It’s Mother’s Day, and a sermon about divine judgement and locust plagues and starving animals probably isn’t what most of you came expecting today. But interestingly enough, the overall tone of the first chapter is not so different from some very common maternal phrases, like “sit here and think about what you’ve done”, “You can come back out when you’re ready to apologize and behave”, or “I hope you’ve learned your lesson”.

Today, we’re going to start with the first chapter, and as we read we’re going to see three specific types of calls to action: a directive to listen and tell, a directive to grieve, and a directive to repent; and each of these is followed by a description of the admittedly brutal circumstances that makes these actions necessary.