Speaker: Caleb Schrock-Hurst
Bible Passages: Joel 2:12-13,28-29; Luke 11:9-13
Summary: The prophet Joel tells us that in later days God will pour out his spirit on all people — we should remember that we are empowered, after Jesus’s day, to ask and answer hard questions. We should be present to the needs of the world, and ready to act to answer those needs.
Good morning everyone, happy Advent! Good to be with you, I’m happy to be out of my ankle boot as of this past Tuesday, it is great to be walking freely again after a year of low-grade pain and eight weeks of recovery post-surgery; thanks for your prayers and your support.
Today is the second Sunday of Advent; and I find Advent such an interesting time in the church year — like Lent, it is this season of waiting before a joyous holiday, and specifically waiting that is meant to be a bit of a reflection on darkness, and loss, and our need for God. Advent feels appropriate right now — the whole world seems to be on edge, waiting, and just when we think things can’t be more unpredictable a new news story or new tragedy strikes us or our communities. Waiting for God as the world seems stranger and darker each day is the right step for today — but it’s also understandable that we sometimes don’t even know what to ask God for; but sustained waiting is part of what allows the right questions to crystalize, and asking the right questions is often more important than finding the right answers. We need to embrace this strange season together.
Yet, Advent is a little strange outside of the religious world — why would we take a month to ponder our weakness, the needs of the world, and our need for God, when we could just jump straight to the fun and good news of Christmas?
Yes, having the children’s program this morning maybe proves my point a bit — that Advent is a harder to celebrate well than Christmas — and while we do look ahead to Christmas, may we also, today and the next two Sundays, sit in darkness together for a while, wrestling with the brokenness of the world, looking for God.
And, as the puppet show put it, if we look on our own accord we probably won’t view the world accurately — to put it another way, without the guidance of community, of scripture, and of the spirit, do we really know what to ask God for? So much of the bible is about the people of faith thinking they have God, and the world, figured out, thinking they’ve solved the problems in society one way or another, thinking they know what to ask God for. But the story of the bible is God consistently sending messengers — like the prophets — to help the people see better — help them see how they are failing to reach the future God has prepared for them, helping steer them towards asking the right questions, of themselves, of God, and of their society.
So, this morning, we’ll be talking about opening our hearts to God and the needs of the world, about asking better questions in our season of waiting, and about God empowering us through the spirit to answer some of those questions. But first — let’s spend a little time with the prophet Joel.
Joel and the other biblical prophets tend to do two things at once — comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. We should try to ask questions in this vein — questions about economic inequality, societal injustice, rejection of God’s way, and so many more. The prophets root their questions in a rich imagination and hope — they are able to imagine and articulate a better future, of societies more aligned with God’s vision of life — this is the spirit of prophecy that Joel tells us will one day be poured out on all people.
But Joel, unlike many of the other prophetic books, was not written to critique one Hebrew monarch or another; Joel doesn’t name any time period or specific king to receive his warning — rather, Joel stands as a timeless picture of the people of faith, with both a warning and invitation: Joel offers the warning that Godless and unjust societies will receive God’s unwavering judgement for their sins; but he also offers the invitation that when societies turn towards God and seek righteousness, they will be met not with the judgement they may deserve from their past actions, but instead with boundless grace and forgiveness. This promise holds true for us too — no matter how far we’ve wandered, when we turn towards God, as individuals and communities, we will be welcomed by grace.
The first two verses we read from Joel today — about God being slow to anger and abiding with love — come just after Joel has laid out an apocalyptic picture of a corrupt and unjust society failing to live up to God’s will, beset by an army so numerous it resembles a swarms of locusts. The Advent lectionary has us skip this part, but the locusts, just as Joel’s promises, are also timeless — while we will meditate on Joel’s promises in a second, in this time of Lent, may we also ask questions about the locusts of our own world, besieging people of peace — companies that put profit over people, governments that put corruption over good governance, people who embrace individual success and indifference to evil rather than communal healing and justice. Just as God’s promises of grace endure forever, human failings and the frailness of society remain remarkably consistent from Joel’s time to today.
But something is different between Joel’s day and our own — Joel views sin and repentance and grace as communal things, while we tend to view them as individual things. Joel speaks of sinning communities; we too often speak of sinning individuals.
Joel lays out a vision of the communal nature of sin and repentance: all parts of society — all parts of the society of God’s people, remember — bear responsibility for the injustice in their midst. He points towards eventual communal repentance and restoration; he envisions God’s people admitting their collective guilt, and receiving collective grace. Joel doesn’t suggest that individuals turn to God, but rather that whole societies need to turn together toward right living. Hear Joel 15-17: Blow a horn in Zion, solemnize a fast, proclaim an assembly! Gather the people, bid the congregation purify themselves. Bring together the old, Gather the babes and the sucklings at the breast, let the bridegroom come out of his chamber, the bride from her canopied couch.”
In other words, Joel is urging everyone to turn and be reconciled to God together — all parts of society bear guilt for the injustices of their day, and all parts of society can change their ways and return to God, and receive God’s grace.
And this builds to the beautiful and unique promise of the later verses we heard this morning — in the later days, the days after the messiah has come, it will not just be the priesthood, or the elites, or the prophets who are connected to God, but all parts of society — God will draw near to normal people — normal people, like us, will have direct access to the goodness and the grace of God. In the Old Testament world, prophecy and dreams and visions were the main ways people connected with God, but typically only prophets and priests could do so — but here, God is promising to draw closer, and to grant this connection to all the people who follow him. Hear these verses again: In those days,
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit.
Everyone will have access to the grace and power of God — not just the wealthy and educated, but the poor and needy; not just men, but women, not just adults, but children; not just landowners, but servants, slaves and wage-workers. God’s presence with us will break down these hierarchies, and put us on an even plane — beloved and empowered children of God. This promise is foreshadowing Jesus’s birth — that God will break down the walls of hostility, the veils of confusion and darkness and doubt that we now live under, and come to live as one of us; more close to us than any Old Testament Hebrew could have imagined.
And the promise is specific — dreams and visions and prophecy all have one thing in common, even from our non-Pentecostal viewpoint: they are about the future. When we have an understanding of the future — when we know what we’re living for, when God is speaking into the future of our lives — this is what gives us a sense of purpose and hope even amidst the darkness. This is the spirit of advent.
Now, as Christians, we live in the now and not-yet; heirs to the promise of Jesus birth, death, and resurrection, that the word became flesh and dwelled among us; but in Advent we remember that we also are in the not-yet — we are still waiting for the kingdom that has come near to fully break forth. So, while we wait for this outpouring of the spirit to be made even more complete, what do we ask for? We ask again for God to, in the words of Paul, break down the walls of hostility between people, and between us and God; we ask God to pour out his spirit of life on us, so that we may be agents of reconciliation in the world. And, from the gospel of Luke, we have the assurance that God hears our questions.
This brings us to our passage from the book of Luke. This passage is all about asking the right questions and expecting a good answer from God; it reminds us that God is waiting to answer us with good news, waiting to empower us with the spirit.
One of the underlying themes of both Joel and Luke is grace — that God is, fundamentally a God of mercy, offering good things to all people who seek him, no matter their past mistakes. Next week, interestingly, we’ll take a look at a different core characteristic of God — justice. Now, we should acknowledge that these ideas are actually a little bit in tension — can God be 100 percent merciful, and 100 percent just? In the seminary world, I’ve heard this question asked: is God just because he is merciful, or merciful because he is Just? I would fall in the earlier camp — that the biblical picture of God, and Jesus’ life, clearly shows us that God doesn’t delight in punishment but instead rejoices in forgiveness— and we, followers of Jesus, need to share this delight in forgiving wrongs and building others up.
If we return to the image I shared from Karl Barth in my last sermon — that we need to go through life with the bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other — we will have ample opportunity to offer forgiveness and ask the right questions about what we can do to bring the kingdom a little nearer. Informed by God’s promises, we walk in a world in need, asking how we can be God’s hands and feet in the world. However — we know some of the reality of not always wanting to ask the hard questions, because it might fall to us to be the answer!!
Recently, I was chatting with a friend about the direction of a Mennonite organization — he’s on the board — and we came up with a big idea we were both really excited about. I asked him if he would ask a question to that effect at their next board meeting, and after pondering awhile, he said, clearly indicating he didn’t plan to, ‘well, if I ask that, I’m going to have to be the one to answer it.’ I think we’ve all been in some version of that situation! Often, God empowers us to be the solutions to the problems we see — but then, afraid of the responsibility or change in our lives that may entail, we choose not to fully engage with the problems around us — we choose not to ask questions. This, in a strange way, bears out Jesus’s promise from Luke — that God has poured out his spirit such that we can often answer the questions we have if we’re willing; as Gandhi put it, we can be the change we wish to see in the world, but we have to be willing to try; too often, we aren’t sure if we’re really ready for those dreams and visions that the spirit gives us.
But lately, I’ve been sitting with the problem throughout the church, and really throughout all of society, that we seem to all be stretched a little thinner than we used to be; jobs are harder to fill, volunteer position openings seem endless, and there is seemingly no end of the needs of our neighbors and in our own lives. It is good to notice these problems and the problems of our neighbors — not to cut ourselves off from the pain of the world and the pains of others — but we must pair that with the assurance that God is good and wants the best for us; that God is with us in the struggles.
Though we do wait in darkness this advent, we also rest in the goodness of God, the promise of Jesus’s coming, and the assurance that God has come near: the spirit is empowering us with dreams and visions of a better future for us to pursue, and our heavenly father knows the good plans in has in place for us, both as individuals and as communities. We must keep our hearts open to see where God wants us to work, and structure our lives so that we can live towards the visions God has given us.
For our last section today, with this question of seeing the needs around us in mind, I want to think about asking better questions ourselves — what do we ask for?
Asking good questions, as I stated earlier, is often more important than finding the right answers. This is actually born out in a lot of professions as well — one of the main skills of therapists (and pastors!) is asking the right questions, like, ‘how does that make you feel?’
From emotions to institutions, even to academics, asking the right questions is one of the key skills needed for success in leadership, in making friends, and even in connecting to God.
I’ve got two suggestions for asking better questions — asking why questions, rather than what questions; and then asking ‘how’ questions once whys are found.
First — we should ask ‘why’ questions, not what questions. When we’re looking to understand something or someone, we should always look at their motives — understanding why someone does something is usually much more generative than simply understanding what they are doing. This is part of what allows us to love our enemies, for once we know their motives — once we’ve asked them why — we usually find a lot of common ground and can offer peaceful and more constructive routes towards a better future for all.
If we ask ourselves our own why — if we come to understand why, say, we’re angry at our family and thanksgiving meals always blow up and everyone feels annoyed — then we can often diffuse our anger and live constructively together. Knowing our own whys as Christians — why do we help the poor and needy? Why do we gather to worship? Will lead us to richer understanding, and give us better motivation.
Last week I came across an example of the importance of knowing our why at all levels of organizations — at elite hospitals across the country, great care is given to orienting janitors to the fact that they aren’t just mopping floors: they are directly improving outcomes for patients by maintaining a clean and safe environment for patients and doctors. They know they’re why — they are an integral part of the team — and it makes work that could seem dull instead extremely meaningful.
The same applies to us — when we understand and remember our why as people of God — a world at peace with God and one another — we will have the energy to do work that some may not understand as meaningful. With the right why — serving the kingdom of God — we can endure almost any what.
This brings us to my second suggestion for asking better questions — once a strategy, or why, is identified, we can switch our questions, and start asking ‘how’ questions.
One of my all-time favorite book series, The Ender Saga, which begins with the fairly famous sci-fi book Ender’s Game, at some point makes the point that ‘amateurs worry about strategy; professionals worry about logistics.’ Very often we argue about the strategy we should be taking to improve the world so much that we can completely forget about the logistics — if we get so consumed by making sure we have the right strategy, rather than thinking about the logistics of simply sharing and living the gospel in our communities, we will have missed opportunities God has put in place for us to show love to others. We should be quicker to ask ‘what can I do to help’ rather than ‘why should I help;’ we should ask ‘what does God’s presence with us empower us to do’ rather than ‘why is the world still broken?’ I don’t mean to dismiss these important questions which we should indeed ask, but if we keep waiting to fully understand God and the world before acting, then we’re going to be waiting, unfortunately, a very long time.
This is related to one of my favorite pithy comments — everyone wants a revolution; no one wants to do the dishes. So often our task as Christians is to do the dishes — to choose to go the extra mile at work, at home, at school, living in the hope that our giving will be multiplied by God. While we do not neglect pursuits for large-scale, institutional change, we must not forget that it all starts with doing the dishes — the small ‘hows’ of showing God’s love that are always before us.
To call back to Joel, I believe we’re enabled to do this because God has come near, and given us all visions of what God has in store — we’ve opened our hearts to the vision of Jesus, to healing and hope and healthy communities.
But — one question I find myself asking and trying to answer in many sermons these days is what we can do in the face of the brokenness of the world. First, I think simply naming that one of our tasks as Christians is to keep awake to the suffering of the world will make that task easier. Christians should be the first and loudest voices calling out the brokenness and sin of the societies in which we live — and the ‘powers that be’ will constantly tempt us, not into immediately agreeing with their methods of exploitation, but first into silence, and then into not even noticing the injustice at all.
Our first task, then, isn’t just to speak or act — but to live lives where we are aware of the needs of those less fortunate than ourselves. We live in a society that abhors pain, aging, and death — as Christians, we should choose to engage these things, and embrace the promise of advent — that God is gracious, good, and is doing a new thing among us.
Now more than ever, in times of domestic and international political uncertainty, we need to find rest in God and in the promises of Luke. I can’t always say how, but I trust that God is a good father, a good guiding force that is pushing us, as individuals and communities, towards something good. Our job is to continue pressing forward in faithfulness — in not hiding ourselves from the needs of the world, but grounding ourselves in the hope of God so that we can be God’s hands and feet, because we are in the days when God has poured out his spirit on us — a spirit of hope, of grace, and of reconciliation.
As we wait for Jesus’s coming again this Advent, we can rest in the good news that God’s promise of grace remains true — when we find ourselves living not for God and community and reconciliation, but for ourselves at the expense of others, we can turn and find God waiting for us with open arms. This is the essence of Jesus’s message — that God is good, waiting to offer us good things, waiting for us to seek first the kingdom of righteousness and fairness, where the wolf lies down with the lamb and the little child leads us. When we live implementing this kingdom of trust and hope and equality, God is there — and we wait for God’s coming, to bring dreams and visions and light even more fully into the world.
As we go, may we wait with the knowledge that though we may not always see it, God is indeed a good father, giving good gifts to those who open their hearts and ask, earnestly seeking a better future. God is with us, immanuel, gifting us all with the ability to dream dreams of a better future — may God give you your ‘why,’ so that you can live toward it; for the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Amen.
