PROPER 25 (30) Twentieth Sunday after PentecostYear C October 23, 2022
Joel 2:23-32 and Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Luke
18:15-30 _
The prophecy we read in the
book of Joel today is good news for those who’ve been struggling. Hands up if you’d like to hear God saying to
you that He will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
and that you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied?
When I read it, this
wonderful promise, I think of a friend of mine for whom her whole adult life
has been framed with grief. And I pray
that this could be God’s word to her. Maybe
you have had a life, or a time in your life, that seems also framed with grief
or hardships. How would you feel to hear
God declare to you this day, that He will repay you with years of plenty for
the years you have suffered.
I get the feeling that Joel was writing to a people who were weary with grief and hardship. I think most of us can relate to that. The reading is an encouragement to persevere. God sees our pain and longs, with us, for the time when he can repay us for what the figurative locusts have eaten. We can take that prophecy as a word of God’s love for us. God knows our pain and our struggle.
Saint Paul was a man, well
educated. He was a Jew, but also a Roman
citizen. He was someone of high status, but he counted it all as loss compared
with knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection. The proof of this we see in the life of Saint
Paul as he willingly bore suffering to proclaim the message of the Gospel. We get the sense of grief in Saint Paul’s letter
to Timothy that we read today, as he tells of how his life has been poured out
and that no one came to support him and all deserted him.
In all this we come to
understand that, for Saint Paul, the riches of Heaven far surpass any suffering,
and are worth far more than a comfortable life.
We should be encouraged by his example to cultivate this vision and
understanding in our lives… but it is easier said than done. Our perceptions of how life should be,
sometimes gets in the way of seeing God’s hand.
On Friday night, while on
shift with Mackay Street Chaplaincy, we came across a lady who was more than
likely homeless… she had an accent – possibly English – and was 45 years old.
Our first interaction with
her was when we were setting up. The
team were talking about spiders and cockroaches. This lady had obvious mental health issues
and walked past the team. Over hearing
part of the conversation, she severely scolded the team for referring to people
as cockroaches. This was not what they
were doing, but there was no convincing this woman otherwise. Fast forward about a half hour and we found a
man who was unconscious. He seemed to be
simply asleep but we couldn’t wake him and we tried everything we could with
respect and caution. Suddenly this lady
walks up, and without any hesitation or invitation, rubs the man’s chest and he
wakes up. She continued to help us
assist him. I feel like we were lacking
in the gifts needed for that moment and God, most certainly was working through
that lady to assist us, even though, from our perspective, she probably needed
plenty of help herself.
We were being professional
and respectful of the man’s boundaries – which is not what he needed in that
moment, and the lady was not bound by our same sense of boundary. Her ability to simply see a need and act was
similar to a child, straightforward and simple.
Not to say it is the right thing to act impulsively, but the simple
acceptance to act on the prompting of God is a lesson we could all learn, and
what I see as Jesus’ encouragement in our Gospel reading today, to accept the
Good News like a child.
This lady was not bound by
riches either and was, in many ways, freer than most – she had nothing to
lose. She was a gift to us, and a lesson….
To never discount a person because of their status or assumed mental condition.
In the economy of God that lady was more
valuable to God for his purpose in that moment, than those of us who were there
to do the job of ministering to the man.
Our Street Chaplaincy group
is a diverse group with people who have a heart to be in ministry, and yet,
interestingly, some of those people are boarder-line broke, and others have
their own mental or physical fragility.
Many times, the church and charitable organisations grow into a middle
to upper-class group – those with the financial resources to help others. It morphs into a group of the “Haves” who
minister to the “Have-nots”. This is not
the way God intended us to be, and not the way that God wants us to see each
other. I can’t tell you how many times
that God has taught me something, through someone unlikely – according to my
own preconceived idea of things. There is no condition on the spirit of God
that says you need to be a person of financial stability or a person of intellectual
or physical prowess to be valuable in the kingdom of God. he delights to use us all, but I reckon that
he especially loves to work through those that we don’t expect.
The rich ruler who came to
Jesus was a mover and shaker. He was not
just rich, but he was also a ruler. This
means that he was a man with leadership qualities. Not only was he a rich leader, but he was
good man. He asked Jesus what he must do
to inherit eternal life. Jesus answered
him according to the Law of God, the Torah.
The man had kept the commandments from his youth. We all probably know someone like this. An admirable person in our community who was
a perfect child and sailed through their teenage years with integrity,
resisting peer pressure and always choosing the right thing. Seriously, these people do exist…. I have
known some. The rich ruler was this
person.
These people are not those
who come to God in repentance over their sin… but they do desire God and
goodness. But the danger here is that
they might feel they have earnt their way into heaven or can do some work to
ensure their place with God. They are
good and wonderful people, but the Bible tells us that ALL have sinned and
fallen short of the glory of God. Sin
simply means to miss the mark of the perfection of God.
It should be noted that Joel
tells us that God promised to repay the people for the years the locusts had
eaten their crops and give them a time of plenty. King David and King Solomon were blessed by
God with abundant riches. So, It would
appear that riches are not the problem, but the heart of the matter – and
riches do, more often than not, corrupt.
The disciples of Jesus were
aghast at the words of Jesus to the rich ruler and said, “Who then can be
saved?” It is abundantly clear that
the criteria for inheriting eternal life is way beyond us all – and that is the
point.
We all need to know that no
matter how good we are and how little we find ourselves in temptation of sin,
we still all fall short of the glory of God.
We can not save ourselves and we need a saviour – and we have one.
The rich ruler called Jesus
Good and, as a Jew, he should have known that this was not a term to call
another human as only God is described as good. It seems that there was an error in the man’s
thinking that it was possible for mere humans to be sinless, and therefore earn
the right to enter heaven. Jesus, in
questioning the man about this was drawing out the error in the man’s thinking.
I do believe we are often
guilty of the same error. I have often
heard people say, perhaps jokingly, “I hope I have done enough for the fella
upstairs to let me in.” More often than not, people are aware of their
short-comings but don’t realize the Good News or fully understand the message
of salvation.
There is NO way that any of
us can do something that qualifies us to enter heaven. Only one person ever born could inherit
heaven. An interesting choice of words –
“Inherit”. We generally think of an
inheritance as something that is given to family members, and especially
traditionally, to the first-born son.
Guess what? Jesus is the
first-born Son of God.
Jesus is the inheritor of
heaven. Jesus is good enough. Jesus is sinless. And Jesus is the Son of
God.
Here is how it works; Jesus
came because God so loves us. We believe
in ONE baptism for the forgiveness of sins – that ONE baptism is not your
personal baptism. It is, in fact, Jesus’
baptism into the sins of the world.
Jesus was spiritually immersed into the sins of us all and he took these
to the cross. When Jesus cried out, “my
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it was because he experienced what
should be our separation from God because of our sin. (He was also declaring the prophesy of Psalm
22 fulfilled).
Jesus experienced separation
from God, so that we don’t need to. We
all have free will, so if some chose to remain separate from God, God will
respect that desire.
When Jesus said, “What is
impossible for mortals is possible for God.”, this is what he meant. You and I can’t inherit eternal life, but God
the son can. And then because of our own
personal baptism and uniting our life with Jesus, we, with our life in him,
also inherit eternal life. This is the
Good News. This is the message of the Gospel.
The saddest thing I’ve
witnessed in the Christian church was a wonderful elderly man who was scared of
dying because he didn’t know if he had done enough or was good enough to be
accepted by God. I hope that we can all
grow in understanding the intense love of God and His extravagant grace. We, through the death and resurrection of
Jesus are promised eternal life. Is God
not a person of his word? This how it
works! Rejoice – you and I are saved
from this fear and this separation. It
is beyond any shadow of doubt. Not only
did Jesus die, but he rose from the dead, proving the power of God to save us
all. It is a done deal. Nothing in your past or your future can
separate you from the love of God through Christ Jesus.
The rich ruler went away sad.
His reality was under the old covenant
and subject to the law. That Law of God
does not change and we are all asked to love God with all our heart, mind and
strength. For the rich ruler that meant
putting God before his riches. We all
have some area of failure, no matter how much we try and none of us can inherit
eternal life on our own. However, rest
assured, Jesus established a New Covenant and through him, our inheriting
eternal life is a reality that we can rejoice in. Being united to Jesus, and with the Holy
Spirit as a deposit of our spiritual life, we are bound for glory. What is impossible for us is made possible by
God. Amen!!
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