Sermon: “From Doom and Gloom to Hope”
Text: Joel 1-3 NRSV
Method: 1st-Person, Pure Narrative Sermon

Theme: Eschatological faith dares to believe that our world finally makes sense, that life is fully meaningful (Walls 2008, 3). The Book of Joel provided hope for the Judeans in their time of crisis during the post-exilic period. Joel’s proto-apocalypticism can serve as an example—an opportunity for all—to face, and cope with, oppression at the hands of foreign supremacies. In this way, apocalyptic literature “can be thought of as crisis literature” (Scott 2014, 83-84).

Scene: The first-person account of a Judean man who discovers the Book of Joel for the first time and travels back to his community to share the text with his brother. He (the unnamed main character and discoverer of the Joel text) is excited and simultaneously fearful after his discovery of a papyrus copy of the Book of Joel. Upon jointly sharing in a thorough readthrough of the text, the apocalyptic writing in Joel sends the Judean brothers on an emotional rollercoaster--initially hopeful, moving to utter fear, before finally settling in God’s promise of deliverance for the Judeans and hope for a new kingdom. By embodying the identity of a Judean man during the post-exilic period, the sermon intends to provide the listener with the historical outlook of the Judean community, and how through this historical reality, the Judeans would have been in search of newfound hope. For the Judean brothers, the proto-apocalyptic writing in the Book of Joel provided an answer.

Intended Sermon Audience: A church congregation with little-to-no knowledge about the historical identity and realities of the post-exilic Judean community. The sermon utilizes the first-person narrative style to focus on the identity of two Judeans who, after discovering and reading through the Book of Joel, would have experienced a range of emotions. The ultimate result of this rollercoaster of emotion for these two Judean brothers is trust; trust in a just and righteous YHWH, and hope for the bright future of a New Israel, as indicated in by Joel.

Explanation of Preaching Methodology and Theological Implications: There are many benefits to a first-person, pure narrative sermon. The listener hears the story as written in the text; with exegetical additions utilizing both biblical commentaries and my own exegesis together to form how I personally view the text. Obviously, there will be blind-spots (Kim-Craig 2021, 56-67), that I bring to the exegetical work (such as my prior hermenteutical commitments: cisgender, white, hetero-male). I have done my best, however, to identify the historical realities of the Judeans, and utilize that knowledge to portray the range of emotions and responses likely to have occured when a Judean discovered the Book of Joel for the first time. The thoughts of a person in history itself is challenging, and will not be the only possible result of a Judean discovering an unfamiliar text during this time of crisis, nor does it excuse or demagnify the crisis or value of the experience of the Judean community. But I felt that the first-person narrative preaching style will allow listeners who may or may not have heard a sermon on the Book of Joel to this point take something away from my original narrative.

Lastly, one significant benefit to the first-person narrative style of preaching is that the listener doesn’t hear from the preacher (me) directly. I am in no way able to make my own comments as “the preacher,” I am solely able to embody the character, and perform the narrative. In this way, I am allowing the hearer to hear the gospel through their own [postcolonial] lens, rather than being told what to take from the text (equated with more didactic methods of preaching). This preaching method heavily involves performance, as described by Kim-Craig in her book on Postcolonial preaching methodology (Kim-Craig 2021, Foreword). A thorough exegesis of the text is necessary: this determines what is said AND what is not said in the narrative (based upon what is and is not in the text). Additional thoughts of the main character are included in the narrative as well to attempt to further understand what is not said in the biblical text. Even if this text is previously unfamiliar to the listener, the pure narrative, 1st-person preaching method allows all to experience the gospel in a [new] way, in their context.