Sunday worship: Majoring on the Minors - Joel's harvest of hope

SERMON
Let’s pray: may the words of my mouth
and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The long-running cartoon series, ‘Peanuts’, features as the main character a boy named Charlie Brown and his dog, a beagle named ‘Snoopy’.
How many of you are familiar with this?

Well, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Charlie’s school friends were a real fixture of my childhood –
both the comic strip, and the T.V. shows:
no Christmas was complete without ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’.

Charlie Brown – and he’s never just ‘Charlie’,
it’s always his full name apart from one character who calls him ‘Chuck’ –
Charlie Brown is one of those people in life who never seems to catch a break;
life is never straightforward,
made even less so because of some of his friends,
and even his dog, Snoopy, run rings around him.
He’s never chosen for the sports team,
he’s often accidentally overlooked when it comes to party invitations...
he’s a blend-in kind of boy who seems to live a life of quiet desperation.
No matter what he does to be noticed,
no matter what challenge,
no matter what great plan he has...
it seems like the whole universe just conspires against poor Charlie Brown.
He bemoans his fate to friends and dog, and different friends have different solutions:
just play more sport...
learn to play music...
keep your comfort blanket with you at all times.
They listen to him,
they offer advice,
they try to be kind and helpful.
His friends, in their own ways, have found their coping mechanisms for life.
Meanwhile, Charlie Brown valiantly keeps putting one foot
in front of the other, just trying to get on with life.
He also sighs quite a lot.

In among all of his school friends, there is one character who isn’t particularly helpful,
and that’s a girl called Lucy.
Lucy is pretty street smart and savvy:
nobody will ever pull the wool over her eyes,
and in fact, it’s often Lucy who enjoys getting one over on everyone else,
especially poor old Charlie Brown:
she sees him as an easy target.
And these two, over the years that the comic strip ran,
were involved in one particular oft-repeated gag which all revolved around a football –
as in an American-style football.
You see, all Charlie Brown ever wants to do is to try to see if he can kick that football...
The first time the gag happens, you see him standing on a grassy pitch with the football.
Lucy then turns up.
Charlie Brown explains to Lucy that all she has to do is to hold the ball –
basically, to keep it from falling down while he walks back and prepares to take a run at it.
‘All you have to do is hold the ball, then I come running and kick it.’ he says.
Lucy’s reluctant at first, and really doesn’t think it’s a good idea,
but... she eventually gives in.
Charlie Brown backs up, and then comes charging down the pitch.
At the very last moment, Lucy grabs the football and pulls it away out from under him.
Charlie Brown, already committed to kicking the ball, ends up flat on his back.
‘Aaargh’ goes Charlie Brown, ‘why did you do that?’
Lucy, thinking it’s a great prank, makes an excuse:
‘It’s a new ball, and I was afraid your shoes might be dirty. 
I don’t want anyone with dirty shoes kicking my new football.’
He tells her:
‘Don’t you ever do that again! 
Do you want to kill me? 
This time, hold it tight!’
And so he tries again.
She does hold the ball tight:
so tightly, that he kicks a ball which doesn’t move, and again ends up flat on his back.
He sighs and says:
‘I’m not going to get up. I’m just going to lie here for the rest of the day.’
But actually, over the fifty years that the cartoon ran,
Charlie Brown does get back up, does try again –
and a variation of the football prank features every year from 1952 through to 1999,
with poor Charlie Brown never managing to to kick that football,
due to Lucy doing something to foil him right at the last minute.
Somewhere deep down, he knows what she’s like,
he knows she almost can’t help herself...
yet, nevertheless, he persists:
he tries and tries again –
always hoping that this will be that one time when, against all the overwhelming odds,
he’ll kick that ball.

The very last time this gag appears, in 1999,
right at the last minute, Lucy is called away,
so she gets her brother to hold the ball,
and to pull the same old prank on Charlie Brown.
Later, back at home, she catches up with her brother and eagerly asks him what happened.
Did he pull the ball away?
Did Charlie Brown kick the ball?
Did Charlie Brown land on his back yet again?
What happened?
And her brother turns the tables on her replying:
‘You’ll never know.’
And of course, neither do we,
but in all those many times of trying,
in all those many years of hoping against hope that he can kick that darned ball
we’re left with a flicker of hope ourselves –
maybe, just maybe, Charlie Brown did actually kick that ball...
maybe his years of hoping
did    finally    pay off.
When the whole world seems to be telling Charlie Brown to just give up,
hope is the thing that whispers
‘try one more time,’ 
and it’s hope that keeps him going.

And hope is central to the message we hear in the Book of Joel.
In a message which begins by using the image of plagues of locusts covering the land
and leaving utter devastation in their wake,
Joel’s message can seem anything but hopeful.
The locusts are likened to an invading army laying waste to the land:
all that was blossoming and flourishing
is now withering, perishing.
‘Weep and wail,’ says Joel –
‘the wine has been snatched from your lips,
the fig trees are withered,
the fields are ruined, 
the ground dried up,
the wheat and barley are no more...
the pomegranate, the palm, 
and the apple tree are gone;
surely the joy of the people is withered away.’

If Amos was preaching a message of justice to a people grown
too comfortable and too complacent
from living off the fat of the land at the expense of others,
then the message of Joel is to a people who appear to have nothing left –
the fat of the land has been eaten away before their eyes.
All seems lost.
In such a time, what do you do?

The first thing, is to acknowledge it.
To ‘weep and wail’ is perfectly right:
to name what has been lost,
to remember what was,
to have a season of taking stock and grieving
helps to eventually find a way forward in this new, changed world.
Joel calls the people to a time of mourning and a time of repentance –
refocusing themselves upon God;
turning to God.
It’s only as they take time to do so that they can begin to see that
while all seems lost,
not all is lost.
While the going is hard, they don’t journey through this strange new landscape on their own:
‘the Lord will take pity on his people...’
Beyond the loss, there will be a time of restoration, renewal, even:
out of the battered and withered land, green shoots of recovery will grow –
there will be new grain, new wine, new oil.
God will provide enough that they will be fully satisfied.

I’m very conscious at the moment of the fires racing through the Amazon –
experts estimate that an area the size of a football pitch is being lost each minute.
Over the course of our time of worship this morning, that’s roughly 60 football fields.
Horrifying.
Even more horrifying to think about, if the rumours are true,
that some of the fires were deliberately lit.
Growing up in a land that is no stranger to bushfires, however, what I do know is this:
after a forest fire has been through an area burning everything in its path,
when you look around at the remains,
you feel that nothing will ever grow in such a place again –
all is blackened,
all seems dead.
And yet, at some point, small green shoots come bursting through the blackened soil,
until, over time, you see the place begin to heal, to recover...
loss giving way to growth,
darkness giving way to hope
as life seems to begin again.
This is what God, through Joel, is saying:
‘courage, have hope, dear ones,
there will be restoration,
life will begin again even though you struggle to see it now.’
We hear God saying:
‘the open pastures are becoming green;
trees are bearing fruit,
the fig-tree and the vine yield their riches.’

After the time of mourning, has passed,
there will be time when the people will once again be able to rejoice.
And there’s more –
in what’s possibly the most well-known passage from this book,
because it’s referred to in the New Testament on the Day of Pentecost,
Joel speaks of the coming of the Spirit of God –
not just falling upon selected people as in the days of old,
but upon all people –
young men and old men,
upon women,
upon all social classes –
free and slave...
Where all seemed lost,
where even dreams seemed to have been ravaged by the locusts,
new dreams,
new visions,
will burst forth from the human imagination –
the fruit born from the seed of hope
and of God’s eternal faithfulness.
The Spirit of God will bring life and vision to all people.

Scholars are not sure when Joel gave this particular prophecy –
but, there’s a universality and a timelessness to his message.
It’s a message that reminds us that,
even in the seasons of darkness and despair,
when all seems lost,
all is not:
it’s a message that reminds us
that God walks with us,
that God has compassion upon us,
that while there will seasons in life
that will be hard,
there will also be seasons in which to rejoice.

Joel tells us that we are God’s people,
and as we turn to God,
we find, in him, a place of hope,
and, if we pause a moment to catch our breath,
we may just catch brief glimpses of green and growing shoots breaking through –
for no matter how bad,
no matter what plagues our lives,
everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Let’s pray:
Holy and Gracious God
We give you thanks for the gift of life
for the gift of your Son
for the gift of the Holy Spirit
Lead us through the trials
the suffering and sorrow
the challenges and struggles
the tired times and dark places
Lead us
with grace
with love
with peace
Fill us
with hope
with patience
with stamina
Transform us
in your image
in your Son
in your Name
Transform us
to grow
to understand
to see
Transform us
that we
can be
made whole
And in wholeness
may we be
the hands and heart of Christ.
Amen*
      *prayer by Terri C-P