Sermon for Ash Wednesday: 2/13/13

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

"Return to the Lord your God."

You know the expression "You can't see the forest for the trees".

Well, this text struck me like that this week.  The prophet Joel declares "Return to the Lord your God."  I read a daily devotional entry on this text early this week, and the author made a seemingly self-evident observation, but one that had never occurred to me.  The author wrote that the word "return" implies going someplace one has been before.  

There is an imminent threat to Jerusalem, and Joel declares to the people that the Lord desires that they return to where they had once been, to the covenant relationship the Lord had established.  

We all know the story of the Wizard of Oz.  When you think about it, one of the reasons this movie is such a classic is the timeless nature of the theme of returning home.  Dorothy is lost in a frightening and unfamiliar place, and wants nothing more than to return home.   The friends she makes along her journey provide a source of joy and encouragement, but nothing can replace the peace and comfort of returning home with her family.  

But, there is another bit of timeless wisdom in this story, possibly even more important than the longing for home that we all can identify with.  It is the way in which Dorothy got herself lost in the first place.  She ran away.  Not long after she did, she found herself more vulnerable than she realized.  

We are vulnerable away from God, trying to make life go well for us on our own.  The prophet Joel tried to get this point across to Jerusalem before the twister of catastrophe came and they wound up in Babylon again, or Oz. 

We have this chance today to hear the prophet Joel make the same announcement for us.  Return to the Lord your God.

Now, if we understand that returning to God is to return to the covenant relationship with God, and if we understand that covenant to have begun at creation, we might expand our vision of all people in the world being called to "return" to a place they have been before—to the Lord their God...the source of life.  For, who can best navigate the course of life, than the author and giver of it?

The prophet Joel calls us to look at all the ways in which we, like Dorothy, run away from God's covenantal relationship...our home...the place from where we all come....only to find ourselves lost in Oz.  

But, Joel also calls us to recognize that we are children, like Dorothy.  We are God's children.
Is there any place parents wont go to bring their lost children home...any depth to which she wont go...and pain which he wont endure?  No.  Same is true of our God!

One day, we will close our eyes in death.   Ash Wednesday makes this point very clear with the message on our foreheads, "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return."   But, even though we all have indeed come from dust...returning to dust is not God's plan or our hope.  Into the dust of creation God goes with his son, Jesus to bring us home.  He goes into death to bring us out, give us life and guide us home...to our eternal home.     

This is why the ashen symbol of our mortality is in the form of a cross.

It is the cross of Jesus that saves us.

It is Christ who brings us back home.

Just as we will all, one day, close our eyes in death.  One day we will also, like Dorothy, wake up and find that we are indeed back home...with al those who have died ahead of us, and with Jesus to welcome us when we open our eyes.

And then we'll say in one way or another

There's no place like home.

Amen!

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