The Day of the LORD

Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God;
for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.
Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.

Alas for that day!

For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.

(Joel 1:13-15)

A persistent theme of the Old Testament Prophets is “The Day of the LORD” – the moment in history when God shows up in person and makes everything right. God’s people assumed they’d be the primary beneficiaries of God’s restorative action. In the course of making the world right, God would do away with the evildoers and restore the fortunes of his chosen people. The words of the prophets disabuse God’s people of any such illusion. Amos writes, “Woe to you who long for the Day of the LORD. Why do you long for the Day of the LORD – that day is darkness, not light!” The prophets confront their people with the fundamental error we all make: assuming that what’s wrong with the world is all those other people. Assuming that God’s on our side. Assuming that justice should always flow our way. The prophets warn God’s people that they’re on the wrong side of justice.

When God talks about justice, he’s not talking primarily about crime and punishment. He’s talking about making life right. And that’s where everyone’s culpable. Everyone holds a narrow view of justice – one that serves one set of interests while ignoring many others. The prophets confront God’s people with perpetuating economic, political and religious policies that protect a privileged majority and persistently push others to the margins. All the while priding themselves in their moral purity and self-sufficiency.

Through his prophets God tells his people, “You may be comfortable. But I will not rest as long as there single parents and children going to bed hungry; as long as there are displaced people who are homeless and unemployed; as long as there are people who have to resort to crime because you’ve given them no dignified way to support themselves.” God tells his people, “Don’t come to me with token words of worship or pleas for assistance if there are people in your world whose voices you’ve silenced or cries you’ve ignored.” God’s justice is sweeping and world-renewing. Justice is bad news for the beneficiaries of injustice.

But it’s good news for those who have suffered injustice; who have protested injustice; who have set aside their privilege and taken their place alongside those who mourn injustice.

We can split hairs about what’s injustice and what isn’t. About what destructive attitudes and policies are justified and which are not. Our rhetoric may protect us now. But it will not stand up in the cosmic court of Almighty God. He is coming to make it right once and for all.

There’s one way to take the terror out of the Day of the Lord. It’s to choose justice now. To leverage your power and privilege on behalf of someone who has none. To call injustice injustice. And to abandon your way for God’s way. A way that affirms the dignity and humanity of every person; a way that promises the means of life to everyone, and fights to protect them; a way that places everyone on equal footing in a place of equal importance in the economy of God’s love and the new order of God’s Kingdom. If that sounds bad to you, you may need to heed the prophets’ warning about the Day of the LORD. But if it sounds right – like the way it’s supposed to be – then take heart. The Lord has come. He is even now redeeming our seemingly irredeemable world and reconciling our seemingly irreconcilable differences. Justice will come; justice and mercy will consummate their long-distance relationship; the wrong we so desperately want to be made right will be made right. Don’t give up. The Lord will have his day.