NOTES for Joe 2:12-26

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.

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.

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.

A girl of about seven went to Sunday school. She listened to stories about how Jesus was rejected, how He was not recognized and was killed. She cried and did not sleep for several days, and then she decided to ask a question of the teacher who led the classes. "Tell me," the girl asked, "what will we do when He comes a second time and we do not recognize Him again? What if we miss Him again?" "Oh no," the teacher answered, "the second time it will be impossible not to notice. He will come in glory."

The girl was so glad. When she grew up, she said that the longer she lived, the more she met people who do not see when the mountains drip with wine, the hills flow with milk, and deserts turn into streams of water. It would not even have surprised her if there had been people who failed to notice that the sun and moon had grown dark and that there were no more stars. Then she understood for herself that these signs alone are not enough for a person; for the sake of preserving one's delusions and refusing to acknowledge one's mistakes, a person can reject any facts. From then on, evangelization became her main work. "The harvest is so great," she says now.

The Lord’s judgment will end with the establishment of justice, but at first it is difficult to understand: for whom will He establish justice—only for the sons of Judah and Israel? Why will other nations come to the valley of judgment—is it only to be condemned?

Yet we already know the prophetic words about the sons and daughters of different nations who will come to the God of Israel. Those who persist in their sins will reap their fruits, as the Jewish sinners denounced by the prophets have reaped them more than once. But those who repent and abandon their former way of life will become an integral part of God’s people and will therefore no longer be foreigners unworthy to pass through Jerusalem, which has once again become an undefiled sanctuary.

So what is really God's judgment? Is it a punishment coming from heavens, against which God has to protect His people, or it is all the same a judgment in our usual understanding, when the affair of each is examined by an infinitely wise and infinitely merciful Judge, for Whom nothing can be hidden? It would probably have been easier to say that these two points of view on Judgment replace each other historically, that the image of God chastising the sinners without distinction is changed to the image of a wise and merciful Judge. Is all this true? We are not going to say that the God, clattering with thunders and flashes of lightning on the sinful humanity, is not also really foreign to the religions that grew on the Christian ground.

It is about another thing: the image of the Judgment is sometimes doubles even in the Bible, and hardly it will be necessary to put this double vision only on history. And maybe, all the problem is, what is considered as judgment? For us today the judgment supposes an evaluation of man or his acts, given by the judge, who because of diverse reasons is entitled to it. And we look at God's judgment very often almost in the same way, adjusted by the omniscience and the mercy of the One who judges. And for the prophets, for example, the judgment already became the meeting with God face to face, and man was already condemned here because of his own sin, and not of God.

In fact, what can feel a man who met God, but rejected His love, mercy, guidance? What remains to him to do? Obviously, only one thing: the power of God. Because love, mercy, and guidance are voluntarily accepted, in them God's will manifests itself according to the human nature, by condescending to its weaknesses and its limits. If there is no voluntary acceptance, there is only the power: because God will not disappear from the world only because His presence in this world does not please someone, and that is why this someone will see not the face of God, turned to man, but the power of God, which is not intended for man. With all the ensuing consequences here.

Sometimes in prophetic preaching it is not easy to draw a boundary between preaching proper and prophetic vision. In many ways this is explained by the fact that in such visions the reality of our world often stands beside the reality of the spiritual world. There is nothing surprising here: God created the world so that there would be no sharp boundary between the spiritual and the natural, despite all their difference. Such a boundary is the consequence of serious damage to the universe, whose cause, among other things, was also the fall. But in their visions the prophets often see the world as God conceived it originally and as, apparently, it will become again after complete transfiguration. This is how Joel sees Judea. On the one hand, before us is the same familiar land, with its mountains down which streams of meltwater run in spring, its olive groves, vineyards, and flocks grazing in the valleys. On the other hand, there is the river of living water flowing from beneath the foundation of the Jerusalem Temple: already in the pre-exilic period it became a symbol of the messianic Kingdom and of the new life that everyone who shares in this Kingdom will receive. So what is this: still earth or already heaven? Perhaps both. And on the other hand, not quite one and not quite the other. Both heaven and earth are already not quite as they were before. Perhaps this is the very new heaven and new earth of which Revelation tells us. The Kingdom, slightly opened to the prophet, about which he bears witness to us. The very Kingdom whose entrance is opened to us by the Messiah sent by God for our salvation.

We are not surprised that the Lord continues to care for people after the trials they have endured; the Bible constantly reminds us of His mercy. We also know that images of an abundance of earthly fruits often symbolize not only material well-being but also the Lord's spiritual gifts to His faithful. There is therefore nothing unexpected in a prophecy about the outpouring of the Spirit following the promise of plenty.

Let us note that everyone will be equal before the Spirit sent by God. The Spirit will give gifts to all who are capable of receiving Him, regardless of age or social position. Moreover, salvation is proclaimed to everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, that is, who turns to Him—not only to those born among a particular people or brought close to the Temple's hierarchical structure. Salvation proves so accessible! And yet it is so often rejected...

Why is the invasion of ruthless, unstoppable conquerors called the day of the Lord? Is not the Lord good? Why does the prophecy use such a strange comparison?

This is difficult to understand, although we are not surprised when evil brings retribution: while hoping to escape it and asking forgiveness, we still understand that we deserve punishment. But let us remember that, besides the danger of openly becoming an agent of evil, there is also the danger of growing accustomed to what is good, until, like the air, it ceases to be noticed or valued; then we may drift away both from the good and from its Giver without noticing it at all.

And if we adopt a detached view of God, if we imagine Him far from us, “somewhere up in heaven,” He may give us the opportunity to sense that the world is in His hands and that even amid every horror He is near and will not abandon us to the power of absurdity.