Transfiguration Sunday, February 15, 2026

Judgement and Wrath
Joel Chapter 2 begins with a warning that the day of God’s judgment is coming. The author warns that this judgment will be unspeakably terrifying. Judgment will roll over the land like darkness, like a great and powerful army, so vast it cannot be counted, more organized and disciplined than any human counterpart, that burns and destroys as it progresses leaving devastation in its wake. It is so powerful that the Earth quakes, even the Heavens tremble with fear as the sun and moon fail to offer light. When the army of God falls upon the city, the walls and defenders of the city are as if they were not even there. God’s warriors will scale the walls and climb in through the windows like thieves. This is no siege; no battle on the plains or hills outside the walls. This is an invasion. It is not abstract, this is personal. God’s army invades into the personal spaces, through the window and into the very homes of each inhabitant of God’s own city.
The author of Joel goes on to say that all of this terror and destruction is not a forgone conclusion if the people will come together and repent. The text asserts that God is merciful and slow to anger, full of love and forgiveness. So, the prophet calls the people to repent. Everyone. From the newborn infants to the elderly, even those invested in celebration, should stop what they are doing and stop what they are doing to antagonize God.
Several themes appear in this text that can help our congregations better understand the nature of God. We see clearly in Joel that God is a god of true relationship and change. God who is loving and merciful will relent from the prophesied punishment if the people will repent. The commands Joel uses, “return, rend, return, blow, sanctify, call, gather, assemble” show that the people’s response is not predestined, but truly matters to what happens next. Joel provides a picture of God as responsive to human actions. The text demonstrates a cooperative pattern familiar to those who know process relational thought: God initiates the call, but the future (judgment or restoration) is partly shaped by human participation (repentance and communal prayer). The people’s choice to change creates real conditions under which God “changes course” from judgment to blessing. This is simply one of the many examples found in scripture of divine openness and responsiveness to human action. Not only is God relational and responsive, our text also underscores a deeply interwoven communal/relational existence in which both individual and corporate choices affect the whole. We see the truth and importance of the interdependence of all of existence as well as the social character of both sin and healing.
These themes preach well and tend to be well covered in process relational thought. Let’s tackle the hard one – God’s wrath, and especially God’s punishment. If God is ultimately relational and responsive and if God is not coercive, then how do we make sense of the author’s description of God’s punishment? Typically process and relational theologians describe events that we would call destructive or evil as the natural consequences of the free choice of humans and everything else in existence. Generally, we would explain those events that attribute wrath or punishment to God as God allowing those natural consequences and free choice to take place in the name of God’s uncoercive nature. Here, though, this is more difficult. Joel describes this invading army as not natural and as the direct choice of God. This presents us with two problems. First, nothing can be un-natural. Even God, although super-natural, that is, above natural, is still a ‘natural’ part of the whole process. Two, God uses these un-natural forces to punish. The easy way to help our congregations understand this, is to point out that Joel is indeed speaking in metaphors and that the threat of God’s punishment is not a foregone conclusion. The point Joel is making is that those natural consequences and free choices will turn destructive, but God does not want that, and will ‘relent’ if we begin to make better choices – justice, mercy, faithfulness to God.
It is also possible to look at Joel’s description of God’s punishment in another way. God has a will toward the good and God acts in this world through those who will adopt God’s aims for this world. God can will that great evils and injustice stop. While God cannot coerce anyone into stopping evil and injustice, God can act through those who would adopt those aims. While I believe the author of Joel is indeed speaking metaphorically when describing the great and powerful army that spreads like blackness across the mountains, the metaphor points to the author’s conviction that God has the ability to call the willing to enact punishment. To say that God can will punishment when people have gone astray from the good, is not to say that God coerces. It is to say that aiming at the good may sometimes mean eliminating the bad. But, God prefers repentance and acceptance of God’s aims at the good. God would rather not aim for punishment. The author of Joel reminds us that our God is merciful and slow to anger, full of love and forgiveness. God does not coerce the people to repent, but calls us to repentance.
This theme goes well with the season of Lent. If we say we have no sin, the truth is not in us. All of us fail to enact the good that we can enact regularly. Wallowing in sin is not the point, but neither is ignoring it. This season invites us to inspect our hearts and our lives for those things that stand in the way of the good and that close down our possibilities instead of expanding them, both personally and publicly.
Today might be a good day to talk to your congregation about the ways that you fail and fall short and the steps you are taking to correct that. Encourage your congregation to do the same.