Joel 2:21-29 Past and Future and Present

Many of you will have stories about this church- perhaps stories from when you were young, humorous anecdotes about the “characters” who were part of this congregation, or memorable events that happened here. Maybe you remember the humble example of a teacher or an elder or can recall first learning a bible story from the sermon or in Sunday School. Maybe you remember weddings right here in this sanctuary- maybe your own, or baptisms- your own perhaps, or finding the deeper meanings of the Christian life- living in fellowship with brothers and sisters or in communion shared with the worshippers around you. This is a good day to remember those times, and to talk about them.

It may seem a strange choice that I would select a reading from Joel as the sermon text on this special day. Well, I thought it strange anyway, at first. But it is the Old Testament lectionary reading for today, and these statements from the passage that call us to remember seemed appropriate: be glad and rejoice for the

Lord has done great things; praise the name of the Lord who has dealt wondrously with you. So, if we are looking back on the past 100 years in the old opera house, or the 150 years of the life of this church, this scripture can affirm God’s presence among us. But the church must never look backwards only, even when we celebrate the great holy days and feast days of Christendom, and great occasions such as this time today. The church must also look forward, for our Lord indeed

“makes all things new,” and his “steadfast love is new every morning,” and we are

“new creatures” in him. And our passage does look to a time when the Lord will do a new thing and pour out the Holy Spirit upon all flesh, and the world will be remade. Our celebration today looks backward and ahead with gratitude and humble worship to the God who has blessed us always and, we trust, will be with us all the days of the life of the church.

There was something more that made this passage right for our celebration.

Our denomination was founded and grew on the American frontier, where men and women and families left behind, what must have seemed to them, an old and corrupted civilization to settle in the wilderness, to make new lives; and we may read these words of Joel as God’s promise to the settlers: the pastures are green;

God has given the rain; God is with the people and they shall never again be put to shame. And these pioneers, as they moved west, created a new civilization- even in the villages and settlements of Central Texas- that in the wild lands they began to plant a Garden where they could reap great harvest, just as our passage says: the fig trees and vineyards give their full yield; the threshing floors are full of grain, and the vats overflow with wine and oil. Truly, God was with his people, and has kept them from that time even until now.

The circumstance of Joel’s prophecy is the devastation of the land of Judah, caused by drought and an invasion of locusts- a “ravenous army” Joel calls them, darkening the sky as they fly over and leaving behind a barren landscape: the crops in the field- utterly destroyed, the grain in the barns- eaten up, the trees of the orchards- stripped clean. But in our scripture, we read of God, out of the chaos and destruction, beginning anew, and God’s people starting over with God; just as our

Disciples’ ancestors two centuries ago built a new world out of the wilderness with the promise of God’s presence among them.

But perhaps on this day, as we gather to commemorate the history of our church, we may sense that this is a time even now of transition, an ending of what we look backwards to, and the beginning of a new age. For today may be the day that God’s Spirit is moving among us, as verses 28-29 show us, and giving us the vision of a world where healing can begin again, where peace may reign, where the storehouses of grain are not filled up as an investment, but full and waiting for us to open them to feed the hungry and the desperate. Where our sons and daughters are given the words of prophecy- not to foretell the future- but to speak God’s true word of love and peace to all flesh. It is that same word which calls us to be one people, helping and loving and sharing, brothers and sisters giving thanks to God.

Isn’t that what you remember best of the life of the church? If our strongest memories are of fellowship and service, we may be assured that God is not through with us yet!

We have come here to renew friendships and fellowship, and to give thanks and to celebrate 100 years of worship in this place and service in the name of the loving

God. But there is something from our scripture in Joel, from the forward looking part, verses 28-29, we should note so that our worship today might become for us an occasion to commit ourselves to being God’s men and women in the current day and in the new age, and not just God’s church of the past.

Because the new age is a time when peoples are brought together. Our passage describes this, where the young and the old, both, see mysterious things and understand what God is doing; where men and women, together, tell the good news of the merciful Savior; where social divisions are torn down so that even the lowest, “even the least of these,” are filled with the Spirit: that is, rich and poor, the haves and the have nots, management and labor, find hope in God’s kindness and find common cause in God’s mission to the world.

On the great days, like today, it is almost enough to come together and retell old stories, and enjoy one another. Almost, but not quite. We gather in thanksgiving that God has blessed us, and this day, calls us to be faithful witnesses of God’s goodness to the hurting and hungry and dispossessed. Let us live now, so that the next centennial celebration will be a day much like this one when God’s children meet to offer praise to the loving Lord: that good news has gone out to those in need, that God abides with us still, and sends salvation and healing to all who seek him.