Prepare for God's Forgiveness

AR reading today are from The Book of Joel chapter 2.

Yet even now says the Lord return to me with all your hearts with fasting with weeping and with sorrow. Tear your hearts and not your clothing return to the Lord your God for he is merciful and compassionate very patient full of faithful love and ready to forgive.

After that, I will pour out my spirit upon everyone your sons and your daughters will prophesy your old men will dream dreams. And your young men will see visions. In those days, I will also pour out my spirit on the male and the female slaves. Tyrion's the reading.

November 30th was an anniversary for me. It was the third anniversary of my arrival in Japan.

I came. Almost on a whim not quite a well-made planned to move overseas and I had to spend some time looking for a job, but it seemed like a world wind. My suddenly found myself in Japan the day before I left a full my car got everything ready for my family to be without me for six months while we prepared our animals to be ready to travel to Japan.

I arrived in a country. I had never been to who language I've hardly spoke and very badly at that with cultural differences were very large from what I had grown up with and I had an idea of what it would be like Based on books and movies and TV shows and things that I had seen in her and my time taking Japanese language lessons.

But I had no idea what it would really be like. And I came I never I drive the first day and I made my way from the airport through the public transit system of Tokyo to an apartment that I had arranged online never seen an apartment design for folks who are staying a little while fully furnished what they call a 1R apartment in Japan meaning it's a single room at the LA kitchenette smaller than most desks with a single burner and a little stinking little mini fridge and have a shower and a toilet. and a clothes washer and a bed and a desk and a TV and the whole thing is about 10 square meters, which is about 100 square feet. If you can imagine it really it was about a 10 by 10, but it was said it was longer than with wide. And I had no possessions except what I brought with me in my suitcase. I didn't pack any boxes or anyting I left everything in the US. Planning to come back in six months and ship everything over. All I had was a few changes of clothes my computer some books. And a nativity a little folding nativity scene that I've gotten just before I left.

If I set it up in the corner of my very lonely little apartment. And I found an English-speaking Church in town st. Alban's Anglican Episcopal Church The Only English-speaking branch of the Japanese national Episcopal Church. In Tokyo, and I went for services and I arrived course on the first Sunday of Advent. and so I attended Advent of Christmas services are and I loved the candles and the instance in the hymns and the icons. It was a very high church and will Catholic Episcopal church if you will. And I was really great and I really want to meet people and talk to people and being the only English speaking Anglican Church in Tokyo, but really I think all of Japan that's part of this particular denomination. They had a very large membership. They had people from all over the place. Anyone who spoke English and was a member of the American Church from anywhere in the world. So we have people from India. We have people in South Africa from the UK from Australia from New Zealand. We had people from I believe I may be Indonesia or bar places in the Pacific. We have people from the US and from Canada.

Weed over Africa image in South Africa already, but other places in Africa as well.

And that was this very diverse community of people who had come from all over from all different parts of the world and it come together into this into this worshiping community and it changed often if people came because people didn't stay in Japan for a long they would come even maybe just for a vacation and they would come to church and then we'll leave again and yet there were some people there who have been there for 20 + 30 + 40 years as well. And of course there were some I need a Japanese folks there as well who preferred to attend Worship in English rather than the Japanese church next door. That was a it was the sister car gation. So I attended Services there and it was great and I got to know the minister there and it was great and I have to look at a community and I spent the next six months preparing for the arrival of my family. And living alone in my tiny apartment. I really began to Grapple with questions about my identity in my culture in my belief that I had not really given myself time to Grapple with in the busyness of my life in the US, but now I had nowhere to go had nowhere to be at got up in the morning and went to work. Got food on the way home watching TV went to bed. There is nothing else for me really? So I had time to prepare and to think and after my family arrived I eventually stopped attending the church because it took so long to get there every Sunday was about an hour each way every Sunday. I would go for big events for Easter and Christmas and things but not for every day worship every week Works worship.

I feel like this must have been something like what did you do and experience when they returned to Judea from Exile in Babylon? They had been. Taken to Babylon forcefully forcefully removed to Babylon and then the Babylonians had been conquered by the Persians. and so now that the Persians had Loudon to come back, but they have been living for more than a generation and Exile in many different places. And they spoke different languages now and they had different cultures. And yet they were all coming back together to to rebuild this this place that their ancestors had come from. It must have been difficult for them and it was a small place. They didn't have the things they needed. They had to rebuild the Temple. They had to rebuild the wall. They had to go out in and till the fields that had been left to just go back to Nature. Everything had to be created again then again.

Antonis the setting that we find the prophet Joel

Julius one of which were called the the Minor Prophets or the 12 prophets the short prophetic books by the come near the end of the Old Testament.

Joel likely lived after the return of the g d em from Exile in Babylon. There's it's hard to tell from the actual tax the Texas very short and it doesn't specifically mention any event that we allowed to get a really specific date for it. But based on some of the evidence in the text about people being sent into Exile are sold into slavery in bringing people back from all over into other things current scholarship generally generally agree that this was Texas written after the return from Exile while it was being ruled by the Persian Empire. And during the time of this book there was a plague of locusts that descended on Judah. This plague is also a tested into other of the above. The prophets books. I'm 202 different prophets books.

Dojo if using the plague of locusts has an opportunity to tell the people that they should repent and return to worshipping God to the plague can be lifted and removed from the people. He also privatizes after that about the coming day of the Lord when God will judge the people.

And so we have a mix of kind of standard prophetic works that we see in the in the Old Testament talking about return return to God. We return to God with the kind of apocalyptic text about the end of the world in the coming the coming of the Messiah and all this kind of stuff. I get to the general flow of a textual narrative is a narrative we've seen so many times before the people have once again begun to turn away from God. They come back into this place. They've been another in living other places. Maybe they've picked up over the religions of the places where they were. And so Joel at least feels like this is part of the reason why the Locust have, because the people have turned away from God.

and so he tells him turn back turn back and you tell them something that I think is very important. He tells them that even though they've done this no matter what they've done. God is always willing to forgive those who repent who turn back towards God the word repent infectious means to turn to turn around to turn back. In this case, I turn back towards God. Literally do 180 degree turn. And then the reading Joel says I kind of importantly.

Tear your hearts and not your clothing.

There was a common practice at the time for repentance or for sorrow or grief to tear one's clothing. And to put ashes on one's head and to wear rags and tatters. as a sign of how how despondent you were about either about repenting or about your grief or whatever it was but Jewels point is it The people need to not just do this physically the physical act but they need to actually change their hearts. They need to change their thinking and their their their habits and really change how they're living their lives to turn back to God.

So he says no return with all your heart with fasting and with weeping and with sorrow, but are your hearts and not your clothing?

Later on. He he talks in the next section about what it will be like when God comes in and save the people from their current oppressors. And after we get that to reading after that, I will pour out my spirit upon everyone your sons and your daughters will prophesy your old men will dream dreams. And your young men will see visions and those days I will also brought my spirit on the male and the female slave here is a clear Universalist message in this will text him a text.

Everyone the holy spirit will come upon everyone.

When he brings up the male and the female slave the point of this is to show that it doesn't matter about your class or your station in life. Doesn't matter about your gender. It doesn't match your age. It doesn't matter where you're from because you people were from all over and they weren't that they were they were all judeans, but they had come from all over they have family from all over they they've been living in in different cultures just wasn't really A single United Family tribe as it might have been before the exile. I told George Lee saying everyone is welcome. Everyone will be part of this if if we turn back to God then God will forgive us. And then God spirit will come upon us.

Joel is looking forward to the coming of the Messiah. He is preparing the way. For the coming of the Messiah. And as we look forward to Christmas and the celebration of the birth of Jesus. We should take time to look at our own lives and be honest with ourselves and with God about where we have turned away from God this year. Let's ask for forgiveness. And repent literally let's turn back towards God in preparation for the coming of God for the coming of the Messiah and for the Forgiveness that he brings for us and for all of humanity.

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