POUR DOWN LIKE WATER Twenty-second after Pentecost
October 24, 2010
Joel 2:23-32
Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
I feel like I should begin this sermon, like Butch and Etta in the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” by riding around on a bicycle and singing “raindrops keep falling on my head.” Because the scriptures for today refer to water pouring down out of, and full of, God’s abundance. And even the hymn we sang before the scriptures, “Jesus shall reign” could be about water if we spell “reign” a different way!
In the reading from the First Testament, the prophet Joel has summoned the people of
But, as John Calvin said, God promises “life to us in death and light in the darkest grave.” So Joel announces that there is going to be a turn of fortune for the people. In place of a wasteland, there is going to be a “new creation” in the form of a bumper harvest which is a gift from God, a sign of God’s benevolence, mercy and grace. Drought will give way to rains. Grain, wine, and oil will abound. And this abundance has a divine purpose—so that the people will know God—not as punisher, but as divine giver.
In the first Genesis story of Creation we are told that “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” This is the breath of God, breathing life into all that is. God’s Spirit hovering over the whole process of Creation. Now Joel is talking about a new breath of God, a new wind and fresh gift of God’ Spirit. And it will be poured out on everyone. All flesh will receive the Spirit but especially the powerless—the young, the old, the slaves, both male and female.
And then the final days will come. They are described graphically in the reading but if we take the concept of the end times in the whole context of the passage, it will be a time of abundance.
In our time, it seems to me that we are more inclined to nod our heads to the violent description of the end times and give silent assent to that being the way things will be—they are surely going that way. We’re more inclined to believe that description than to believe what precedes it—God pouring out abundance on us.
On Thursday night at the study group we were talking about why these so-called “New Atheists” were writing and receiving such wide-spread attention at this time. One of the reasons may be that we are living in times of such despair that people are full of fear and looking for someone or something to blame—in this case, religion. And something to save them—in this case, science. The fact that the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket—with terrorism, ecological disaster, economic collapse and so on—is the fearful reality of our days. And Joel’s “blood, fire and columns of smoke,” the sun being turned to “darkness” and the moon to “blood,” resonates more with us when we see the way we seem to be headed.
We tend to predict trouble. Joel is trying to convert us to predicting joy. The terrible apocalypse is juxtaposed to a happy ending, using symbols of wheat, water and full vats to describe what God is going to do in the world. Bad things have happened, and may continue to happen, but they will not last. We are to be fed, not destroyed, in God’s future.
Henry Beston, an American writer and naturalist, who wrote a book in 1925 called The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod was asked what he discovered during this time. He said that we should “learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it.” We should go out at night and stare at the cosmos. And what he meant was that so often we overdo tragic interpretations when all around us beautiful stars exist in the dark. Our imagining into the future is too often fearfully bleak.
We have allowed ourselves to become prisoners of the darkness. And once someone has become a prisoner of darkness—instead of enjoying the night—everything looks bad—even the good stuff. Ice cream is no longer a treat. It is full of fat or calories or a symbol of an undisciplined life.
Who are we to limit God to the dark of the night rather than the stars? What if God is about to do something good and we miss it because we are too scared to look? What if God is about to pour down, rain down countless blessings on us and our world and we can’t see it, can’t accept it, are suspicious of it because our vulgar fear of the darkness has blinded us?
Another interesting thing about the Joel reading for Christians is the symbolism he uses for God’s abundance—water, oil, grain and wine. These are our sacramental symbols—water and oil for baptism, grain and wine for communion. They are our symbols because Jesus used them that way for us. And Jesus used them that way precisely because they are symbols for God’s abundance. As Christians, we are baptized into abundance and eat and drink abundance together. Why do we so often forget that?
And then we turn to the psalm for today, Psalm 65. This psalm may have been written immediately following a drought. A once-parched land is now lush because God has heard the prayer of a petitioning people. In this it harkens back to the Joel reading. It begins with our need for, and God’s provision of, forgiveness. God doesn’t need our repentance and forgiveness to create beauty and bounty. God does this out of unconditional love for all that is. But we need them so that we can experience fully the beauty and bounty that God provides, so that we can know God’s deliverance from the darkness.
And once again the unconditional faithfulness of God is described by the powerful metaphor of water. Water, which is the difference between life and death. The earth is enriched by the gardener God who waters the earth. Grain is produced in the earth because there is a
Raindrops, floods even, are surely falling on our heads.
But have you noticed something about both of these readings? Aside from sitting there getting soaking wet, I mean. While they are both about God unconditionally providing us with abundance, we also have some responsibility in this. We have to be in tune with God in order to know the abundance. We have to clear away the dark blinders that are over our eyes. We have to look for the light, not in a Pollyanna-ish way, not for expedient, short-lived happiness, but for real joy. We have to be prepared to see it.
And when we turn to the reading from 2 Timothy, we notice something else. This New Testament book may not have been written by Paul himself, but it was certainly written by someone who knew him well and can accurately describe how Paul must have been feeling as he sat in a Roman prison, awaiting what was sure to be a violent end to his life. But he’s not spending his time whining and regretting. He knows he has fought the good fight and finished the race.
And as Paul looks back on his life, he offers a powerful image of his ministry as self-gift through the use of the metaphor of “libation.” A libation isn’t just a drink. A libation is a liquid, wine or oil, that is offered to a god or in honour of someone. Paul doesn’t use a pouring-out image that suggests wastefulness; he doesn’t feel his life has been wasted because of the end he is facing. Rather, he uses an image of a life-giving water or wine. Paul is departing this life, preparing to die, and yet the term he chooses for his poured-out self is an image of renewal and refreshment, an image of life. Paul’s life and ministry were a drink offering that was being “poured out” for God’s people.
And so should our lives be. We have not been given God’s abundant water in order to hoard it for ourselves. Everything we have and are has been given to us to enable and encourage and inspire us to live in ways that share God’s abundance with all of the Creation that was made to be abundance.
Again, harking back to the hymn, “Jesus shall reign.” And let’s for a moment use the incorrect spelling and say that “Jesus shall rain”—Jesus’ life and example showing us that we, too, can rain down as God’s love and abundance throughout our lives. If blessings are to abound, all God’s children must seek to release prisoners who are enchained by oppression, violence, illness and their own darkness; they must make the changes necessary to give rest to those who are weary in body, mind and soul because of too much work, too much worry and too much despair; they must look for ways to make the world more just so that no one lives in physical or emotional want. We have a joint responsibility with God to make the world a place where God’s rain can reign. For we do not do this alone, ever. We are standing in the rain of God’s love, support and abundant life.
And so…. “…be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has…poured down for you abundant rain….The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” For God is “the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.”