Westmont Magazine Seeking the Good Life in the Book of Joel

By Jaco Hamman, Professor of Religion, Psychology and Culture and Director of the Program in Theology and Practice at Vanderbilt University

A Chapel Talk at Westmont College on March 22, 2019, as part of the Gaede Institute Conversation on the Liberal Arts “High Anxiety: Liberal Arts and the Race to Success"

Today I want to talk with you about the Good Life. I assume that, more than anything, even more than the great education you get here at Westmont, you long for a good life. Of course, Westmont is a wonderful partner in seeking the Good Life.

You will agree with me that good health, or a great education, or money and being able to buy whatever you want, or having the latest Apple AirPods—in black—will not guarantee you a good life.

Philosophers have debated the Good Life for thousands of years. I want to point us to a 2,500-year-old story that describes the Good Life. I doubt whether you know this rather neglected story in the Old Testament.

As I imagine you are longing for the Good Life, I also imagine a few other things about you. I think you know anxiety and/ or depression and/or loss, and/or trauma intimately. Also that you are great at building friendships and alternative communities even as you know the pain of loneliness and not belonging. I believe you are deeply spiritual, most probably not in a traditional sense. You appreciate accountability toward persons and systems about how we cause harm to the Earth. Lastly, I imagine you are actively involved or seeking to create a better world. My hope for our future is in you, more so than anyone else!

So I’m going to tell you a 2,500-year-old story. Stories or narratives are important because they help us find purpose and meaning in life. We can make it our own, hearing it differently, even if we listen to the same story.

Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff in his book “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now” argues that we need an opera with many acts to live by when most persons live by hit singles. He writes, “Experiencing the world as a series of stories helps create a sense of context. It is comforting and orienting. It helps smooth out obstacles and impediments by recasting them as bumps along the way to some better place— or at least the end of the journey. As long as there is enough momentum, enough pull forward, and enough dramatic tension, we can suspend our disbelief enough to stay in the story.”

We find our story in the Book of Joel, which was probably written between 586-555 BCE near Jerusalem, but we are not sure. Many questions surround this book: date, author, genre, etc. The temple has been destroyed, and Israel is searching for God’s presence in their lives. This short book contains only 73 verses, about half of which focus on devastation and destruction and half on renewal and restoration.

Joel is a demanding book with 43 commands, or approximately three commands every five verses.

He is a unique prophet in that he does not care about personal sin and what Israel has done wrong. Yet he calls for accountability.

Are you ready for the first act of Joel? Be warned, for Joel knows how to make an entrance!

Act 1: Joel 1:1-4
The Lord’s word that came to Joel, Pethuel’s son:
Hear this, elders; pay attention, everyone in the land! Has anything like this ever happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and have your children tell their children, and their children tell their children. What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten. And what the hopping locust left, the devouring locust has eaten.

There is the “gazam,” the “yelek,” the devouring palmerworms and cankerworms or caterpillars, slow moving but devastating. And then there’s the “chasil”— “that which consumes” — and the “arbeh,” the red-locust swarm, fast moving and equally deadly.

Joel says we all know crisis, some slowly evolving, but others that surprise. The locusts of life cause loss of many kinds: of relationship, material loss, intrapsychic loss (the loss of a personal dream or vision), systemic loss, role loss, and functional loss. Loss in turn changes our identity; it leaves us confused about who we are. Act 1 is about loss and devastation. There is no hope in Joel’s opening verses.

Act 2: Joel 1:14; 2:16
Demand a fast, request a special assembly. Gather the elders and all the land’s people... Gather the people; prepare a holy meeting; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants.

When locusts touch our lives, we often ask: Why, God? Where is God? These questions are impossible to answer, especially for someone else. Joel does not provide an answer for us.

Rather, he says we have to respond in four ways to the locusts of life:

• We cry out to God in lament.
• We fast.
• We gather.
• We need to seek God.

I have no doubt that you are a master of gathering. You know how to use technology to build alternative communities, but you also seek out face-to-face engagements. Act 2 commands us: Gather! For in being together we discover ourselves and God anew.

Act 3: Joel 2:13, 25-26
Return to the Lord your God, for God is merciful and compassionate, very patient, full of faithful love, and ready to forgive... I will repay you for the years that the cutting locust, the swarming locust, the hopping locust, and the devouring locust have eaten.... You will eat abundantly and be satisfied... and my people will never again be put to shame.

Joel offers the most beautiful God, a god we actually know, for Jesus mirrored that God to us. Each of us has a unique understanding of God. How do you describe God?

We build our image of God along our life path, from family and church, from experiences, and various forms of education through life. That means the locusts of life also shape the way we see God.

If your God is not “merciful and compassionate, very patient, full of faithful love, and ready to forgive and one who repays,” then I offer you the God we discover in Joel.

Compassion in Hebrew is “rahum”, which comes from “rehem”, womb! God, my friends is womb-ish. Like a mother’s womb, God gives life. What a God to believe in, a God that restores even our shame. When guilt says: “I did something wrong,” shame says, “I am not worthy, not good enough.” With shame, self-doubt plagues us, and the Good Life eludes us. Rather, anxiety, perfectionism, aloofness, competition, and pretense will push away authenticity, vulnerability, intimacy and purpose in life.

This third act of Joel reminds us that God is a compassionate God. I have been talking much lately about this God, and I have discovered that those who believe in a God of judgment are offended by the God of compassion.

Act 4: Joel 2:28-29
After that I will pour out my spirit upon everyone; your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men and women will dream dreams, and your young men and women will see visions. In those days, I will also pour out my spirit on the male and female slaves.

Let me summarize our story thus far. There was a people who were devastated by locusts. They gathered and discovered the compassionate God, the God who restores. This God notices the devastation and is about to take action. Our story has taken a turn away from devastation to restoration.

God continues and intensifies the restoration by pouring God’s breath or life force, which is a better translation of “spirit,” in each of us. Hope is awakened and possibility abounds as boundaries of gender, age and class are broken. Since God’s spirit is active in each of you, I can be confident that you, too, have visions of a changed world.

Joel asks: Can you catch the vision God awakened in you and in your sister and brother?

Today, many communities prefer vision casters to vision catchers, for that would be the leadership the business world offers us. They will discover that those who cast visions, who almost always are men, are poor vision catchers.

Act 5: Joel 3:2-3
[The Lord says:] I will gather all the nations, and I will bring them to the Jehoshaphat Valley. There I will enter into judgment with them in support of my people and my possession, Israel, which they have scattered among the nations. They have divided my land, and have cast lots for my people. They have traded boys for prostitutes and sold girls for wine, which they drank down.

In the fifth act, Joel moves from agricultural and personal restoration to societal and political restoration. The portion above refers to a day that is often called “The Day of the Lord.” Tradition has understood this day as one of fear and judgment.

In Joel, those who know the compassionate God who restores need not fear. Rather, we can see this day as one of accountability. God will hold us accountable for our words, choices, actions and stewardship, just as God held Tyre and Sidon and the regions of Philistia responsible for theft and social atrocities such as human trafficking (“they have traded boys for prostitutes, and sold girls for wine”).

The womb-ish God of compassion beckons us to be pol ticians. Christians are most often afraid of politics. The word literally means “the shape of the city.” We shape the city either through our silence and apathy or through our involvement, activism and advocacy, collaborating and participating with God in changing the world. Be a politician for the compassionate God! This is a key pillar of the Good Life.

Act 6: Joel 3:18
In that day the mountains will drip sweet wine, the hills will flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah will flow with water; a spring will come forth from the Lord’s house and water the Shittim Valley.

We have come a long way from the devastation the locusts caused. The people of the Ancient Near East believed that kings lived next to rivers. Israel’s God, of course, did not have a palace, so they believed that water flows from God’s throne or temple. This image permeates the Bible.

• Genesis 2:10: “A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.”
• Revelation 22:1 “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
• Psalm 46: 4: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.”
• In Ezekiel 47, Ezekiel saw a river flowing from God’s temple that was so deep he could not cross it. Verse 12 describes the leaves of the trees next to the river as medicinal and healing.

This image simply states that God’s blessings need to flow to others. Christians are often guilty of two things: They either dam themselves up and become stagnant pools or they become flash-floods over others, eroding people made from topsoil (not dust—but that is another chapel for another day).

Joel asks: How are you flowing God’s compassion, love and forgiveness to Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, and the ends of the Earth?

In conclusion, this 2,500-year-old story is about a people who knew the locusts of life. These locusts caused devastation, anxiety, loss, crisis and trauma. They mourned the losses and sought healing for the anxiety and trauma by building life-giving communities and nurturing their spirituality. They discovered the compassionate God who promises restoration and pours God’s spirit over all. These people embraced accountability, knowing that decisions made and actions taken have consequences. They participated in God’s restorative work toward a just society and a sustainable Earth. These persons lived the Good Life.

You are that people.

You, who know the locusts of life but give thanks to the compassionate God, who live downstream from the water that flows from God’s throne, go now and make a difference in this world. Amen.