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.
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