So I have spent a fair bit of this week researching locusts and locusts plagues. Turns out they are really quite fascinating and kind of cute. They are mostly solitary creatures but in the right circumstances – often created by warmer temperatures and vegetation growth which leads to a surplus of food – they will reproduce rapidly and swarm. And this has devasting consequences. And so we are going to begin with a little video about locusts. I thought it was quite interesting, and I found it helpful in visualising and understanding this reading and so I wanted to share it with you.
Video
For now let’s pray, “We thank You, holy God, for Your word which You have made known to us in creation, through Jesus our saviour and our Sacred Scriptures. We pray this morning that you will speak to us afresh through your word and that it may dwell in us and amongst us. Amen.
The book of Joel is the second of the minor prophets in the Bible and so it is the second book we are reading and reflecting on but we actually do not know where it is placed chronologically. The book gives very little indications of when it was written.
It is not a well known book but it is actually quite significant to Christians. We begin our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday with a reading from Joel,
“Yet even now, says the Lord, 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 then on the day of Pentecost we again hear the words of the prophet in the mouth of Peter who declares in Acts,
“In the last days it will be God declares, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”
But the first time I actually remember hearing about the prophet on his own terms was at a TEAR conference about 20 years ago.
TEAR as you probably know is a Christian development, relief and advocacy organisation responding to global poverty and injustice. Every year at Christmas this church raises money for them through the useful gift catalogue.
Rather than set up their own projects their model is to partner with locally-based Christian agencies. These local people are better placed to understand the needs of their communities and to develop responses to those. They used to hold a yearly conference in which people from their partner organisations would come and tell stories about what God was doing in their communities.
This particular year there was a speaker from South Africa, named Robyn Hemmes who shared with us about her work with Youth for Christ and children on the streets of Johannesburg.
She began talking about her context in South Africa and she drew on this reading from the prophet Joel. She spoke about how this description of the locust plague and its devasting impact on Joel’s community had become a helpful metaphor of living with the complexities of post-apartheid South Africa.
In my introduction I referred to Ellen Davis who describes the prophets as interpreters, she says, “People whom the Bible designates as prophets interpreted in word and deed the faith for their time, and equally, they interpreted the times for the faithful. In the Bible those engaged in prophetic work are learned and innovative interpreters of Israel’s scriptural traditions.”
This is a good description of Joel. The book of Joel quotes from the book of Isaiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Obadiah, Malachi, Ezekiel and Amos. The scriptures help him make sense of the tragedy going on in his world (the locust plague). He then interprets the literal swarms of locusts that invaded in successive waves as a foreshadowing of a soon-coming invasion of enemies as well as a future day of judgment and then restoration. Something that gives him hope.
Thousands of years later, this woman Robyn from South Africa, draws on the prophet Joel to interpret the tragedy going on in her world (apartheid) and the ways it continued to impact her country even though, at that time, it had ended 10 years ago.
Joel describes the locust plague using four distinct Hebrew terms gazam, arbeh, yeleq, chasil. I do not speak Hebrew so I am probably not pronouncing these words correctly but as you can see on the PP.
- Gazam is derived from a root meaning “to cut off” or “shear.”
- Arbeh comes from a root meaning “to multiply,” emphasizing their vast numbers.
- Yeleq is linked to “licking” or “hopping,” describing their movement.
- And Chasil comes from a root meaning “to devour” or “consume entirely.”
These terms have been translated into English as if they are different types of locusts – cutting, swarming, hopping and destroying – but they are not so much different types of locusts but different phases of the plague.
Robyn described apartheid as being like a locust plague on South Africa. And what apartheid itself had not devoured, was devoured by the struggles that followed to somehow share the limited resources that were once for a small minority with the majority. And what was not devoured by what followed, was destroyed by the corruption and the disappointment with broken promises that came after that. 46 years of violence, poverty and inferior education and healthcare did not just go away.
This is how intergenerational poverty, unemployment, poor health and trauma works. It is passed down. Something the Biblical authors like Joel seemed to have a sense of before psychology came up with a word for it.
This helped her see why apartheid was still wreaking havoc on the lives of so many of the children she encountered on the street, who were babies or not even born when apartheid ended.
And now I have found all this a helpful metaphor for the impact of intergenerational trauma on this place. This description of the locust plague and the way it invaded in successive waves and eventually devoured everything reminds me of the fact that colonisation was not a one-off event that happened in the past that we can and should all just move on from now.
Joel beseeches the people to remember, to tell their children of it, and to let their children tell their children, and their children another generation. He commands them not just to move on but to lament, to wail and to weep and to be dismayed.
The land too, which is active character in Joel and several of the prophets, mourns.
The trauma, the fragmentation, the poverty that colonisation and the successive polices that followed reverberates in the violence and crime our town knows so well. Our systems and services buckle under the pressure of this.
“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 destroying locust has eaten.”
We need long term solutions that bring healing and hope not knee jerk reactions that might feel like they are having some short term gains but are simply kicking the can down the road.
Thankfully, Biblical prophecy as I have said the last two weeks, and will probably keep saying over this sermon series, is always about judgement but it is also always about hope. We do need to lament and mourn and wail and weep. But we do not need to be stuck there. We need to have prophetic imagination, that is the capacity to host a world other than the one that is in front of us. We need to hold out faith for ourselves and others that things can be different, that lives can indeed be transformed. And that Christ will come and make all things new.
In Joel chapter 2, God responds. He addresses his creation, his people and the earth itself with words of hope, and I will finish with this,
“Then the Lord became jealous for his land, and had pity on his people.
In response to his people the Lord said:
Fear not O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done marvellous things!
Do not be afraid, you animals of the field, for the open pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine yield their strength.
Be glad then you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given the former rain faithfully and he will cause the rai to come down for you.
The threshing-floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
I will repay you for the years that the locusts have eaten my great army, that I sent amongst you.
You will have plenty to eat until you are satisfied, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. Never again will my people be put to shame.
You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel.
