Since the election results became clear, I have not been able to get Joel 2:12-17 out of my mind.

“Yet even now [Just that phrase alone, people, wells my eyes], return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.

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Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain-offering and a drink-offering for the Lord, your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people.

Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast.

Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.

Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

How to Handle A Locust Infestation: Fast, Weep, and Mourn…

The context is this: locusts—it’s not clear whether they were actual locusts, or if the term were a derogatory, euphemistic reference to an advancing army, or both—but anyway “locusts” had swarmed Judah and annihilated the nation’s crops, and therefore everything and everyone else.

This was, of course, not Israel’s first locust rodeo: they knew of the locusts which had swarmed Egypt, and they knew who sent these locusts, and they knew what had happened to Egypt in the locusts’ wake.

But this time, the locusts descended upon Israel itself.

This time around, God was displeased with God’s very own people.

But Joel, well he showed up, and he showed up with an antidote: communal repentance.

Joel announced an invitation from the Holy One: “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning: rend your hearts and not your clothing.”

Now, truth is, I’ve been rending most anything I can get my hands on since the election, so much so that the word, like an incessant water drip, finally moved me yesterday afternoon to rustle up this very text, and to be reminded about what it had to say to me and to this moment.

In this passage, we hear that we’re to return to God, but with specific instructions to boot: we are to fast, and weep, and mourn.

And after we’ve done that, we are to rend our hearts.

Now I’ve never been great at fasting, but it is a standard religious ritual: fasting reminds us that we’re dependent on God, and it forces us to focus on that dependence.

Fasting humbles us.

Weeping comes when one cannot escape the trauma of what has or what will come to pass.

It is more than a good cry: it is a wail from the soul.

And when we weep before the Lord, we’ve been aptly reduced to the devastating knowledge that we’ve incurred God’s wrath, and we have earned it.

And so we mourn.

Mourning and weeping tend to overlap, of course, but they aren’t interchangeable.

When one mourns, one grieves something that is no longer, something that’s caused irreparable separation, something that can not be reconstituted.

Worse, in this case, we ourselves are the source of the devastation.

It’s not like some random astronomical event obliterated our existence, or some incomprehensible fluke suddenly decimated all that we had held to be lovely and true.

Nope.

Joel’s community know that they destroyed something cherished and holy, and they did it all on their own.

…And Then Rend…

So after all that, then, after fasting and weeping and mourning, all that is left to do is to rend.

It’s an odd word, ‘rend,’ one that we rarely use on the daily in our 21st Century vernacular.

It’s most often used for the ripping of clothing, not to make rags, say, but to embody all-encompassing grief and regret.

Rending symbolizes the destruction of something that protects us, that provides us dignity and cover.

There is no hiding when we stand naked before God and everyone.

No leaf can cover our shame.

But, and this catches us off guard, here in Joel, God actually says, “Keep your clothes on.”

I’m not interested in your bare skin, says God.

I want your bared soul.

Rend your hearts, says God.

Rip them apart with the same ferocity you would a garment.

And why?

So that our hearts, the epicenter of our life, are finally open to God, the creator of all life.

Deep. Exhale.

…And Then Drop Everything and Gather

So at this point, there’s nothing of us left: we are hungry, we are spent, we are agonizingly aware of our guilt.

And we have flayed and filleted ourselves before God, so that God’s presence can enter us again.

And then, notice what occurs:

God asks us to assemble.

This is ‘us’ writ large: the old, the young, the children, even the infants; the bridegroom and the bride, who most certainly have other activities on their mind.

Doesn’t matter.

God wants us to assemble in worship, of all things.

And there, collectively, we are to confess.

We confess, and we remind God of who God is: a God of mercy.

Precisely at the point where we have come to realize that we deserve perpetual judgment, we remind God—and we remind ourselves—that God is rather a God of mercy.

It’s not, of course, that we get off scot-free.

Let’s recall that at this point we are famished, exhausted, emotionally raw, and spiritually exposed.

Judgement happens, as it should.

But our God is a God who brings new things out of death, a God of transformation and restoration.

Our God is a God who holds onto covenant promises way better than do we.

So, Because of Luther, We Have to Ask, What Does this Mean?

With that, a couple of post-election, Joel-inspired take-aways here.

First, Love Does Not Always Win, Actually, And In Fact It Lost Spectacularly On Tuesday Night

This election was not most about how well Trump ran a campaign or how badly Harris did.

This election was about the victory of raw racism, bigotry, and a permission to be crude and cruel that has saturated the ethos of our nation.

It is about the basest of human instincts winning out over compassion, kindness, integrity, community, and love.

It is about the preservation of the self over the well-being of all, and the reduction of ‘neighbor’ to one who looks like, eats like, lives like, believes like oneself, and particularly if white, straight, and a conservative Christian.

Conversely, the people of God are to make like Micah 6:8 (“What is it that the Lord requires but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God?”) or Matthew, in which we hear of the Least of These being served by those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, cared for the sick, and visited the prisoners.

For starters.

On Tuesday, this country voted less for Trump and more for the now-normed permission to hate, and divide, and oppress, or to feign ignorance that we cast our vote for exactly that.

The majority in our nation knew who Trump is, they know what his agenda is, and they went for it.

For this right here, they said, y’all just sign me and the rest of us up.

Second, The Dems and the Church Swung and Wow Did We Miss

This election was enabled by two things.

Dems Meant (Mostly) Well, But…

The first of those two was the Democrats’ collective incapacity to understand the intoxicating power of cultic behavior which draws lines and defines who is in and who is out.

Dems went with logic.

We went with statistics.

We went with joy.

But without tethering these otherwise noble approaches with a willingness to approach, appreciate, and strive to enter into Insular-and-Fear-Induced Group Think, we Dems done got Othered, and we therefore done got beat.

We abhor the values of those who voted for Trump, but we were perceived as abhorring the actual Trump supporters.

In this way, we were…are…no better than what we accuse MAGA of doing.

So while we figured out how to talk about Trump supporters, we never really figured out how to talk to and with them.

We never really sought to understand—which is different than condoning, to be clear—why they were drawn to the rhetoric of division that Trump espoused with such finesse.

And with no relationship, we had no basis for change.

The second matter is, in some ways, more to Joel’s point, and as a Lutheran public theologian, more to mine.

The ELCA Meant (Mostly) Well, But…

As I’ve been saying now for years (I’m here speaking most directly to my own people, though perhaps these words are transferable to other denominations), yesterday’s election was very much thanks to two elements of how the ELCA opts to do the Lord’s work:

* The structure of the ELCA;

* The well-intentioned but pastorally- and theologically-suspect culture that encourages rostered leaders to avoid calling out racism, homophobia, bigotry, and hate, all in the name of “meeting people where they are” and “being a pastor to all the people.”

Turns out, though, that you can’t both-sides the God of Joel.

I know, I know, I just spoke about relationship.

But you can’t have a relationship with anyone without having clarity of self, and conveying that self with clarity.

Anyone who has so...

Of the Election, Joel, Rending Our Hearts, and the Role and Culpability of the ELCA

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