Trinity Blog

Yet even now, says the Lord,
    return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
¹³ 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.  Joel 2: 12-13

Growing up, I had two dogs.  When I was working late, I had the responsibility to let them outside before we went to sleep for the night.  One evening I came home as usual and let the dogs out.  After fifteen minutes or so, I went to let them back in and I could not find them.  Usually, they were waiting by the door when they were done.  I called and nothing happened.  I took a flashlight and scanned the yard thinking they couldn’t hear me, but I couldn’t find them.   I went back inside with the full conviction of leaving them outside the entire evening for wandering away.  I waited about an hour or so and checked outside the back door and both dogs were sleeping in the flower bed.  They wandered off but eventually returned to be let in.

Just as my dogs wandered off from me, so too do we wander off from God.  They caught the smell of a deer and ran off and when they came to themselves, they came back home.  We do the same thing; something catches our attention or desires, and we wander off from God and from our Covenant community.  In the prophet Joel, the Covenant People of God, Israel has wandered off from faithfulness and obedience to God.  Just as I called out for my dogs to come home God calls out to his people who have wandered off with Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me.  We might be tempted to think that God has wandered away from us, but the truth is that we are the ones who wander off from God and need to return to God.

But how do we do that?  How do we make a sincere returning to God despite everything we have done to God and against God by wandering off.  Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.  It is not our physical bodies that have wandered off from God but our hearts and minds.  So, a mental and spiritual return to Christ needs to involve those things.  So, we return with all our heart, not just a fraction or trace but all our heart needs to come back to God.  Fasting, weeping, and mourning are all signs of remorse and regret.  We return with God with a broken and contrite heart convicted of breaking God’s heart by leaving. 

Many among church people believe and understand that remorse involves a bodily sign: a rending of clothes, sackcloth, and ashes.  We are embodied souls with a complete unity of our inner and outer selves.  We are not two, body and soul, but one, embodied souls.  So, whatever we do in one we do in the other, or at least that is the hope.  For many, remorse is an outer display, but nothing ever changes in their hearts.  The prophet reminds us that whatever we do we must do as a whole person, rend your hearts and not your clothing.  Doing something with our outer person but neglecting the matters of heart, mind and soul are useless.  True remorse is a soul and body endeavor, and the more important element is not what we do with our clothes but the transformation and repentance from the Heart. 

We have understood how we are to return to God, but do we truly understand what we are coming back to.  The text says, Return to the Lord, your God.  The LORD is the covenant name of God.  We are not just returning to God, but we are returning to the life and lifestyle of being in Covenant with God.  We return to a connection and binding of ourselves and God.  We are re-newing our vows made in Baptism to turn away from sin, to turn toward Jesus Christ and to be his faithful disciple.  This simply means that we return to following Christ, our sins are forgiven, and we are made new.  Or simply stated, we commit to wander away no longer. 

But the good news of the Gospel or why we can return is because of the character of our God.  Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.  God is gracious and merciful and our wandering off is forgiven.  God is slow to anger in loyal and unmovable love.  God does not want to punish but to correct and discipline.  The Gospel is that we can return because we are loved, forgiven, and made new by the Grace and Love of God given in Jesus Christ. 

Friends, we will wander off as we each struggle with our natures.  But God has opened God’s-self up to always accept a returning sinner.  But we need to return to God with all our heart in signs of inner remorse.  We are also returning to our covenant life together following the was of Jesus Christ.  Perhaps then through Christ and the Holy Spirit we can learn to stop wandering off and learning to stay with Christ.  But if we do, Christ promises to always take us back, if we return to him with our whole heart.  Amen. 

Acts 16:6-15
⁶They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. ⁷When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; ⁸so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. ⁹During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” ¹⁰When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

¹¹We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, ¹²and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. ¹³On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. ¹⁴A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. ¹⁵When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.

Driving in the city is challenging enough, but then when the water company starts digging up streets to replace the lines and connections, driving becomes impossible.  Day after day it seems, a new detour springs up taking you the long way around or a new closed road sign forces you to have to find a new route around.  If I didn’t have an application on my phone that would give me directions to where I wanted to go, I would have even more difficulty trying to get to work or school.

Just as it is with road construction signs, so too is it with the direction of the Holy Spirit.  In the book of Acts, Paul and company are directed where to go by the Holy Spirit.  But, like the detours, they were forbidden to enter Asia and Bithynia.  The Holy Spirit was steering them to a specific time and place and that meant a do not enter command to those places which were not.  What if the Holy Spirit is steering us to specific places and people?  What if we are being directed to a conversation or interaction under the purpose and plan of God?

The Apostles must have been discouraged because they literally ran out of road.  After coming to Troas, they could not go anywhere.  The only place was across the see.  But that was always the plan and after a vision, the Apostles become convinced this was the direction to go.  Have we ever had a dead end on our journey?  Have we been told not to go here or there, and we are facing a cul-de-sac with no way to move forward?  Even when we cannot see the way forward, the Spirit of Jesus Christ still has a journey in mind, just as Paul was told the way forward and he went.

The results of following the steering of the Holy Spirit is the interaction of Paul and Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth and the founding of the first church in Europe and the one dearest to Paul’s heart.  This was the plan, but Paul was never shown it until he obeyed and followed.  What if it’s the same with us?  What if we are only shown the plan in stages and the stage right in front of us?  We might be kept in the dark as to the whole process and result until we follow and obey, and then the purpose of God is made known.  What if the plan of God is hidden from us until we follow in faith?

Friends, might God be steering us through the Holy Spirit?  Avoid here.  Go there.  Tell Lydia.  Plant a Church.  Speak the Gospel to them.  Like the Apostles the Spirit is still leading and guiding us, keeping us from going there, but steering us to go here.  But the Spirit is also hiding the entire plan and process from us as a test of our faith.  Will we follow in faith instead of seeing the results?  Are we yet like Paul with the faith to trust the lead of the Spirit, and to follow the signs trusting God knows the way and the path and the result?  Maybe we need to entrust our roads and our journeys more into the hands of God and just follow wherever we are led.  Amen.