What is special about today? For Christians, it is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. For the rest of society, the focus has largely been on…Valentine’s Day. I’m really excited about Valentine’s Day this year because I have a date! Obviously I needed to share this news with my family first before I made a public announcement about it, but—I do! I’m so excited I have a date for Valentine’s Day this year…February 14!
Valentine’s Day—the day when you can find this and millions of other corny jokes about love on Google, red roses, chocolates, heart shaped gifts, and images of cupid are everywhere. There are different theories about the origins of Valentine’s Day. Most connect it with a Catholic saint, Valentine, but those who observe the day all agree on its focus: love.
How would you describe love? An article titled Love, actually sought to answer that question, by exploring the biology and chemistry behind love—the chemical reactions, signals and impulses that are produced in the brain. The author of the article wrote: “These chemicals make us giddy, energetic, and euphoric, even leading to decreased appetite and insomnia – which means you actually can be so “in love” that you can’t eat and can’t sleep.”
Isn’t that how so many define love: being in love—an experience, an emotion; falling head over heels in love. The author continued: “I’m not sure I could define “love” for you if I kept you here for another ten thousand pages…In the end, everyone is capable of defining love for themselves.”
If that’s so, how would you define love? That’s actually an important question for us to reflect on because we talk about love in the church all the time—’loving one another’, ‘Christian love’, ‘God’s love’. But what is love?
If humans live by what we think love is we would still not have a reliable guide to help us love, because our definitions of what love is could all be completely different, and could change from one day to the next.
The Bible tells us that love doesn’t begin with us, but with God. Love is bound up so inseparably and completely with God’s very nature and being: God is love (1 John 4:8). So it follows that we would need God to tell us what love is and guide us in his love to love one another—and he does. In the great chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13 (4-7) God defines love—not as a feeling, but by showing what love does: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Tonight’s theme focuses on the first few words—let’s read them together: Love is patient, love is kind. I don’t know about you, but I’m not at all good at being patient. I want God to do things for me now. I want others to do what I want now. I’m very good at being impatient: “I am too tired for this”; “I’ve spent too much time with you on this before”; “I don’t want to talk about it anymore”; “It doesn’t interest me”; “I have other things to do”.
Notice the “I’ in all those sentences? These are all about the “I” not about the other person. If life just involved me, I’d be really good at being patient! But life involves others, and life is according to God’s ordering and timing; his will, not mine, not ours. That is why the word ‘kind’ is seated next to patience in this verse. ‘Kind’ is from the word ‘kin’. We are to be kind to our kin; to all people made in God’s image. To be kind to our kin means to be patient with them, in everything, to do to others what you would have them do to you (Matthew 7:12).
Have you ever found Impatience is easy, patience is hard? That’s because patience is not natural—it is not something we can conjure up within ourselves. If patience is a part of love and God is love, then patience is super-natural. It is something that must first come from outside of ourselves and be worked in us…by God. We should note that for God’s people, patience and faith go together. To be patient is to wait on the Lord. God has chosen his people as his own and gathers them to himself to have faith in what he says, and to trust his promises. Faith and trust mean hoping for things promised for a future time—in God’s time.
In our reading from Joel, we hear of a people who had struggled with impatience all through their history. God’s people were impatient as he led them through the wilderness, grumbling against him. They were impatient waiting for Moses to come down the mountain, breaking the commandments before they were even given, fashioning for themselves an image of God as a golden calf. They were impatient as they waited on God in their land: the life of the nations around them and their religions systems looked much more promising—much more attractive, much more effective. God had pleaded with them over and over, but they turned away from him and his prophets despite his longing pleas again and again.
If someone in the church or community had taken us for granted so many times, over and over again, repeatedly refused to listen to us, upset us, hurt us, failed us, turned their back on us, most of us would probably extend a second chance, or say “Three strikes and you’re out.” So often we treat those in the church as enemies, rather than our brothers and sisters. We find it hard to be patient with one another. We might even hope to see some kind of consequence befall them.
In our reading God is about to bring about a consequence for his people’s consistent impatience. Joel warns them: “Blow the trumpet in Zion”—think of the CFS warning siren. Danger is coming. This danger is graphically portrayed at the beginning of chapter two—disaster is on the way—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Their appearance is like the appearance of horses,
and like war horses they run.
As with the rumbling of chariots,
they leap on the tops of the mountains,
like the crackling of a flame of fire devouring the stubble,
like a powerful army drawn up for battle” (verses 4-5).
It is an invading swarm of locusts, personified as God’s army coming to bring judgment on Israel. The swarm is so great that they will block out sunlight and cast a dark shadow over the land as they wipe out the vegetation in a flash. Destruction of the crops not only means the people will have no food, but they will have no grain for making grain offerings to God. Had God brought an end to the sacrificial system by which he restored his people to himself?
The people’s only hope is God’s mercy and forgiveness. They are urged to gather in worship and pray for this. The situation is so urgent even those breastfeeding and honeymooners are on notice. “Who knows, he may relent” are the words from Joel which hint that God might yet be patient again, showing grace to his people. Will they listen to God’s word this time: to gather in haste and repent, rending not just their garments in a mechanical religious ritual, but their hearts? For as King David prayed: “A broken and contrite heart, O Lord, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17).
God’s judgment was not unrestrained fury. It wasn’t because he was done with his people. It was because he wasn’t done with his people! God was bringing them to see what they were doing and had done to themselves. Using ‘tough love’ he gave them a wakeup call to bring them back to him, so they could know him as the Giver of everything they had separated themselves from.
The same call to God’s people of old through the prophet Joel to blow the trumpet and gather the assembly comes to us tonight. “Return to the Lord your God.” We have come tonight to meet with God and seek his mercy, for the times we haven’t been patient with God, trying to engineer life on our terms and timeframe, walking away from God and his word rather than walking with him. For the times we haven’t we been patient with others, seeing them only as a hindrance and frustration to our priorities. For the times we have treated our brothers and sisters as enemies rather than children of God. For the times members of our families have experienced traits of our impatience.
What is the basis for our returning to the Lord? His steadfast love! “God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger [patient!], and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster” (Joel 2:13). Could you imagine someone dedicating themselves to you, to walk with you, help you, love you, no matter how many times you upset them, or failed to meet expectations, or couldn’t do the things they asked of you—someone whose patience with you never failed? Could you imagine a love like that? That is God’s love for you. He loves you not with just warm and fuzzy feelings, not a self-seeking love, but a self-giving love, sending Jesus to humble himself even to the point of death on a Cross, to bring life to the world. That is where we see God’s patient love most clearly; his slowness in being angry with us, his abounding in steadfast love. That is where we see the Lord is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9).
Tonight we have an opportunity to join with the ancient church custom of having ashes applied to our forehead, to confess that we are born in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. Dust (ashes) we are and to ashes we shall return. We are completely reliant on God’s mercy. Yet God has been patient with us. The ashes are applied in the mark of the Cross, reminding you that in Christ God has shown his steadfast love to you personally, because Christ the crucified has redeemed you.
As he welcomes you to his table tonight, to give you his body and blood by which he shares his own life and holiness with you, and forgive all your sins and wash away all your guilt and shame, may he work in our hearts his divine love, so that by his grace we grow in patience towards others. And as your Father in Heaven sends you out in blessing, to love others as we would love ourselves, you proclaim by the Cross in ashes on your forehead God’s steadfast love for the world in Christ. Amen.
