Joel 2 | Wayfarer

“And afterward,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.”
Joel 2:28 (NIV)

“Teacher,” asked the student, “I have been reading the prophets and I have many questions.”

“Rightly so,” answered the Teacher. “Many look to the prophets for answers when often the greatest treasure found in their words is the discovery of the right questions.”

“Is the prophet writing about a time that was, or is it about a time that is, or is it about a time that yet will be?” asked the student.

“Yes,” answered the teacher, softly.

“I don’t understand,” said the student. “Which is it?”

“Of course you don’t understand,” said the teacher. “Your confusion is rooted, my child, not in the words of the prophets but in your understanding of God who revealed to them their message. In your mind, you’ve confined God inside of time. But, time is a construct of creation and God existed before creation. Therefore, God exists outside of creation and is not confined by the construct we call time. Thus, you must consider that those marvelous things God reveals to the prophets may, like God himself, be at once about what was, what is, and what will be.”

The prophetic message of Joel reverberates with the words of the teacher. Today’s chapter is at once about what was happening in Judah, what would happen on the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts, and what has yet to happen.

It was verses 28-32 of today’s chapter that Peter quoted on the miraculous day in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 2. Jesus’ followers, male and female, young and old, were gathered together when the Holy Spirit came upon all of them like a rushing wind and they all began to speak in all of the various languages of the throng of Jewish pilgrims crowded into Jerusalem for the Pentecost feast.

One of the things that strikes me about both the words of the prophet and the event on Pentecost is the loss of delineation between nations, gender, and age. The pouring out of Holy Spirit on and into the followers of Jesus was not discriminatory, neither was the manifestation of the Spirit in the proclamations being made in various languages of the world.

The further I get in my spiritual journey, the more I have come to embrace the understanding that the gifts and callings of God’s Spirit are not discriminatory in any way. Just as the teacher revealed to the student a God who is not confined by time, so Joel’s prophesy and the events of Pentecost reveal a God’s whose indwelling Holy Spirit, the spiritual gifts Holy Spirit gives, and ministry to which Holy Spirit calls individuals are not confined by human distinctions of race, gender, age, education, nationality, political world-view, or socio-economic status.

It is only we human beings and the institutional church that we humans built that has chosen to pick-up those distinctions that God blew away and discarded on the Day of Pentecost and set them back in place within our religion.

In the quiet this morning, I’m reminded that the Great Story reveals God to be exceeding, abundantly beyond all that I could ask or even imagine. Like the student, my problem is so often rooted, not in my understanding of the Story God is authoring, but in my very understanding of who God has, is, and will reveal Himself to be.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Martin Luther, author of the text of Christ la... — Martin Luther (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In those days I will pour out my Spirit
even on servants—men and women alike.
Joel 2:29 (NLT)

A few weeks ago I discovered that a client of mine is a history buff like me. He introduced me to a podcast called Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History and encouraged me to download the episode call “Prophets of Doom.” I’m about half-way through the 4 hour podcast and I’m hooked. Carlisle shares a fascinating true story set during the Protestant Reformation in the first part of the 16th century.

As background for the story, Carlisle spends about an hour doing an excellent summation of the social, religious and political climate of Western Europe during this period of time. The tectonic plates of history are shifting. For over a century the Bible had been the secret text of the rich and well educated. The masses were only told the parts that the religious and political leaders wanted them to hear. Manipulation of the Message to maintain wealth and power became commonplace. Then Martin Luther did something radical that would change history. He translated the Bible from the original Greek into common German language (at that point it was only hand copied in Latin). The new invention of the printing press was then used to mass produce it to be read by anyone who could read their everyday language. For the first time, every day people could read and interpret God’s Message for themselves.

One of the radical realities of Jesus’ teaching is that salvation and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are poured out on everyone regardless of age, gender, social standing, or educational level. Anyone who believes is indwelled by the Holy Spirit and a part of the “Body of Christ.” As the people in 16th century Europe began reading the Bible for themselves, they began to realize this and it became a huge part of the change in tides that would shape history to this day.

I would love to jump on my soap box and explain how I believe the leaders of the modern church have continued to manipulate the system to ensure that only select individuals of their choosing get to participate in realizing and using their spiritual gifts, but that’s another blog post.

I thought about all of this as I read the ancient prophet Joel’s words. Even in Joel’s day the idea that women and common servants could and would receive God’s favor and the gift of God’s Holy Spirit was a radical notion. This morning I am reminded that throughout history man has manipulated God’s Message to further his own ends. Jesus carried out God’s plan to pour out love, salvation and spiritual blessing to anyone who will take the step to believe and follow. Even me. Even you.