Year C Proper 25 - October 23, 2022
Praying for Rain
In the name of the Gracious Trinity: God, Son, and Spirit. Amen.
Nebraska is in a drought. Those of you in the agriculture industry, whether farmers or with farming clients, know this all too well. I’m a city girl and usually out of touch with the needs of the land. The lack of snow this past winter raised the alarm for agriculture folks but delighted me. When dry conditions caused wildfires this year and the smoke put my allergies in overdrive, I was annoyed. When my lawn turned brown, I was irritated. It wasn’t until I heard that drought was declared across our state and would drive up the price of my groceries that I prayed for rain.
Praying rituals for rain are the oldest religious observances in human civilization.
Our Jewish forebears who wrote the Holy Scriptures connected precipitation with God’s attentiveness to Creation. In the Book of Job God declares that it is God “Job 38:25 ‘Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, 26 to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life.” Rain is good for all of Creation.
In today’s lessons the prophet Joel and the Psalmist describe God’s profound love for the Chosen People as bountiful rain:
Joel 2:23 - O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication.
Ps 65:9 - [God] you visit the earth and water it abundantly; you make it very plenteous; * the river of God is full of water.
Ps 65:11 - You drench the furrows and smooth out the ridges; * with heavy rain you soften the ground and bless its increase.
The Prophet and the writer of the psalm also use drought as an indicator of divine judgment against the people. God withholds rain and snow because of societal sins. One person’s wickedness is not enough to destroy fields of crops, but cruelty toward each other, Creation abuse, religious hypocrisy, and fiscal corruption add up to disaster.
A community of individuals who commit themselves to gratitude, generosity, compassion, financial equity, and sacrificial caretaking of children and vulnerable elders will produce abundance in God’s economy. When all of us possessing power and wealth, or simply living in financial and physical stability arrange our lives oriented toward God, Joel prophesies , Joel 2:26 - “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”
I do not adhere to the Prophet’s view or Psalmist’s view that human sins cause God to bring drought. That injures Creation too deeply. Our excesses, though, make drought worse: if every one of us committed to a water conservation lifestyle – from the corporate farmer to this city girl priest – the Platte River would not be dry and drought wouldn’t hurt industry and our economy so deeply.
It turns out, adhering to the Good Word is good for us. Consider the persistence of COVID-19 as a pandemic – being afraid of pestilence and caring for the sick saved a lot of lives. Consider the looming recession – a society of equitable economic policy, disciplined consumption, and authentic gratitude could weather global downturns without collapse. Consider the eruption of personal violence across our nation – if we loved our neighbors and ourselves, domestic violence that leads to shootings would be dismantled and isolation leading to suicides would ease.
God grants us personal resources and we can weave those together to strengthen the reign of Christ’s peace and love. When our strong faith and material resources serve our whole community like rain
Joel 2:24,26 - The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil... [We] shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord [our] God, who has dealt wondrously with [us].
Pray for the sick, pray for neighbors in need, pray for peace, and right now, pray for rain. Amen.
The Very Rev. Vanessa E. B. Clark+
The Old Testament, New Testament and Gospels readings are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.