St John's Anglican Church

Shrove Tuesday is such a lovely tradition isn’t it – with the pancakes and festivities.   It’s one of those traditions which often loses its intended purpose though.   As you are all probably aware, the idea was to rid the household of anything that could be considered a rising agent – no cakes or bread making during Lent – and so Shrove Tuesday was the preparation for a period of penitence.

The early church was aware of Jesus’ teaching about the yeast of the Pharisees which led to  them taking the place of God in their society – full of their own importance & being all puffed up.  The early Christians felt the need to be focused on God and the penitential aspect of Lent.

Today, Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, we are tasked with considering our own ‘puffed up’ state – where we might have put ourselves on the throne of our lives – where we might have lost our deep love for the Lord.  We confront our sinfulness and God’s punishment for that sin…… for God must exact justice.  But we are also shown God’s grace and mercy.

When the prophet Joel came on the scene, the nation of Israel was prosperous and the people were ‘puffed up’ with their accomplishments and were quite complacent about their faith.  They had what they needed, so they took God for granted.  They had lost  their spiritual focus and had turned away from God to self-centredness, idolatry and sin.

Sounds all too familiar doesn’t it – how easily we forget God when all is going well.   In times of trouble or need though, we clamour to be at his side – God for emergencies only!

The people of Israel no longer knew the true joy of the Lord – they had put their joy in things, situations – and, as is the case with all earthly things, they’re temporary!   –  everything had vanished – eaten by a plague of locusts – until the land was as barren and harsh as the people’s hearts.

Then God called to them, through his prophet, to return to him with all their hearts – with fasting for their sinfulness , and weeping and mourning.

Praise God in His eyesthat as much as there is a law in place for justice and punishment,  there is another law that is in effect as well – it’s the law of undeserved favour and mercy and grace.

We see this being played out in the book of Joel.  God calls the people to repent and change their ways.

He calls them to stop loving things, or themselves, more than God.   Sadly they fail to listen and the Locusts exact God’s punishment.   Then God gives them another chance to repent and turn back to Him.  ….. not just saying sorry – or looking sorry – but turning from their ways and , with penitent hearts turning to God.

Joel tells them in vs 13

Rend your heart and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and compassionate.

Then the statement in Vs 14

Who knows?  He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing.

This is  beyond our normal understanding, but this is how our God treats us ……  We sin and he forgives – not only does he forgive and have pity on us, he leaves behind a blessing!   Such behavior  is so not like the way of the world!

Vs 25 says the God will repay His people for the years the locust have eaten.

That is what the book of Joel is all about – God’s chosen people have turned from Him, and the land is overrun by hungry locusts.  Crops are destroyed & there is nothing left.   The Israelites deserved to lose God’s blessing because they no longer cherished their relationship with Him – they took Him out of first place in their lives.

The Book of Revelation tells us quite clearly that God is just in His judgments – He is right in what He does!  Sin deserves punishment.

When we disobey God or walk away from Him, or set up idols or ignore Him or just go our own way, then we shouldn’t be surprised if he uses a variety of tactics to call us back.  And it’s always because He loves us, not because he doesn’t!!

Amazingly – and I’m sure we’ll discover that afresh during this Lent, –  God takes pity on us when we acknowledge our sins and turn away from them and come back to HIM.

Look at Verse 18 “Then the Lord will take pity on his people” Vs 19 He will give us enough to satisfy us

Vs 20 says God will drive our enemies away from us.

When we admit that we have wandered – and in many respects – we all do at times – when we confess our sin from the depths of our hearts, then God takes pity on us and he wants to repay us for the pain and struggle that we’ve had along the way.  In spite of our unfaithfulness to God, He wants to bless us and bring back our joy.  He wants to bring life out of death! He wants to forgive us!   In a way, when we repent of our wrongdoing, God wants to repay us with good for the sins we have committed.  Does this make sense??

NO, BUT because we serve an extra-ordinary God, He pours out extra-ordinary blessings.

JOHN 3: 16   For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

This is Mercy and Grace in action.  This is where God’s love and God’s justice come together  at the Cross of Christ – as it has been so beautifully expressed in the song

Come and See :

We worship at Your feet,

Where wrath and mercy meet,

And a guilty world is washed

By love’s pure stream.

For us He was made sin—

Oh, help me take it in.

Deep wounds of love cry out

‘Father, forgive.’

I worship, I worship,

The Lamb who was slain.

To be forgiven and to be blessed afterwards with salvation and eternal life  – what a mighty God we serve!!

There are some though, who really don’t enjoy this message of mercy & grace – they see it as permissiveness  and believe that instead we need to be harder on sin.

In response to this, someone wrote:

So  you’re worried about permissiveness – about the way the preaching of grace seems to say it’s OK to do all kinds of terrible things as long as you just walk in afterwards and take the free gift of God’s forgiveness.  While you and I may be worried about seeming to give permission, Jesus apparently wasn’t.  He wasn’t afraid of giving the thief on the cross, eternal life in paradise. He wasn’t afraid of giving the prodigal son a kiss instead of a lecture; a party instead of being gated;  and he proved that by bringing in the elder brother at the end of the story and having him raise pretty much the same objections as many do.  He’s angry about the party.  He complains that his father is lowering standards and ignoring right living. The prodigal son ought to have been punished!  And to that, Jesus has the father say only one thing:  ‘your brother was dead and he’s alive again.  The name of the game is RESURRECTION – not keeping an account of wrongs.

That’s God’s message for us today – I believe that he doesn’t want to keep us punished for all our past mistakes – He wants to make us truly alive.

And so, even though we do have, and need to have,  penitent hearts & our foreheads will be marked with the ash of repentance, we can celebrate the truth of the Gospel message of our forgiveness and blessing as we come to the Lord’s table  – to our great thanksgiving – the Eucharistic feast.     Our sure hope and our blessing is in the Cross of Christ and His Resurrection.

AMEN