Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost: Joel 2:23-32; Psalm 65; 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18; Luke 18:9-14
I lived much of my life on the east coast of the US, where rain was usually regular but intermittent; I also spent long stretches of time working in Britain, which is generally known for regular rainfall. It was not until I moved to California with its specific seasons of rainfall that the scriptural passages that describe the bounty of rain really hit me. I now understand the magical transformation of the brown landscape to green when the rains arrive.
You visit the earth and water it abundantly;
you make it very plenteous; the river of God is full of water.
You prepare the grain, for so you provide for the earth.
You drench the furrows and smooth out the ridges;
with heavy rain you soften the ground and bless its increase.
Psalm 65:9-11
In the book of Joel, we are instructed to “be glad and rejoice” in the early rain, “abundant rain, the early and the later rain”. There will be a good harvest of grain and wine and oil. The damage done by pests will be undone. “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied”. This is a picture of abundance, of God’s bounty and generosity. There is every reason to “praise the name of the Lord your God”. The Lord will be in the midst of Israel, and the people will know that the Lord is their only God.
Yet this bounty is not the beginning of a stable or peaceful world. The consequences of this bounty and presence are not entirely what those in authority might want. The Lord’s spirit will be poured out on everyone, and “your sons and your daughters will prophesy”. Even slaves will receive God’s spirit. God’s spirit is not observing the usual hierarchy, but embracing everyone. This is a sign of the day of judgment: suddenly we have portents in the heavens and on earth. “The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood”. At this point “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”.
God’s abundance, in other words, does not just support the world as it is; it is a sign of radical transformation. God’s world is not our world. This passage from Joel was used by religious radicals during the Reformation to sanction preaching by ordinary people, especially women, but also uneducated men.
This same emphasis on God’s vision being different from that of the world is evident in the parable in today’s Gospel. Here we have two men praying at the temple. One is a pharisee, who carefully kept the laws. His prayer offers gratitude to God that he is not like others, but that he follows the laws given in the scripture. The tax collector, on the other hand, is off in a corner, asking God for mercy for his sins. Yet Jesus tells the disciples that it is the tax collector who is justified, “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
It is comfortable to think that God wants the world to be a better version of what we want it to be. Today’s readings warn us against that comfortable vision, drawing our attention to the ways following the Lord will turn the hierarchies of our world upside down. It is tempting to be like the pharisee, confident in our vision of the world and our place in it. What would it mean for us to see ourselves as the tax collector, woeful failures in following God?
Credit: http://www.bl.uk/learning/images/uk/crown/large2180.html