commentators would at least have us know there are these two options - military chariots taking over the land are so numerous they are compared to swarms of locusts, or a plague of locusts is so deadly as to be compared to an invading army.

Either way, whether historical or allegorical, the picture is painted with great eloquence and passion. Something happened which was so deadly, so horrifying that it needed to be told. In our own day and age this is the way people talk about the terrorist attacks of 9/11, about Pearl Harbor, or about the Holocaust. “Never forget.”  “Never again.” The same urgency of remembering. The same feeling that the story needs to be told to the children who were too young to understand when these things happened, and to their children who were not yet born when grandma and grandpa witnessed these events, and to those grandkids’ great-great-grandkids, and on and on, to every generation. “Never forget.”  “Tell the children.”

          But the devastation caused by the army of locusts isn’t the only part of the story worth telling – remember, this is only the very beginning of Joel’s message.

          Note the shift in verse 13 of chapter 1 – did it catch you off guard at all?  Our natural reaction to the destruction of our land would probably not be sackcloth and ashes, repentance and fasting.  But the traditional way to interpret suffering at that time was as a punishment from God.  What we say in a rhetorical way at times – what did I do to deserve this? – that question was taken with utmost seriousness back then.  So in response to the invasion by these sworn enemies, whether human or vermin, the people repented with fasting and weeping and prayer.  Every last one of them –the children and the aged, even newlyweds and infants at the breast. 

          And as chapter 2 continues, we are told that a kindly, gracious God responded to the people.  What Joel calls the “northern army” (Joel 2:20) is removed and sent far away.  Pastures become green again; trees are able to bear fruit.  The Lord promises – did you hear it? – to repay the people for the years that the locust has eaten. And we begin to realize that the story to be told and retold here is not simply a story of tragedy and suffering, but a story of God’s mighty acts of redemption and restoration even in the darkest of days.

          What is your favorite biblical story of danger-turned-rescue? Of tragedy-toward-recovery? Of despair-become-hope? Who have you told?

Certainly both branches of our church family have their stories of hard times faced, and how God brought them through.  And our congregation continues to create new memories worth sharing with our children and our children’s children. Who have you told?

What is your own story of recovery from adversity?  Where has God’s grace found you in the pit, and pulled you out? Who have you told?

I understand a gentleman once got up to lead a children’s time in his church with a borrowed bank sign hung around his neck.  It said simply: “Teller.”  His point, of course, was that we are all called to be tellers of God’s mighty acts.

So when you read through the Scriptures, notice which stories grab your attention.  Where does your spine tingle? What makes you squirm?

Think back on the pivotal events our nation has been through, or our church family, or your own family. Where has God been in each of those stories? 

And where has God been acting in your own life?  For surely some of the most compelling stories are the ones we’ve lived ourselves.

Put that “Teller” sign around your neck and get to work. We’ve got an amazing audience waiting for you, and they love a good story.

Tell the children.