October 27, 2013
Joel 2:23-32
23O children of
Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for he has given the early rain
for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and
the later rain, as before. 24The threshing floors shall be full of
grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
25I 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.
26You shall eat in
plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has
dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. 27You
shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God
and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.
28Then afterward 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. 29Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will
pour out my spirit.
30I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth,
blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31The sun shall be turned to
darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD
comes. 32Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be
saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as
the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.
Sermon:
“The Spirit of Freedom”
I was
only a child when I heard the prophet Joel speak. I was in the marketplace buying grain for my
master. A slave at the age of 8, I had
no hope of ever seeing my family again.
His
first words were, “O children of Zion, be
glad and rejoice in the LORD your God!” What
an absurd thing to say. Even at 8, I
knew it was ridiculous. How was I
supposed to rejoice, as I carried grain that I would not get to eat, knowing
that spilling a single grain would result in harsh punishment by my master? I did not even know what it was to be glad
anymore: each day was as monotonous and harsh as the one before it, and I had
no reason to believe it could change.
But for
some reason, though it would mean my master’s anger at me taking too long to
return, I stayed there, in that marketplace and listened. His words were like water in the parched
places of my soul.
“God
has given the early rain for your vindication, has poured down for you abundant
rain. The threshing floors shall be full
of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” he
said.
I wasn’t sure what ‘vindication’ meant, but I did
know what grain, wine and oil meant. I
was nearly starved, and thought with anger that a child should not have, “What
good does all that do me?? I’ll still go
hungry and invisible.”
But then he said, “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the
LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never
again be put to shame.” YOU shall
eat in plenty and be satisfied. That
meant me. I almost dropped my master’s
bag of grain in shock at such a statement.
I felt like he was talking directly to me: the dirty, barefooted 8-year
old slave.
Where did he get these ideas? He said I wouldn’t be put to shame
again. Could he know the shame that I
carried around every waking moment, the shame of being unable to stop those
horrible Babylonians from breaking my family apart and taking my sisters and
brothers and even my parents into slavery?
My shame had been with me so long, I didn’t even know how I would feel
without it.
People started laughing at that prophet Joel at
this point. “What nonsense!” they
shouted. Some even threw the rotten
fruit from the market at him. But he
only became more determined. There was a
fire in his eyes that told me that this was no ordinary man, and that my life
depended on hearing what he had to say.
Picking up a rotten fig that had been thrown at
him, I gobbled it down greedily, and kept listening.
“Then afterward 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.” That Spirit sounded comforting and real. But I was not a son anymore, I thought
bitterly. My family was gone. I belonged to no one. I was no one.
The small flicker of hope he had stirred in me went out again, and I
turned to leave. His words were not for
me – an 8 year old slave boy.
I’m not
sure if he saw me struggling to shuffle away with my heavy bag of grain or if
that Spirit he spoke of told him to speak, but his next words stopped me dead
in my tracks:
“Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my
spirit.”
Suddenly tears sprang to my eyes and I
turned. I noticed that the marketplace
had grown very still all of a sudden.
Slaves were dropping their heavy purchases for their masters, and for
the first time in a very long time, standing up straight. I let my bag of grain fall to my feet and did
the same.
God’s Spirit poured on us? Even uttering such words in a public place
could have gotten him killed. In fact,
several merchants’ faces grew dark with rage and they started muttering to one
another.
I remember my mother teaching me about the great
God of our people, Yahweh. I remember
hearing that he had taken my ancestors out of slavery once very long ago in
Egypt. I remember that they had been led
by a pillar of smoke and flame in the wilderness, and how the sky, the sky, had
rained food! But that God could not be
around anymore. I considered those old
stories fairy tales, things people just told themselves to feel better.
Perhaps Yahweh used to do great signs and wonders
and miracles, but not now. Now, we were
all broken, hopeless, scattered, alone.
That God was gone.
Except that there was Joel, refusing to be
silenced by the merchants. As they tried
to seize him, he shouted even louder:
“I
will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns
of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before
the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. Then everyone who calls on the
name of the LORD shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall
be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be
those whom the LORD calls.”
At the mention of “survivors” and “escape”
something amazing happened. All of us
slaves, who were so accustomed to being silent and invisible, started
shouting. I was astounded to hear my
8-year-old voice crying out with theirs.
It was a primal cry: full of the anger of broken
families, the heartache of occupation, the despair of feeling abandoned as a
people. But it was also a cry of joy:
his message made no sense, but somehow we knew it was true. We knew that God’s Spirit would come and
bring us freedom because even then, in that moment, our souls felt more free
than they had in years.
I never saw Joel again, but I can guess what sort
of sticky end he came to. After he was
dragged away, we all took up our loads again, only now they didn’t seem so
heavy. Though those slave burdens could
be felt in our hands and on our backs, they didn’t seem real anymore. What was real, in this world of despair and
abuse of power, was Joel’s words. A
Spirit would be poured on all of us, a Spirit that would bring us a freedom
unlike any we had ever known, and we could already feel it beginning.
When I returned to my master, clearly very late,
he hurt me. He called me “worthless
slave” and kicked me. He told me I was
“nothing.” But though my ears heard
those words and my body was bruised, there was something within me now that he
couldn’t touch, something Joel’s words had put there. It was hope.
Before I met Joel, I thought that the most
powerful force in the world was despair. I saw how it stamped down our people, until we
were breathing but not really alive. I
saw how the slave owners used it to make us feel weak and less than human. But I was wrong. Despair is not the most powerful force in the
world: hope is.
It was completely foolish to hope that there
would be a day when we wouldn’t be slaves anymore, when God’s Spirit would be
poured on all of us, when there would be enough food for all. But hope is always a bit foolish, isn’t
it?
And that sort of foolishness makes all the
difference in the world. Which I suppose
is why Joel was willing to give his life for it. Trusting that God’s Spirit wasn’t just
something of the past, but was alive and freeing us from what enslaved us, even
now, was foolish. Believing that a day
of liberation was coming was foolish.
But, I’ve come to believe that God works in
foolish ways on purpose. You see, this
world thinks it is so very wise, with its ways of getting power by pushing
others down, of some eating and drinking too much just because they can,
knowing full and well that others go hungry.
Wisdom in this world allows children to be enslaved in civil wars or in
cocoa plantations or in families that don’t love them. Wisdom in this world says that God only helps
those who help themselves, and God loves the important best.
So of course, God’s Spirit must be foolish:
foolishly poured out equally on everyone, foolishly mocking the ways of greed
and power, foolishly hopeful in the face of despair.
There’s something I learned as a child slave, and
that is that everyone is a slave, in one way or another. Some as enslaved by people desperate for
power. Some are enslaved by the need to
be important or right. Some are enslaved
by addiction, worry or fear. And nearly
all of us are enslaved by despair, something we carry around like I carried
that heavy sack of grain in the marketplace, assuming we’ll never be able to
let it go.
But I’ll tell you what Joel told us that
day: The Spirit of God is upon you, and
that Spirit is more real that your despair.
So, let it go. Throw it down,
stand up straight, and know that you are not invisible to God. And know that no one else is, either, even
those who seek to keep you down.
When freedom finally came, as I knew it would, it
didn’t feel as dramatic as I thought it might.
I realized that God’s Spirit had already stirred a freedom within me,
even as I was still enslaved. Mostly, I
was given freedom from anger and bitterness, freedom from thinking I deserved
God’s presence any more or less than anyone else.
“O children of Zion, be
glad and rejoice in the LORD your God,” Joel had said. It sounded foolish at the time, and it
was. But I say the same thing to you, in
the middle of whatever despair or worry enslaves you, “O children, be glad and
rejoice in the Lord your God” because God’s Spirit is with you, even now, and
will never leave you. You are free. Amen.
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