20 Pentecost Proper C 25, October 26, 2025
Joel 2:23-32 Psalm 65
Joel 2:23-32 Psalm 65
Rather than trying to force some unifying and totalizing organization upon the biblical writings, even when the lectionary makers try to match readings for a given Sunday for preachers to present a seasonal or Proper specific theme for the week, it is probably more accurate to acknowledge how the various writings in the biblical collection are more context specific to their writing occasions than to an overall scheme which any of them were privy to.
The Psalmist was a poet and he attributed a great Personality behind the cyclic patterns of nature as well as those which stood out because of the attention getting magnitude. For the Psalmist, nature events were signs of God.
Biblical writers also read nature events as portents for human community, particularly in the literature which pertained to the end of life as we know it for the human social order.
The proto-apocalyptic portion of the Prophet Joel might be called a preparation writing for the end of life as humans have known it. For an individual, writing for a personal end might be called a dying proclamation, or a very sad version of such would be a suicide note. The writing that we have from the Second Epistle of Timothy purports to be a dying proclamation of St. Paul. It does seem to me to be a redacted version of how disciples of Paul would want him to address the impending ending of his life. His dying proclamation seems too confident, and maybe too specifically presumptuous about what his afterlife reward would be: a crown of righteousness given by the Lord. Why does anyone need visions of hyper reward in the afterlife unless it is presented as motivational encouragement to a community that is not experiencing much real time reward? The dying words refer to his own experience of personal abandonment in his ministry. Such words are diagnostic of the internal struggles which Paul and the early Jesus Movement experienced. The words are also apocalyptic because they refer to the longing for the day of the Lord's appearing. Like the Prophet Joel, and the many other portions of apocalyptic writings in the biblical and extra-biblical writings, the afterlife is viewed as a great reward and correction for how bad things have been for those who trusted God in the times of their lives in their various missions.
In many ways the Bible is a collection of books containing writings about people who held to the normalcy of justice that gave rise to the analgesic imaginations of an everlasting future where correction, reparation, and reconciliation would occur so that justice as normal could ultimately be upheld as a current comfort.
Given the personal ending in death that each person will face and given the fact that large groups of people also face possible catastrophic endings at various times; how should we as human beings live?
The Gospel parable about the self-righteous religious leader, and the contrite tax collector provides some clues to the Christ-recommended way to live. We should live hoping for the mercy of God as it is filtered through the particular consequences filtered toward us in the vulnerable circumstance of life itself. And we should live with mercy toward each other not presuming to have superior cause to have contempt for other people because of their differences from us in their life experience.
The Gospel for us then is this: Mercy. Mercy from the God of All and in All and how the all is funneled to us in our life situation. And knowing mercy, we should live with mercy toward each other because of the vulnerable situation of what may happen to any of us at any time in the realm of the probable.
Lord have Mercy. Christ have Mercy. Lord have mercy upon us, sinners. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment