This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Joel 1:1-13; Revelation 18:15-24; Luke 14:12-24
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
Joel 1:1-13. To a farmer there can hardly be anything more horrific than invasion by an army of locusts. There’s no defense. There’s a singular result: total wreckage, and the loss of a season’s worth of labor. The prophet Joel surveys the wake of just such an attack. He may very well have witnessed ransacking by actual locusts at some point in his lifetime. But the locusts serve as a metaphor, or a symbol, of the way invading armies have plundered and pillaged his homeland: “For a nation has invaded my land, powerful and innumerable” (Joel 1:6).
There’s no way to date Joel’s writings exactly. We’re not told under what king he served. What’s so powerful about Joel’s graphic vision of a land blighted by locusts is that it could have applied after either of the invasions—Israel in the north by the Assyrians, or Judah in the south by the Babylonians. In each case, everything has been leveled. Everything that has made the Promised Land the Promised Land has been taken.
And so, the prophet calls, in the first place, simply for lament. Everybody—from drunkard to virgin, from priest to vinedresser— needs to grieve. People can’t even worship aright: “Grain offering and drink offering are withheld (there being no crops left!) from the house of God.” All they can do in the moment is grieve.
Eventually, Joel will call for repentance, and then he will make promises of an extraordinary future. But first, he says: “Put on sackcloth and lament…” (Joel 1:13).
We live in not dissimilar days. A locust-like coronavirus has devastated the earth, emptying city streets and filling hospital emergency rooms. At the same time, a locust-like plague of discontentment and grievance has beset the hearts of citizens of the U.S., whether on the left or the right. And I believe the first thing to do is simply to let the sadness settle in.
Revelation 18:15-24. Eventually, all will be set to rights: that’s what the Book of Revelation wants us to know. And setting to rights will entail the bringing down of every destructive and defiling impulse that has ever been let loose against the human race. “Babylon” will fall. Ultimately, even nature itself will be brought back into equilibrium, with chapter 21’s “new heaven and new earth.” No more coronavirus, no more sickness of any sort. No more dying, no more hurricanes or earthquakes or devastating fires. But the hinge of it all, the fulcrum, will be the elimination from among humans of every corrupting influence. “Babylon” will fall. As Paul puts it: all of creation will be set free from its corruption with the redemption of the human race (Romans 8:19-21).
And once “the great whore” Babylon has fallen, the stage will be set for Revelation 19’s wedding feast of the Bride (tomorrow’s reading).
Luke 14:12-24. “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God” — Luke 14:15. An invitation to that banquet is to be prized above any invitation you might receive, ever. And yet, inconceivably, it is an invitation that too many of us are inclined to put in the trash can: “But they all alike began to make excuses.” There’s land to survey, there are oxen to yoke, there’s a new marriage to begin. (I just bought a car. I just got a new job. We’re heading out on our honeymoon...)
It’s possible to have your field of vision so filled with this life’s possibilities that you miss life’s number one possibility: a place at the Table of the Feast of God. Jesus is not saying don’t take the job, or don’t commit to the marriage. But he is saying that it’s wise to hold all these things with a loose grip, because a great day is coming. “The poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” … people from “the roads and lanes” will fill God’s house—and there will be a place there for you and for me, if only we have prepared ourselves to say “Yes!” when the invitation comes.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+