Bugs
Sermon
Daring To Hope
Sermons For Pentecost (Last Third)
The title of this Thanksgiving sermon is "Bugs." It's a sermon about bugs - in particular, about a biblical response to bugs. That might seem odd to you, but that's exactly what our first lesson in Joel 2 is: a biblical response to bugs. The land of Judah had been overrun by locusts - grasshoppers - and the prophet Joel was called by God to help the people deal with their bug problem.
You and I have bug problems of our own. Some of them have six legs: cockroaches in the kitchen, silverfish in the bathroom, bees in the yard. But some of our bug problems have no legs at all. When something we're doing doesn't work right, we say there are some bugs that need to be worked out. There are specialists who make their living debugging computer programs. When we're irritated or frustrated we say something is bugging us. When someone is suffering an unknown sickness we say they've picked up some kind of bug.
Those bug problems are minor. The bug problem in the book of Joel was major. Locusts by the millions were laying waste the whole country. Every green leaf had been eaten; the sun was blocked out by bugs. The crops were gone, livestock were dying, people were beginning to starve. Like our own country in the Dust Bowl years, Judah was seriously threatened with ruin.
Nor was the threat just to the economy and food supply. The bugs were eating away at the spiritual strength of the people. With no fruit, no grain, no healthy animals, the people had no sacrifices to offer God in the temple. There was no worship any more, the priests had no ministry to perform. And the children of God had to wonder if the whole grasshopper plague had come about because God wasn't taking care of them any more. Life was infested with bugs at its very heart.
Well, then, we're talking today about something more serious than weevils in the Cheerios, aren't we? These are the bugs that tear our lives apart. Economic recession and unemployment are for us a locust plague - the streets of our cities are full of people without money for rent or groceries or clothes for their children; some of you may be facing the same pressures. Environmental degradation, the hole in the ozone layer, toxic wastes in our drinking water - those are bugs like Joel had on his mind. Cancer, marriages falling apart, AIDS, Cub Scout-aged children with automatic weapons, colleges that nobody can afford to go to. The bugs in today's newspaper eat away at our strength and our nerve just like the bugs in the Bible did.
So on Thanksgiving we open the little short book of Joel in the Old Testament to see what God's prophet had to say about bugs.
The first thing Joel said, just before today's lesson, was "Repent!" You'd expect a prophet to say that. "Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love." Many churches use these words from Joel's prophecy about bugs as a call to repentance during Lent.
You see, Joel and the Hebrew people of his day saw everything in life as part of their covenant with God. Locusts weren't just a bug problem, but a sign of a deeper problem. Something was wrong between the people and God. And the bad times also reminded the people of an even greater crisis that was waiting for them come judgment day, the Day of the Lord. God sent locusts to shake the people up, to shock them back onto the right track so they wouldn't get completely lost.
We today aren't as quick as Joel was to interpret misfortune as a punishment from God, but we still need the call to repent. We create many of our bugs by our own indiscretions - ecological, economic, medical, marital - and the suffering they bring us reveals that we need to change our ways. And in a more general way, the fact that we experience miseries at all reminds us of our fallenness, our brokenness, our sinfulness.
The Thanksgiving holiday preserves a tradition that dates back to the Puritan colonists of our country. They had another tradition, however, that we might need to remember as well. Like Joel, the Pilgrims and their descendants called for a day of repentance whenever disaster struck. They understood that the breakdowns in our lives are signs of a much more basic brokenness.
But all of that only leads us up to our Thanksgiving text. After Joel calls the people to worship and repent, he has some great news. "Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green." "Hey, there's green grass growing, buds on the trees, grapes on the vines and I don't hear any buzzing." It sounds like a pesticide ad in a farm magazine: no more bugs.
That was good news for a couple of reasons. First, of course, it meant that the people would get their livelihood back and have food on their tables again. The nation was saved. But more than that, it meant that God still cared. The people had drifted and doubted, but God was still taking care of them.
We can trust God to take care of us, too, even when we're plagued by bugs. Martin Luther wrote, in his Small Catechism, that God "provides me with food and clothing, home and family, daily work, and all that I need from day to day. God also protects me in time of danger and guards me from every evil."11 God won't let the bugs destroy us; he has both the power and the will to save us from them.
Which is not to say, though, that God is the big heavenly Orkin man. God's providence isn't a technology that will save us when we pick up the phone and call; God's ways are more subtle and more baffling than that. We can't presume on God to solve all our problems for us.
But we can be confident of two things. God is the master of the universe. He created locusts and mosquitoes as well as people and nations and churches and economies and families, and rules over all of them. Besides that, we can be sure that God is for us. The memory of all the things God has done for his people throughout history - especially the gift of his Son Jesus - assures us that God is on our side, blessing us and saving us.
That's what it's all about in the end: God and us. Listen to how Joel ends the passage that is our text tonight. "You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other." The whole point of the bug episode and God's dramatic rescue of his people from the plague, Joel says, is to remind them of their covenant with God. God wants them to remember him, to be aware of his presence, to give him credit for their blessings, to worship him.
And isn't that what Thanksgiving is about, too? Sure, it's a day to count our blessings, to enjoy our families and to help people who have few blessings to count, but it's mainly a day for us to remember God, to be aware of his presence, to give him credit, to worship him.
Thanksgiving can easily become a time for self-congratulation, for celebrating our wealth and successes under the pretense of giving thanks for them. Or it can be a time when we trivialize the problems in the world and the burdens in our own lives so we can feel more like being thankful. But real thanksgiving doesn't rise out of appreciation for the good things we've gotten, or out of ignoring the sorrowful things we've seen. Real thanksgiving rises out of knowing the depths of God's faithfulness to us.
The Lutheran magazine recently mentioned words spoken on his deathbed by Archbishop Matulis of Latvia.
Three times the war passed over Latvia, killing two-fifths of our people. They burned down my church and destroyed the Bibles and hymnals. They took away my wife and I never saw her again. When it was all gone, I realized that I had nothing else in this world but Jesus Christ. It was like a breath of freedom.12
Archbishop Matulis had bug problems of biblical proportions. But he also knew the meaning of Thanksgiving - that in the midst of his bugs, he had Jesus.
Today we give thanks for abundance, good health, our nation, our families and all our other blessings. But we also acknowledge the bugs in our lives, that might make it difficult for us to give thanks. Joel - the bug prophet - tells us we can still give thanks: first because God is always working to do away with our bugs, but especially because God is in our midst. He is our God and there is no other.
You and I have bug problems of our own. Some of them have six legs: cockroaches in the kitchen, silverfish in the bathroom, bees in the yard. But some of our bug problems have no legs at all. When something we're doing doesn't work right, we say there are some bugs that need to be worked out. There are specialists who make their living debugging computer programs. When we're irritated or frustrated we say something is bugging us. When someone is suffering an unknown sickness we say they've picked up some kind of bug.
Those bug problems are minor. The bug problem in the book of Joel was major. Locusts by the millions were laying waste the whole country. Every green leaf had been eaten; the sun was blocked out by bugs. The crops were gone, livestock were dying, people were beginning to starve. Like our own country in the Dust Bowl years, Judah was seriously threatened with ruin.
Nor was the threat just to the economy and food supply. The bugs were eating away at the spiritual strength of the people. With no fruit, no grain, no healthy animals, the people had no sacrifices to offer God in the temple. There was no worship any more, the priests had no ministry to perform. And the children of God had to wonder if the whole grasshopper plague had come about because God wasn't taking care of them any more. Life was infested with bugs at its very heart.
Well, then, we're talking today about something more serious than weevils in the Cheerios, aren't we? These are the bugs that tear our lives apart. Economic recession and unemployment are for us a locust plague - the streets of our cities are full of people without money for rent or groceries or clothes for their children; some of you may be facing the same pressures. Environmental degradation, the hole in the ozone layer, toxic wastes in our drinking water - those are bugs like Joel had on his mind. Cancer, marriages falling apart, AIDS, Cub Scout-aged children with automatic weapons, colleges that nobody can afford to go to. The bugs in today's newspaper eat away at our strength and our nerve just like the bugs in the Bible did.
So on Thanksgiving we open the little short book of Joel in the Old Testament to see what God's prophet had to say about bugs.
The first thing Joel said, just before today's lesson, was "Repent!" You'd expect a prophet to say that. "Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love." Many churches use these words from Joel's prophecy about bugs as a call to repentance during Lent.
You see, Joel and the Hebrew people of his day saw everything in life as part of their covenant with God. Locusts weren't just a bug problem, but a sign of a deeper problem. Something was wrong between the people and God. And the bad times also reminded the people of an even greater crisis that was waiting for them come judgment day, the Day of the Lord. God sent locusts to shake the people up, to shock them back onto the right track so they wouldn't get completely lost.
We today aren't as quick as Joel was to interpret misfortune as a punishment from God, but we still need the call to repent. We create many of our bugs by our own indiscretions - ecological, economic, medical, marital - and the suffering they bring us reveals that we need to change our ways. And in a more general way, the fact that we experience miseries at all reminds us of our fallenness, our brokenness, our sinfulness.
The Thanksgiving holiday preserves a tradition that dates back to the Puritan colonists of our country. They had another tradition, however, that we might need to remember as well. Like Joel, the Pilgrims and their descendants called for a day of repentance whenever disaster struck. They understood that the breakdowns in our lives are signs of a much more basic brokenness.
But all of that only leads us up to our Thanksgiving text. After Joel calls the people to worship and repent, he has some great news. "Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green." "Hey, there's green grass growing, buds on the trees, grapes on the vines and I don't hear any buzzing." It sounds like a pesticide ad in a farm magazine: no more bugs.
That was good news for a couple of reasons. First, of course, it meant that the people would get their livelihood back and have food on their tables again. The nation was saved. But more than that, it meant that God still cared. The people had drifted and doubted, but God was still taking care of them.
We can trust God to take care of us, too, even when we're plagued by bugs. Martin Luther wrote, in his Small Catechism, that God "provides me with food and clothing, home and family, daily work, and all that I need from day to day. God also protects me in time of danger and guards me from every evil."11 God won't let the bugs destroy us; he has both the power and the will to save us from them.
Which is not to say, though, that God is the big heavenly Orkin man. God's providence isn't a technology that will save us when we pick up the phone and call; God's ways are more subtle and more baffling than that. We can't presume on God to solve all our problems for us.
But we can be confident of two things. God is the master of the universe. He created locusts and mosquitoes as well as people and nations and churches and economies and families, and rules over all of them. Besides that, we can be sure that God is for us. The memory of all the things God has done for his people throughout history - especially the gift of his Son Jesus - assures us that God is on our side, blessing us and saving us.
That's what it's all about in the end: God and us. Listen to how Joel ends the passage that is our text tonight. "You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other." The whole point of the bug episode and God's dramatic rescue of his people from the plague, Joel says, is to remind them of their covenant with God. God wants them to remember him, to be aware of his presence, to give him credit for their blessings, to worship him.
And isn't that what Thanksgiving is about, too? Sure, it's a day to count our blessings, to enjoy our families and to help people who have few blessings to count, but it's mainly a day for us to remember God, to be aware of his presence, to give him credit, to worship him.
Thanksgiving can easily become a time for self-congratulation, for celebrating our wealth and successes under the pretense of giving thanks for them. Or it can be a time when we trivialize the problems in the world and the burdens in our own lives so we can feel more like being thankful. But real thanksgiving doesn't rise out of appreciation for the good things we've gotten, or out of ignoring the sorrowful things we've seen. Real thanksgiving rises out of knowing the depths of God's faithfulness to us.
The Lutheran magazine recently mentioned words spoken on his deathbed by Archbishop Matulis of Latvia.
Three times the war passed over Latvia, killing two-fifths of our people. They burned down my church and destroyed the Bibles and hymnals. They took away my wife and I never saw her again. When it was all gone, I realized that I had nothing else in this world but Jesus Christ. It was like a breath of freedom.12
Archbishop Matulis had bug problems of biblical proportions. But he also knew the meaning of Thanksgiving - that in the midst of his bugs, he had Jesus.
Today we give thanks for abundance, good health, our nation, our families and all our other blessings. But we also acknowledge the bugs in our lives, that might make it difficult for us to give thanks. Joel - the bug prophet - tells us we can still give thanks: first because God is always working to do away with our bugs, but especially because God is in our midst. He is our God and there is no other.
