Fear Not: Crisis Response

from my message on Ash Wednesday, from Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

A siren.  A siren is what was used in the town I grew up in, Littlefield, Texas.  When a storm threatened, a tornado was imminent, a siren on top of the water tower would sound.  Even though we were a mile west of the city limits, we could still hear its wail.  We would go down into the tornado shelter to escape the danger. 

What is it for you?  What is the alarm, the warning, the call to change, to seek shelter for you?

In Joel's time, it was a swarm of locusts.  The crops were looking good.  It was almost harvest time.   Then the locusts came like an invading army, cutting down everything in their path.  Joel says to blow the trumpet, to sound the alarm, to call the people to repentence.  It was not the shofar, the ram's horn that was blown.  It was  a silver trumpet that the priests blew as sign to gather for worship, as a sign that God has come near, that the Day of the Lord was at hand, that the people were under judgment.

What is it for you?  Maybe it is not a swarm of locusts.  Maybe it is a butterfly.  I have almost finished Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, Flight Behavior.  The protaganist, Dellarobia, is going to begin a tryst, when she is stopped by what looks like fire on the trees.  Due to her vanity, she has left her glasses off.  It is not a fire, but a horde of monarch butterflies.  They are not supposed to be here in the southern Appalachian mountains.  They are supposed to winter in Old Mexico where they have been for millenia.  But their ancestral grounds have had many trees cut down. Ph. D.'s come in to explain about global warming and that the butterflies are confused.  It is a work of fiction, but the melting of the polar ice caps, the smog in Beijing, and the ongoing drought here in Texas are not fiction.  Is this an alarm, a call to change?

What is it for you?  Is it a DUI?  You may have started to medicate your feelings.  You need alcohol to get through the day, to go to sleep at night.  Is that your alarm?

It may be a report after your annual physical.  Your doctor says you are overweight.  You have high blood pressure, or high cholesterol.  Is that your alarm?

It may be bankruptcy.  It is not just a function of the slow economic recovery, but of your overspending. Is that it for you?

It may be divorce papers where you have neglected this precious relationship of marriage.  Is that it?

How are we to respond to the alarm?  Joel says we can turn, can return to the LORD.  When we don't know where to turn, we return to the LORD.  We can return because of who God is:  gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, relents from punishing.  The word gracious has the underlying meaning of beauty.  The word steadfast love has the meaning of unbreakable love.  The word for mercy has as its root the word for womb.  God desires to take us into God's very self, to welcome us home. 

We are good at avoiding the alarms, at denying the sirens, the warnings.  The problems seem so big, so overwhelming.  What can we possibly do?   Drive less, carpool more.  Recycle grey water from the shower.  Little things matter.  Get help for addictions.  Fast, exercise as a spiritual discipline with God's help, not just as diet plan.  Learn generosity, gratitude instead of consuming and acquiring.  Honor those close to you with God's love sustaining you.

No one is exempt from the alarm.  Nursing infants and old people are called to deal with the alarm.  Even brides and grooms (like Diane and Jonathan who are getting married on Saturday) are called to leave their chambers and take care of the call to repent.  Even preachers, dad gum it.  No one is exempt from confronting the need to repent and change. 

What is the alarm for you?  How will you respond?  The good news is that God's fierce love will welcome us home, strengthen us to go this Lenten journey, and change. We can trust the results to God.  All we are asked to do is to respond.