Come Back to Me and Say My Land is Best

Reference: Joel 2:12-19

I will be focusing on three main words from that lesson, “Return to Me.” The Lord calls for us to return to him when we have gone astray and he will receive us with steadfast love. We hear much of this from the Gospel of John when Jesus refers to himself as the good shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I imagine what the voice of the LORD sounds like, I think about the Charlton Heston movie the 10 commandments with the voice of the Lord being deep, full, rich and slow. “Moses, Moses…” and when I think about that type of a voice I think about Treebeard…Treebeard is as many of you know from the magical land of Middle Earth, a land that JRR Tolkien writes about in his famed The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Treebeard is an Ent. An ent is a type of shepherd for trees, ents can walk and talk and do all sorts of things. They are strong, powerful, wise, and never hasty.

Now Treebeard appears in the second part of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and he is surprisingly quite the poet. We get a taste of one of his compositions in the movie, but not the whole thing, This composition tells of how the ents, all males, have lost the entwives, all females.
So keeping that in mind, here is the entire poem.

An excerpt from " The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien

ENT: When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough; When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow; When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!
ENTWIFE.: When Spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade; When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard laid; When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air, I’ll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.

ENT.: When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold; When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!
ENTWIFE. : When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown; When straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town; When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West, I’ll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!

ENT.: When Winter comes, the winter wild that hill and wood shall slay; When trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day; When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain I’ll look for thee, and call to thee; I’ll come to thee again!
ENTWIFE : When Winter comes, and singing ends; when darkness falls at last; When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past; I’ll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again: Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain!

BOTH : Together we will take the road that leads into the West, And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.

Now doesn’t that sound an awful lot like us? And I don’t mean our typical male/female romantic relationships, but rather a relationship we are all involved in together.
We know from Scripture that Christ is the bridegroom and we the church are the bride, so let’s pretend like Christ is the Ent and we are the Entwife.

Christ is calling us back, back to his land to his ways which are best. And we stand and argue saying “No thanks Jesus, I like where I am at here without you.” And we’re good through the Springs and Summers of life, until the winters of life come, the bitter wind, rain and cold. And in that time when we are in peril, before we call out for help or even realize we need help, Jesus is already on the lookout for us. Coming to us in our sin, coming to us in our stubbornness, and he finds us. As Paul says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
While we were still stubborn in our ways, loving our earthly things, God sent Christ into the world to take on sin, and sin’s punishment of death and Christ conquered them both and was raised from the dead.

Paul reflects on this firsthand on how it effected his life in 1 Timothy.

Reference: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

How beautiful. “But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”
How true, Christ as bridegroom shows his perfect patience to us his imperfect and ever impatient bride. And He comes after us, enters our world and saves us from the peril that most certainly would await us.

So how appropriate that we speak of this so near to the day of St. Valentine, who according to some was known for marrying people who weren’t supposed to get married for whatever reason.

And how fitting for us. There is no reason God should have chosen us, the church, to be Christ’s bride. We are so far below what Christ would deserve from a bride, and yet God decides to unite us in perfect union by the blood of our bridegroom, Jesus Christ.

This can be shown in another of Paul’s writings.

Reference: Colossians 1:17-23

And all that brings us back to the reading from the Prophet Joel, “Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD weep and say Spare your people O LORD and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations”

And indeed through Christ we are above reproach and we are at peace with God through Christ’s blood.

Delivered February 15, 2008