Rend Your Heart

The opening sentence in today's morning prayer service is from Joel 2:13,

"Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity."

The image I get in my head when reading this is of Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt at the beginning of a wrestling match. What does this action signify in the Jewish mind, though? In ancient Israel, rending (or tearing) your outer clothing was a sign of mourning. It demonstrated grief mixed with deep regret and was a ritual sign of heartbreak. It presents the mourner and those present with the ability to express their sorrow, in effect creating a sort of emotional opening for each person to release the feelings of his or her heart.

Joel was speaking to a rebellious people who used the action of rending their garments as proof of their devotion to the Lord. To the people around them they appeared to be repentant, but the condition of their hearts was a different matter. They fell into the trap that we see time and time again in our society of “fake it ‘til you make it.” We suppose that if we can fool everyone else into believing some lie about us, whether it be how secure we are, how pious we are, etc, we will eventually become what we desire. Sadly, we do not even know we are living this way until the fruit of our works is made known to us, through the Holy Spirit or other people. The truth of the matter is that we can only become who we were created to be as we die to ourselves more and more and allow the perfection of Christ to shine through us.

Each of us has reason to mourn and rend our garments. We lament our sinfulness in the presence of the Most High and cry out to Him to make us new in Him. Our hearts ache to be made whole and our souls sigh with longing to be loved. Sometimes we mourn the death of hopes and dreams we idolized. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death (2 Cor. 7:10).” If we act like the children of Israel and try and pretend we are repentant, but really are not, we actually hurt our own heart and God can see our pretense for what it truly is.
We can look to David, a man after God’s own heart and see what true repentance looks like. Psalm 51 resounds with the heart of the penitent and gives hope in verse 17: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Let each of us in this season of Lent come before our Maker with a broken spirit and a contrite heart so that the joy of our salvation may be renewed within us, for then and only then will we be empowered to show transgressors the Way, the Truth and the Life!