TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Gospel Reading: Luke 18:9-14

NOTES ON THE READINGS

Old Testament: Joel proclaims a promise of renewal to a people whose unfaithfulness has brought on a catastrophic degradation of the natural world. God has sent locusts to devastate the crops of God’s own people. Though the people brought this on themselves by turning away from God, God graciously promises not just to bring the punishment to an end, but to repay the people for the years of merited affliction. Early rains will come down like a healing balm, bringing forth an abundant yield of grain, wine, and oil. And in tandem with the renewal of the earth through the outpouring of the early rain, God will renew the people themselves by pouring out God’s spirit on all flesh. For Joel the restoration of Israel and the renewal of the earth are part and parcel of God’s final act of redemptive judgment. In his Pentecost sermon Peter interprets this passage from Joel as a prophecy of the descent of the Holy Spirit, constituting the Church as a body of prophetic witnesses. Our task in these “last days” between Christ’s resurrection and return is to live with renewed hearts and minds as citizens of God’s inbreaking dominion. 

Psalm: Like the reading from Joel, Psalm 65 juxtaposes sin, repentance, hope for redemption, and the natural order. But these common themes are treated, in these two texts, with substantial differences in emphasis. Sin and repentance, and the indispensability of God’s grace, take up two of the first three verses of the psalm. These verses introduce an essential theme, but the dominant theme from then on is joyful confidence in God’s promise of salvation, and God’s unfailing generosity in the abundant provisions of the natural world. As we contemplate, in the light of Joel’s preaching, the havoc our sin can wreak on the earth, we must not forget the earth’s resilience and the creative divine grace that sustains it. Acknowledgment of the wages of our sin, acceptance of God’s gracious forgiveness, true repentance (renewal of our hearts, minds, and lives), and gratitude for the resilience of the earth—all these are essential to a truly Christian response to the plight of the natural world.

Gospel: To condemn the Pharisee’s self-righteousness, and leave it at that, is to replicate the Pharisee’s mistake. We cannot open our hearts to this parable unless we recognize ourselves in both the Pharisee and the tax collector. Who among us has not puffed up our own ego by comparison with the supposed shortcomings of others? And who among us has not compromised our integrity and fallen short of our most treasured ideals, like the tax collector who collaborated with the Romans in the economic exploitation of his fellow Jews? The negative example set by the Pharisee is manifest in the text, but we have to use our imagination if we are to learn all that there is to learn from the positive example of the tax collector. Acknowledgment of our need for God’s forgiveness, and the receipt of that forgiveness, are only the first steps in the journey of true repentance. The tax collector’s justification puts him in a position to start a new life. He will lessen the distance between his behavior and his ideals. And his experience of forgiving mercy will make him forgiving and merciful with others.

Sermon Outline

1. The Wages of Environmental Sin: Joel interprets the devastation wrought by drought and locusts as divine judgments on Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. Climate change, which promises to be no less devastating, is not an act of God. But climate change does result from our idolatrous worship of material comforts, and our indifference to the suffering our reckless materialism inflicts on our fellow creatures, human and non-human alike. We have ravaged the earth God entrusted to our care, and we are reaping the consequences.

2. Resilience and Mercy: God judges the people in order to call them back into right relationship. The renewal of the covenant relationship of love and justice is reflected in the renewal of the earth. And just as God’s persistent love underlies God’s judgment, the abundant resilience of the earth, celebrated in the psalm for the day, is the deeper reality that persisted even through the trauma brought on by the people’s unfaithfulness. Today we witness the same resilience, and the same divine love and mercy, in the earth’s capacity to heal from the wounds we inflict on it.

3. From Repentance to Prophecy: God promises the people renewal of their spirits, in parallel with the renewal of the earth. In his Pentecost sermon Peter proclaims that the last days foreseen by Joel have been ushered in with the descent of the Holy Spirit. In this in-between time, which began with Christ’s resurrection and will end with his return, the members of Christ’s Body, the Church, have been anointed with that same Spirit of prophecy. And so we are sent to proclaim God’s abiding will for justice for the earth and for all whose lives depend on it.
 

4. Merciful Prophets: In the repentant tax collector, our gospel lesson gives us a model for our prophetic work, and in the self-righteous Pharisee, shows us a trap we must studiously avoid. Peter Pero has observed that “body of Christ is divided among active thieves, passive profiteers, and deprived victims.” Unless our congregation suffers directly from environmental injustice, we will most likely be preaching to passive profiteers, and maybe even an active thief or two. As we work for ecojustice, we must recognize our complicity in systemic injustice, and our own need for mercy and repentance.

SECTION FIVE:  ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

The resilience of the natural world can be made vivid with examples of successful rewilding and restoration projects. Examples can be found here https://bit.ly/RewildSuccess, among many other online locations.

The quote from Peter Pero is found on page 113 of Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, “Love Incarnate: Hope and Moral-Spiritual Power for Climate Justice” in Kiara A. Jorgensen and Alan G. Padgett, Ecotheology: A Christian Conversation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020). Moe-Lobeda’s essay is an excellent theological resource for ecojustice preaching.