20th Sunday after Pentecost
October 27, 2019
Joel 2:23-32; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14
Happy Halloween! Next Sunday is All Saints’ Sunday, and
unlike other holy days, there isn’t much build up to it. Christmas has the four
weeks of Advent and Christmas Eve. Easter has the 40 days of Lent and then the
high holy days of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday. Pentecost gets
the count of 50 days after Easter. Epiphany follows the 12 days of Christmas.
But All Saints’ Sunday just kinda appears each year on the first Sunday of
November. Well, knowing that All Saints is next week, when I first read our
Scriptures for this morning, they made me think of a preparation for All
Saints, or All Saints Eve, if you will, except we already have an All Saints
Eve. It’s called Halloween, All Hallows Eve! Since our festivities on October 31 don’t involve
coming to church, we’re going to celebrate this morning.
The most obvious All Saints Eve text is the one from 2
Timothy. It’s debated whether Paul actually wrote the second letter to Timothy
near the end of his life or whether another author wrote it in Paul’s name
after his death. Either way, it describes Paul’s assessment of his life and
mission as they draw to a close. We know that at the end he was imprisoned in
Rome, which is where he died. Here in 2 Timothy, Paul seems quite aware that
his death is near. Listen to what he says, “I am already being poured out like
a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good
fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store
for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will
award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for
his appearing.” Isn’t that all the more any of us want to be able to say at the
end? I kept the faith. I finished the race. I lived a life worthy of the
calling I received from God (that’s from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians).
There are a couple ways Jesus puts it in Matthew 25.
First, from the parable Jesus tells about the 8 bags of gold, there is the
expectation that you will use wisely and invest in the talents that God
entrusted to you. Are you being faithful with what’s been entrusted to you? The
people God’s given you to love, the talents and abilities God gave you to
develop and use for his glory, and the material things given to you take care
of during your lifetime. Have you been faithful? Immediately after the story of
the talents, Jesus says it will be the time for the shepherd to separate the
sheep from the goats. I’m not sure why the goats get scapegoated, but the
questions Jesus asks here are about whether or not you loved your neighbor. Did you feed the hungry? Did you give something
to drink to the thirsty? When you saw a stranger, did you invite them in? Or
when you saw someone needing clothes, did you clothe them? Did you go visit those
who are sick and in prison? Because by doing those things, by showing love to
your neighbor in those concrete ways, you showed you love God. Jesus says, “Whatever
you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for
me.”
At the end of his life, Paul was confident that he had faithfully
completed his apostolic mission. He had gone to the places where God sent him.
He had proclaimed God’s word and shared the good news of Jesus Christ. He had
developed leaders, like Timothy, to come along after him. And he had done all
this even when facing not just possible rejection but for doing the work God
called him to he received beatings, whippings, imprisonment, at the end, is
facing death as a result of staying true to the calling God placed on his life.
We don’t all have the same calling. I don’t know that any of us here are called
to go around Asia Minor as a church planter. We’re here in western Howard
County. I’ve been called here, to serve with you. And as I look around and
listen and pray, I think God’s calling us specifically to a mission of
strengthening and nurturing families. How can we help the families in our
community so that they have healthy relationships with each other, so that they
are less overwhelmed, so that they have time to spend with each other,
nurturing their faith and opportunities to serve God as well? We’re off to a
good start. We’ve got wisdom and love in our pews and we’ve got some of us deep
in the trenches of raising children. When you’re done, at the end of your life,
will you also be able to say that you were faithful and you fulfilled the
calling God placed on your life?
Being faithful isn’t just actions but also in your words
and attitude toward God and towards others. In our Gospel lesson this morning
Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Jesus tells this
story specifically to people who are confident of their own righteousness and goodness
and looked down on everyone else, as in, people who think they’re better than
others. Their moral compass points to true North. Actually, it’s really easy to
judge the Pharisee in this story. He’s obviously the bad guy, the one with the
bad attitude. When I preached on this passage three years ago, in my previous
appointment, I pointed out the things that the Pharisees did right. They were
very disciplined. They prayed regularly. They tithed, which means they gave ten
percent of their income to the temple. And what the Pharisee seems to be
missing is someone to listen to him. He prays loudly, front and center at the
temple, to make sure not just God but other people hear him. Everyone needs
someone to listen to them. And just listen to listen. Not listen to fix or
listen to give advice or in one ear and out the other. No, a lot of people just
need someone to listen to them. They need to know that they’re heard. They need
to know that they matter. Maybe that’s the boat you’re in this week. If you
don’t know who else to call, call me. That’s part of my calling as pastor is to
listen. For all of us saints, however, are you listening to others? Are you
faithful in your listening?
As
for praying, the tax collector offers a model prayer, sometimes called the
Jesus prayer. “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” We talked last month about the
Greek phrase for it, “Kyrie Eleison,” Lord, have mercy. Are you praying that? Both
for yourself and for others? Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord, have mercy
on my brother and sister who are hurting. If you find yourself at a loss for
words when you’re praying, try those two sentences and stay faithful in your
prayer life and in your listening, which are really the same thing.
Our last All Saints Eve passage is from
Joel. The second chapter of Joel is really fascinating. The first part of it
describes a plague of locusts, disastrous in any agricultural community. Then
comes the passage we read on Ash Wednesday at the beginning of Lent, “‘Even
now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and
weeping and mourning.’ Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the
Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and
abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.” And then comes this
promise that we read, a promise of abundance and of plenty and of being fully
satisfied and never hungry again. God promises repayment for the years that the
locusts have eaten and that we will know that “I am the Lord your God and there
is no other.” Then, included in our passage this week, at the end of the
chapter, is the description of the day when God will pour out the Holy Spirit
on all people. It’s the section we read and claim on the day of Pentecost, with
the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church. Ash Wednesday and
Pentecost all in one chapter, and even echoes of Jesus’ words in the Gospel of
John, when Jesus tells the woman at the well, “whoever drinks the water I give
them will never thirst,” and he says to the disciples, “I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never
be thirsty.” Ash Wednesday and repentance, just like the “Lord, have mercy on
me” prayer. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit on all people at Pentecost, and
we’re celebrating their lives next Sunday on All Saints. And this promise of
abundance and no more hunger, because a longed-for change is coming. Joel was
written around the year 400 BC, while God’s people were in exile. They’re
looking for the end. They’re looking for the promised land. And God promises
that God will do it. You see, the people cannot bring it about. We cannot save
ourselves. We cannot get ourselves out of exile on our own strength. But God
can do it and will do it. What is our God calling us out of exile to do and be in a
new promised land? (Because remember, we can’t go back. We covered that two
weeks ago.) Moving forward, I believe God is calling us to strengthen families.
Please join me in praying discernment both to affirm and then how to go about
it.
So, finally, in view of the coming All Saints Sunday, remember Hebrews 11.
It’s the role call of faith when all kinds of faithful saints are commended for
their faith: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Rahab, and the
list goes on. Yet, that chapter also says, “All these people were still living
by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only
saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners
and strangers on earth… These were all commended for their faith, yet none of
them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better
for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”
I
was reminded this past week that what we do is so counter-cultural, and the saints
who have gone before us knew it, and lived it. Life as a saint is
counter-cultural because we give shelter to strangers and food to the hungry
and we don’t do it because it’s a good thing to do or to make ourselves look
good! We do it because this guy, Jesus, tells us to. We do it because we
believe that loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves are the two
greatest things we can do. We come here every week to worship God and not
ourselves, which is quite countercultural in this egocentric day and age. Worship
is about God, not about us. Worship reorients us back to God, just like on Ash
Wednesday. We pray for God’s Spirit to be poured out on us again, just like on
Pentecost. And we live in a very countercultural way of believing in and
trusting God’s abundance and salvation. We don’t hold on tightly to our things.
Rather we know that everything we have has been entrusted to us by God and we
will be held accountable for being good stewards of them. Be encouraged to
finish the race. Stay faithful. Live a life worthy of the calling you received
from God. Amen.
