NOTES for Joe 2:1-17

A simple question: should biblical texts be applied directly or not? Should the words written there be related to what is happening in the world?

After reading the beginning of the book of the prophet Joel, one wants to say that the ways of responding to what is happening described there should be put into practice. After all, as human beings improve their ways of fighting others like themselves in defense of their own opinion, they improve the means, but their goals do not change. In the same way, the ways of responding to evil in the world that the Bible offers do not change: fasting, prayer, and faith that only One has conquered death. The strong man's house has already fallen; the demons have already been driven out.

Looking at the world even from the standpoint of human logic, it is clear that no human powers can protect us from evil. It can be fought with faith that turns into confidence that Jesus, who drives out demons, will also give us the strength to stand against them.

The Lord's Day, whose approach the prophet Joel discerns in the calamity that befell Israel, was from deep antiquity a central theme of prophetic preaching. Joel's words, like the words of the prophets before him, about the Lord's Day speak at the same time of two essentially important things: terror and hope. Both experiences are equally connected for the prophets with the coming arrival of God into the world, and both are inseparable from each other.

"Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble!" Joel exclaims, and he says that that day is a day of darkness and gloom, terrible for every living thing. The contact of God with this world in the prophet's eyes is like a consuming fire from which no one has escape. Joel sees a kind of global catastrophe in which the earth is shaken, the heavenly lights grow dark, and the whole visible world familiar to us collapses. "Who can endure this day?" the prophet exclaims in trembling.

This terror is a very exact and important experience, rooted in the prophet's deep awareness of the sinfulness of the world, its failure to correspond to the designs of the Almighty. The prophet Isaiah expresses it very vividly when describing the vision of God granted him in the Temple: "Woe is me! I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people also of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isa. 6:5). Only a creature unharmed and free from opposition to God can stand before His face, for everything lifeless disappears, unable to meet the manifestation of Divine Life. The prophets find the awareness of human unworthiness and terror before God's inevitable coming inseparably connected with each other.

Of course, one can consider the prophet's words exaggerated, referring to the Last Day of the world's existence, when "a new heaven and a new earth" will be created (Rev. 21:1). One can think that in describing terrible destruction the prophet pays tribute to human emotionality. Most likely, however, this is not so. When we think of God's coming, we have first of all Christmas in mind, and the angels glorifying God and announcing peace to people of good will. And therefore Joel's despair seems strange to us. But the prophet forefeels something quite different. The whole intensity of Joel's prophecy proves absolutely adequate at the moment of the Sacrifice on the Cross, when the Lord Himself dies for us. Joel's word about the darkening of the heavenly lights and the earthquake was fulfilled exactly on the Day of the Cross, and only because of spiritual dullness are we unable to share his feelings. For the world there is nothing more terrible than this sacrifice, when "He who hung the earth upon the waters hangs upon the Tree," and this is precisely what the prophet is trying to convey to us. All creation, nature and people, lose meaning and become ghosts when people do not accept God and kill Him. This is the catastrophe foreseen by Joel.

But, as to the other prophets, the Lord reveals to Joel that in this inevitable and just destruction of the world there is an unexpected and incomprehensible hope for people. "Turn to Me with all your heart... turn to God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relents over disaster." Despite all the prophet's pessimism about the fate of the world and all the limitation of his human ideas, this word breaks through, because with his heart the prophet sees the Invisible One. This mysterious pity of the Creator is opened to him, the pity proclaimed by the prophet Hosea: "My heart is turned within Me; all My compassion is kindled!" This pity of God is our only trust, the only thing that gives us a chance to survive our meeting with God. But for this, with all one's heart, with the whole depth of one's person, one must turn to God.

It is important that Joel, for whom the Temple, ritual, and the most detailed fulfillment of the Law mean so much, says that outward veneration is not conversion with the whole heart. "Rend your hearts and not your garments!" he says on the Lord's behalf. How sorrowful these words sound, whose meaning is that God needs us ourselves, not what we do or what we possess. And yet they alone point out to us the way to be saved from the coming fire. This word of the prophet anticipates Christ's call: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."

Joel himself is still afraid to believe the mystery of hope opened to him and clearly understands how undeserved it is. "Who knows," he says, "whether He will relent?" These words very precisely convey what tension is required by trust in God's goodness, how following Him is truly like walking on water. And the prophet ends this part of the book with a call to do everything in our power: to appoint a fast, gather the people, infants and priests, bridegrooms and brides, and to weep in hope, so as sincerely to make the saving effort of trust.

The original meaning of fasting is mourning, whether personal mourning, connected for example with the death of someone close, or public mourning, for example on the occasion of some national disaster. It is no wonder that on a day of national mourning, in the streets of Jerusalem one could see people publicly expressing their grief; in the East such a practice is still quite widespread today. And one of the gestures that express grief is torn outer clothing. Meanwhile God says: tear not your garments, but your hearts. External signs are not needed; turning back and repentance are more important. Why is that? Is grief, sincerely expressed even if publicly, as was customary among the Jews of those times, not a sign of repentance? Apparently, not always. Grief certainly makes one think, and sometimes even reevaluate something in one's personal or public life. But not always: it can also produce hopeless sorrow, hatred of life, and a desire to take revenge on the one considered responsible for what happened. And outward, especially public, expressions of grief only inflame these feelings, often hindering the spiritual processes that could really help. What can help, clearly, is a sober assessment of what has happened, repentance for sins committed, and turning to God with a request for help. And the prophet offers the people just such a path: the path not of emotional outbursts, but of serious spiritual work that will help them make the right decisions and find a way out of a situation that may seem completely hopeless.

All kinds of troubles constantly happen in our lives. We somehow manage most of them, but sometimes something happens that we cannot handle. Then we say, "trouble, disaster." And because neither we nor anyone else can do anything to help, we fall into despair. There are different ways to express this despair. In ancient Israel, as a sign of extreme grief, people tore their clothes. That is what the prophet Joel is talking about: "Do not tear your clothes, because there are no hopeless situations if the Lord is there." Once we realize that we are at a dead end, we must urgently turn to the One who is good and merciful, and He, in His omniscience and almighty power, will provide a way out.

But there is one more thought here. Why did we end up in trouble? Because we closed ourselves off from God and hardened in our self-will, so that our hearts became covered with a crust. And the prophet says, "Tear your hearts," that is, break the stoniness of your hearts, open yourselves to others, come out of the prison of your "I" into living relationships with God and people, and disasters will stop happening to you. Troubles and sufferings will remain, but they will no longer be disasters.

Great Lent begins today. The texts we read speak about what is most important at this time, yet how far all this is from our ideas of fasting. What the prophet Joel calls "tearing the heart" always means sadness and tears for us. But the Lord gives us His answer, paradoxical at first glance, that completely overturns the picture. Purification is joy; returning to Him can and should be a feast for us; fasting is a time of reunion between the Creator and creation. A "fasting face" is a human invention for justifying one's laziness and consoling one's vanity. But the Lord calls us to tear the crust of sin from the heart so that all the filth may come out. And then our faces will shine with the joy of Great Lent.

Prophets are often regarded as predictors of the future, sometimes joyful, but more often sorrowful and terrifying. But is that really so? Can the future be predicted at all? The answer would seem simple: God has His own plan, which He will certainly carry out, for He is God and we are human. Therefore the future can be predicted if God reveals it to a prophet, because God must already have planned everything.

Yet here is something interesting: the language of the Bible has no words that could be translated as “doom,” “fate,” or “destiny.” God does, of course, have a design for every person and every nation, but there is also freedom of choice, whether we are speaking of an individual or a people. A prophet may speak of an imminent and inevitable disaster, but it is almost never the case that he speaks of that disaster as something unavoidable.

This lack of predetermination in future events can sometimes even look like a prophet’s mistake. Take Isaiah of Jerusalem, for example, predicting the imminent destruction of his country at the hands of the Assyrians. Was that an error? Judah held out then, after all. Yet Isaiah himself, already during the siege, also predicted that the Assyrians would leave the walls of Jerusalem empty-handed. That is exactly what happened in the end.

Does this mean that God’s plans can change? Apparently they can. And this depends not on God but on people, on their choice and resolve. God does not need people to die because of their sins; He does not want this and never has. If people perish because of their sins, it is only because sin very truly separates a person from God, preventing Him from intervening.

God is, of course, stronger than any human being, but He respects human freedom too much to enter the life of one who neither wants nor awaits Him. A catastrophe, personal or national, then results from God’s inability to intervene. But if people do call upon Him, He is ready to intervene at any moment, even when it may seem too late. He desires no one’s death and is ready to use every opportunity to save as many people as possible, regardless of the fact that many of them, before turning to Him, did everything they could to make their salvation as difficult as possible.

Father Alexander Schmemann writes in his "Journals" (October 12, 1976, p. 297): "The beginning of 'false religion' is the inability to rejoice, or rather, the refusal of joy. Yet joy is so absolutely important because it is the unmistakable fruit of the sense of God's presence. One cannot know that God is and not rejoice. And only in relation to joy are the fear of God, repentance, and humility correct, genuine, and fruitful. Outside this joy they easily become 'demonic,' a distortion in the very depth of religious experience. A religion of fear. A religion of pseudo-humility. A religion of guilt: all these are temptations, all these are spiritual delusion. [...] Fear of sin does not save from sin. Joy in the Lord saves."

But this is exactly what the prophet Joel calls us to remember today. Yes, he speaks of "fasting, weeping, and mourning." But for what purpose? Why does such a great man as Theophan the Recluse, in his word for today, not want to see the words that follow these tragic ones? What makes him break off his reflections on such a hopeless note: "The priests do not stop crying out: 'Spare us, Lord!' But from the Lord there surely comes the stern answer: 'I will not spare, for there are none seeking mercy.' Everyone stands with his back to the Lord; they have turned away from Him and forgotten Him."

All this is true, but not the whole truth, not the whole truth. Yes, the world has become corrupt; we see this with our own eyes. But if we allow ourselves to stop at such heartrending notes, then our whole faith will become neurasthenia. And for most believers it already is neurasthenia, and 90% of them should be referred to psychiatrists - sadly.

But one need only hear at least what the prophet says today: "And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk", and immediately remember what the Apostle answers: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb 11:1). For people may tell us that the prophet is only promising us that this will happen someday, and that the fulfillment of the promise is being delayed. But precisely the assurance of things hoped for is our faith. This we must without fail remember, and somehow see and do in our own life.

Orthodox worship, including the cycle of readings from Holy Scripture, takes on a Lenten character starting today. Today, as on a true fasting day, the liturgy is not celebrated, and at the sixth hour and at vespers we read the words of the prophet Joel. Two passages from the prophet's book are most closely connected with the beginning of the Fast, and the creators of the Church Typikon wanted us, before the Fast, to listen with them to these words of God.

The first reading begins with words about the meaning of fasting. They come after the prophecy about the day of the Lord, about the coming of God into the world being like fire that destroys every sin and every falsehood. The prophet sees and describes scenes of countless disasters coming upon the universe, "for the day of the Lord is coming." And the Lord's words become the answer to this vision of the prophet: "Yet even now, says the Lord, turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God; for He is good and merciful, patient and abundant in mercy, and He relents over disaster." God says that His will is for our repentance and salvation.

But, as in ancient times (and the book of the prophet Joel was written at the turn of the 5th-4th centuries B.C.), the words remain timely for us: "Tear your hearts and not your garments." All the efforts we make during the Fast are directed toward weeping with the heart, even for a minute, and in this sorrow finding Christ. The prophet speaks of this at the end of the passage: "And you, children of Zion, rejoice and be glad in the Lord your God." The Lord Jesus Christ will repeat this thought in the Sermon on the Mount, saying, "But you, when you fast, wash your face..."

The second reading, which includes the end of the book of the prophet Joel, calls us to regard the coming time as the last time. The day has come when repentance and turning back can no longer be postponed. The Lord comes to His people, and those who desire to find life will go out to meet Him.