Perhaps every generation for the past 2500 years has believed that it lived in the end times. The Jews who wrote The War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, believed it. The Christians who lived at the end of the first century believed it. Various Christian groups throughout the Middle Ages believed it. Many people today still believe it. Why does this belief persist? It persists because people look at the world around them and see signs of its imminent collapse. They see evil and persecution, and they see unusual astronomical and natural events: comets, earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes. To the extent that such beliefs spur God's people to positive, redemptive action, they are not bad, but when they cause one group of people to view itself as God's chosen few and to excoriate all those with whom they disagree, the belief that we are living in the end times has negative, even ungodly, consequences. The prophet Joel apparently lived in the postexilic period, a time of unrest and socioeconomic difficulty for many people. Much of the book of Joel is concerned with coming Day of the Lord and its alarming consequences, including earthquakes, heavenly portents, natural disasters, and war. The books ends, however, with assurance that God will protect believers, followed by a remarkable prophecy about God's direct communication with people. "I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit." This prophecy is startling, even revolutionary, in two ways. First, it abrogates the sexual discrimination so often maintained by believers even today: both men and women will receive God's word and God's spirit. Second, it does away with class distinctions: even slaves will receive God's spirit. The book of Acts records that the earliest Christians believed that Joel's prophecy was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit swept over the congregation of believers. Many Christians today believe that the prophecy continues to be fulfilled as God speaks to people through prophets and prophetesses. While many people argue from a religious reading of the signs of the times that we are living in the last days, one can equally well (perhaps better) make the argument from a purely secular analysis of the times. Despite the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons continue to proliferate and spread, and the world's major nuclear powers seem incapable of dealing with the problem, much less eliminating their own stockpiles. The so-called War on Terrorism exacerbates the socioeconomic inequalities between rich and poor and actually brings recruits into the anti-West fold. The population explosion, environmental degradation, and depletion of natural resources at a rate faster than they can be replaced hold the world on its course toward self-imposed destruction. In these last days--and last days they may well be, if people sensitive to God do nothing and say nothing, for fear of rocking the boat--God is again pouring out the divine spirit on many who are willing to accept it. Progressive Christians must speak out against the dangerous policies and evil deeds of the world, in our own backyards as well as in remote locales. The coming Day of the Lord promises to be cataclysmic if it is not averted. Only by correctly exegeting the signs of the times in the light of both our faith and reality can we hope to achieve the hope that ends this section in Joel, a hope for escape and survival for all those who call upon the name of the Lord.
In the Northern Hemisphere, this season of the year is the time of harvest. Farmers harvest crops, ship them to market, and feed the world. In a day when relatively few small family farms are left, those of us who are not farmers take it for granted that we will be able to go to the grocery store and buy pretty much whatever food we want whenever we want. For us, October is more about the World Series, or football, or--every four years--the run-up to the U.S. presidential election than about harvest. In ancient Israel, a large majority of the people made their livings from family farms. A good harvest was seen as a blessing from God. A failed crop potentially threatened the well-being of an entire community. Psalm 65 praises God for a bountiful harvest. Although written in an intentionally generic manner, like most psalms, this psalm seems to reflect a previous time of shortage, a prayer to God, and God's bountiful response. When people live on the constant edge of survival, like most farmers have throughout history, they have a great appreciation for the cycle of nature. Rain interrupts our picnics and outings or makes traffic on our way to work difficult. For farmers, though, the right amount of rain at the right time of the year is a blessing, one that's necessary for survival. Large corporate farms and technological innovations such as irrigation (although Egyptian farmers used the Nile to irrigate their crops 5000 years ago) make us as a society less dependent on the weather. However unaware we often are, though, we remain dependent on the blessings of God. Many people over the past decade or two have experienced downsizing or layoffs in the workplace, something that was almost unheard of in previous decades. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have jobs should praise God for the blessing of employment. We should pray for those who are currently without jobs. Those who have gone through a health care crisis know how devastating and nerve-wracking it can be. If we have our health, we should praise God, and we should pray for those whose health is not good. Finally, most people reading this live in countries that allow freedom of religion and expression, and we should praise God for that. We should pray for those who lack such freedoms, and we should also pray that God will preserve our freedoms from those in power who value control more than freedom.
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived" (Thoreau, Walden). One of the driving forces in the lives of many people is the desire to make a positive impact on the world. Two-term U.S. presidents, as they near the end of their tenure in office, worry about leaving a "legacy." Philanthropists as they get older donate millions of dollars to institutions so that they will name a wing, an entire building, or an endowed chair after them. Celebrities write their memoirs. Like Thoreau, they want to be able to say at the end of life, "My life made a difference." Our reading today from 2 Timothy shows Paul at the end of his life. As death approaches at the hands of Nero, it is too late to do anything about his legacy, he has no money to leave so that someone will name a building after him, and he has no time to write his memoirs. All he has is the life that he's already lived. This is his self-evaluation: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Note what he doesn't say. He doesn't say that he has accomplished all his goals. It's good to have goals in life, but when goals become obsessions, they detract from the quality of our lives. He doesn't point to any particular great achievement. He leaves it to others to evaluate his legacy, good or bad. He doesn't predict the impact that his life will have on others for years to come. What others think of him seems to matter very little. Are we satisfied with our lives right now? When it comes time for us to die, will we discover that we have not lived? Or will we be able to say that we've fought the good fight? Have we stood by our principles when they were challenged? Have we stood by our friends and family during adverse circumstances? Have we stood by strangers in their need? If so, then we have indeed fought the good fight.
Addendum: About the time I was writing this column, a little five-year-old girl whose family belongs to our former church in Stone Mountain, GA, Shelby Prescott, died after a three-year battle with cancer. She was a beautiful, curious, sweet girl who fought a deadly disease with courage and all the faith she had, with the encouragement and prayers of her family, church, and friends near and far. I'm reminded of the fact that the race that God assigns to some is a marathon, while to others God assigns a fifty-yard dash. What matters is not how long the race is but whether or not we finish the race that God sets before us. Like Paul, Shelby fought the good fight and finished her race. She was an inspiration to hundreds of people, and her legacy is ongoing.
In the Disney movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the gypsy woman Esmeralda walks into the Notre Dame cathedral and listens to the prayers of the rich people walking by. They pray for wealth, fame, and fortune. She, in turn, sings a song called "God Bless the Outcasts," in which she says, "I ask for nothing, I can get by, but there are so many less lucky than I. Please help my people, the poor and downtrod. I thought we all were children of God." The chorus follows, which begins with the prayer, "God bless the outcasts." With her song, Esmeralda, a non-Christian, reveals a depth of spiritual understanding that most of the Christians in the movie do not have. In Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, the Pharisee plays the role of a self-righteous, uncaring, religious leader. In his "prayer," he reminds God of his moral superiority to those around him, including the tax collector, at whom he looks down his nose. The tax collector, on the other hand, is a sinner who knows his own shortcomings. In fact, he is so overcome with his sins that he doesn't even notice the Pharisee nearby; he is conscious only of his sin and of his need for forgiveness. His prayer, heart-felt and pure, is this: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" It's easy to have a feeling of moral superiority over our theological or political opponents, and it's also easy to fall into the trap of "praying" in such a way that we praise ourselves and lambaste our adversaries. This parable reminds us of the absolute spiritual necessity of humility. It's not that we pretend to be humble because that's how God wants us to act. It's that we really are humble, because we really are sinners in need of God's mercy. As prophetic Christians, we can't afford to get so bogged down by feelings of guilt that we are unable to speak God's word to the world. But as we do so, we can't fall into the trap of believing our own press (assuming there are people who praise our efforts), forgetting our weaknesses and failures. When we speak, we speak with the words and authority of God, but at the same time we remember that we are speaking to ourselves as well.