Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost Year C
The prophet Joel knew that things were not as they should be.
He had a problem with bugs.
So many of the other biblical prophets had far more sensational situations to confront. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel were called upon to prophesy in the face of mounting threats from foreign empires; Amos courageously confronted the disconnect between religious participation and the demands of justice; Nahum took on Nineveh; Jonah got tossed into the sea; Hosea was forced to realize that his wife’s repeated forays into prostitution were a symbol of the people’s unfaithfulness to the God of forgiving love. From geopolitical events to sexual intrigues to being tossed into the sea while on a rather circuitous journey to Nineveh, the stories of the prophets are filled with so many fascinating experiences.
But not Joel. The problem that confronted Joel was bugs.
Joel’s land had been devastated by locusts. In chapter 1:4, we read,
What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.
And the devastating effects of those locusts touched every area of human life. There was no wine from the vineyards; there were no crops in the field; there was no produce to offer in sacrifice in the Temple; both people and animals were suffering with hunger. In chapter 1, we read,
The seed shrivels under the clods, the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are ruined because the grain has failed. How the animals groan! The herds of cattle wander about because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep are dazed.
Like a ferocious invading army, the locusts had attacked – and the land was suffering.
Things were not as they should be.
But Joel saw, in that calamity, a message from God. It was as if Joel discerned that creation was not in balance; that the locusts signaled a note of disharmony with God and with the natural world. And that sense of alienation from what should be, resulted in Joel’s prophetic musings about the message that God might be trying to convey through those troubling events.
In this, Joel was very much in line with his prophetic colleagues. One of the most amazing dimensions of the Hebrew prophetic imagination, in fact, was that the prophets saw, in the events of the world, the potential for meaning. When the prophets observed the actions of a foreign monarch, or the presence of corruption in the priesthood, or the devastation caused by an army of insects, they did not see mere chance or meaningless chaotic coincidence. Rather, they observed the events of history and listened to the natural world, and in them they heard the voice of God.
There are times, in the modern world, when we find their speculations rather naive. Ever since the enlightenment and the rise of reason and skepticism, we have considered the biblical worldview to be filled, at best, with wild imaginations and, at worst, with silly superstitions.
But before we dismiss the biblical prophets too quickly, we need to realize that we embrace a very similar view of the events of our world. Of all the animals on earth, we are the ones who seek to discern meaning and learn lessons from the events around us.
Consider the questions that we ask when calamities occur. Where was God when the tsunamis hit? What does an electrical power blackout teach us about modern culture? How should the environmental crisis influence our consumer buying habits?
And it is not only meaning that we seek. So often, we also seek to assign blame, just as the ancient prophets sought to do. The prophets blamed the idolatries of the people or the inadequate leadership of their kings and priests. We may not attribute blame in quite the same way, but we do continue to assign blame. When Hurricane Katrina occurred, we were not content to mourn the loss of life and accept that natural disasters occur. Instead, a torrent of recrimination ensued. Blame was attributed to bad engineering, incompetent political administration, global environmental shifts, the disparity between rich and poor, the evidence of continuing racism in the American South, poor urban planning, inadequate social assistance programmes and, according to one well-known television evangelist, Hurricane Katrina was a result of the sexually immoral behaviour of American culture. One event – but in its aftermath, so much blame, so much effort to derive lessons from the tragedy.
And Hurricane Katrina is not an isolated event. When we have summer-like temperatures into late October, or notice changes in the Arctic ice formations, or observe differences in the levels of rainfall, we live with the conviction that these changes are trying to tell us something about the world, and that someone is to blame. Since it is only insurance companies that refer to disasters as ‘acts of God’ anymore, we as a culture seek explanations in science rather than in faith – but in either case, there is something within us that wants to discern meaning. Certain streams of evolutionary philosophy might suggest that we live in a random and chaotic universe, but we are not content to assume that tragedies happen for no discernible reason. Like Joel, who connected the plague of locusts to the unfaithfulness of his people, we long to know why bad things happen.
Whether or not we are aware of it, such a longing is based on our assumption that there is a state of wholeness from which things have deviated when tragedy strikes. We share, with the ancient prophets, the conviction that a state of wholeness, peace and harmony – or what they would have referred to as ‘shalom’ -- is the way that things should be.
And, a lot of the time, we know that we are not living in that state of shalom. We know that we are not living in harmony with the natural world. We know that the disparity between rich and poor is a blight on our common humanity. We know that the exorbitant amount of money that we spend on military armaments is a crime. We know that the prevalence of abandoned children, violent street gangs, substance-abusing young people, depressed adults and forgotten seniors signals that the priorities by which we are constructing this human community are somehow deeply flawed. We know our lives, as individuals, and as a human community, are alienated from God, from each other, and from the natural world.
And we know that this is not as it should be.
The biblical prophets were not, however, simply harbingers of doom. Rather, one of the greatest gifts that they offered to us was their incredible ability to sing songs of hope in moments of despair.
Today’s reading from Joel is a part of his song of hope.
“O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God,” we read, followed by wonderful poetic descriptions of early and abundant rains, threshing floors filled with grain, vats overflowing with wine and oil, and a time of promised restoration.
I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you.
The devastation would not last forever. The alienation would be overcome. And then, in verse 28, the promise of a new spirit is offered –
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves in those days, I will pour out my spirit.
In those days, wrote Joel, God’s spirit would replace the devastation with abundance; the alienation between humanity, God and the natural world would come to an end. Reconciliation would take place, shalom would be restored, and things would be as they should be.
As Christians, we commonly interpret this passage, from Joel, in light of the events that took place on the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit of God was poured out upon the gathered community of Christ’s followers. In fact, in Acts chapter 2, Peter directly quotes from this passage from Joel – about the outpouring of God’s Spirit – as a way of explaining, to the crowds, that the followers of Jesus were not, in fact, drunk, but just excited.
But what was the consequence of the coming of that Spirit at Pentecost?
That Spirit propelled those early followers of Jesus out into the world with good news to declare. It was a message that has continued to be proclaimed by the followers of Jesus throughout the centuries. It is a message of hope rooted in God’s reconciling love.
The apostle Paul wrote about the power of that message of hope and reconciliation in his second letter to the Corinthians.
If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself…and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
And the need for that message is as real, today, as it ever was.
To all of us, who are so often aware of the alienation that besets human life, the Gospel dares to proclaim that these divisions – from God, from each other, from the creation – can be overcome. Reconciliation is possible.
Today is Reformation Sunday. One of the most important emphases of the Reformation was a renewal of the idea of the priesthood of all believers. We are, together, a priesthood of believers, saved not from the world, but for the world. We are not God’s only beloved creatures, divine favourites in some exclusive little club. In Jewish tradition, a priest did not exist for himself, but for the sake of the community around him; in the same way, a priesthood of believers is for the service and the benefit of the world.
This biblical idea of the priesthood of all believers is not simply a way to democratize the church; nor is it a way of breaking down any tendency towards hierarchy; nor is it simply a way to keep the clergy off of our priestly pedestals of perceived power. The idea of the priesthood of all believers is not about our rights, but about our responsibilities.
And what are those responsibilities? Each and every one of us is called upon to participate in the reconciliation of this world to God. As witnesses to the power of the resurrection, we are called to declare, in word and deed, that the reign of God has begun; or, as Paul once wrote, we are all called to be ambassadors of the reconciling love of God at work in this world.
And how do we accomplish the responsibilities that are set before us? We shape our lives in response to the commands of Jesus Christ – we strive to live by the principle of forgiveness; we extend love to the unloveable; we do not return evil for evil, but overcome evil with good; we challenge injustice, prejudice and hatred with the power of God’s reconciling love. We care for creation, knowing that we are called to be its stewards, not its masters. We root our spirits in those moments of prayerful contemplation that remind us that reconciliation with God is not just an idea, but an experience.
Reconciliation stands at the heart of the Christian tradition. Not only is confession and the assurance of God’s forgiveness -- which is a fundamental part of Christian worship – often referred to as the ‘rite of reconciliation’; but it is often followed by the sharing of the peace of Christ, which reminds us that we cannot accept God’s peace, forgiveness and reconciling love without also living in a state of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation with those around us.
But the Church’s work for reconciliation goes far beyond that one moment in Christian liturgy. Rather, Christians are at the forefront of movements for reconciliation in this world. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was directly dependent upon principles articulated by Christian leaders. Work for reconciliation between native and non-native people in our country is a major concern in the modern church. In the prison systems of our country, one of the most fascinating dimensions of the work of chaplains is a movement towards a more restorative vision of justice, not based in punitive measures but in the hope of reconciliation between offenders, their victims, and the wider community. And that initiative – which has had profound effects both on the safe and healthy reintegration of offenders and on the healing of their victims -- can be directly traced to the influence of the Christian theology of reconciliation. I have a good friend, a prison chaplain, who worked for a long time both with an offender and his victim, until the day when the victim and offender sat, in the same room, and confronted each other. In that moment, the power of the offender over the victim was broken; and though it was a difficult and painful journey towards that moments, tremendous healing occurred because of that work towards reconciliation.
But how, it might be asked, are we supposed to accomplish these challenging goals?
We depend upon that Spirit into which we are baptized, which is none other than the Spirit about which Joel spoke – a Spirit that would be poured out upon all, from the greatest to the least, to help us to overcome the alienation and to restore the harmony between God and the world.
But, as those of you who paid close attention to this reading Joel will have noticed, there are difficult words towards the end of the passage. Joel declared that the coming of that day of reconciliation would not be all peace and light. The prelude to that day of the release of God’s reconciling Spirit would be, according to Joel, a day when the sun would be darkened, portents would be seen in the earth and sky, and all of creation would seem to be crashing in upon itself.
As Christians, we believe that this reconciliation that we proclaim came at a terrible cost. For us, the crucifixion was that great and terrible day when, as the Gospel narratives recounted it, the sun was darkened and creation seemed to torn apart.
But we nonetheless believe that the cross still stands as the eternal symbol of God’s reconciling love. It is the place of reconciliation – the place where victim and offender, divinity and humanity, eternity and mortality, glorification and crucifixion, heaven and hell, hatred and love, judgement and grace, condemnation and forgiveness, life and death all come together. It is the place where the ultimate alienation – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” gave way to the promise of reconciliation – “into your hands I commend my spirit” -- and the power of God’s reconciling love triumphed over the forces of alienation. “He is not here; he is risen from the dead.”
But even though we know that the cross stands at the very center of our understanding of God’s reconciling work, we also know that it cannot be fully explained – it is a mystery, a scandal, a stumbling block. But, as Christians, we cling to that mystery, for in it, we somehow know that it is at the heart of God’s reconciling purposes.
And we not only cling to that mystery – we set it at the heart of our spirituality. We preach Christ crucified. We ponder and we proclaim the mystery of our faith – that Christ died; that Christ rose; and that Christ will come again.
And when that day comes, we believe that all things, in heaven and on earth, will enter a state of eternal reconciliation. We believe that it will be a time when devastation and destruction will be past, when injustice and oppression will be swallowed up forever, when mourning and crying and pain will be no more, when death itself will be ended and every tear will be wiped from every eye.
We believe that, in those days, God’s reconciling purposes will be ultimately fulfilled -- and all things will be as they should be.
And as they shall be, world without end, Amen.