A mere week ago, the city was awash. Rain fell in torrents, ceaselessly, for days, coupled with a merciless wind which wreaked havoc on umbrellas, so that not even that flimsy respite could be offered. Among the people I know, most of us confronted this seasonal tempermentality grimly, determined only to endure it. We were tolerant at best, and at our worst moments, were reduced by it to bundles of nerves. I would venture to guess that had anyone proposed we respond to this weather with gratitude, most of us would have responded with incredulity. Gratitude? For what? Isn’t a rainy day pure misery?
Yet this week’s texts remind us that there are immemorial qualities about our world which, though we’re inclined to either take them for granted or resent them, were once held as proof positive not only that God existed, but that he loved us dearly. Rain is one of these. In the context of arid Israel, bounded by deserts and at the mercy of the skies for the cultivation of the land, rain was a blessing.
God’s love is repeatedly explained in terms of the gift of water: in Psalms, believers find refuge in God, and this manifests itself in “springs of water to drink,” as “from pools the Lord provides water for those who lose their way” (Psalm 84:6, 7). The imagery here suggests a separation between spiritual yearning, which is akin to wandering, and divine shelter, which is as an oasis among the chaos and inconsistencies of the broader world: the faithful can retreat, draw deeply from God’s spiritual wells, and so sustain themselves. In the Ancient Near East, this must have served as a very powerful metaphor.
But it is rain image is the most persistent throughout these passages—the sudden gift from the heavens of water upon the people. Rain is how God nurtures the land, and thus the people of Israel: “with showers [God] keep[s] the ground soft, blessing its young sprouts,” until God’s paths “drip with fruitful rain” and “the untilled meadows also drip; the hills are robed with joy” (Psalm 65: 11, 12, 13). Psalms suggests that this living, fluid, abundant joy is responded to be people everywhere as a marvel, and as an indication of great blessing.
Joel, too, rejoices over the gift of rain: “rejoice in the LORD, your God!...he has made the rain come down before you, the early and the late rain as before” (Joel 3:23). This foreshadows abundance in the land; moreover, it’s a wonder which asserts God’s presence in the land, and the depth of his special concern for it.
And when Jeremiah fears that the Lord has rejected Israel, it’s the lack of rain which stands as evidence: “Judah mourns, her gates are lifeless; her people sink down in mourning [and] cry in anguish…they find no water…there is no rain in the land….[and the people] cover their heads” (Jeremiah 14:2, 4). In Joel, God’s presence was attested by the presence of water; in Jeremiah, when there is drought, the LORD is missed in the land, and seems a stranger to it.
The people of Israel, it seems, are a thirsty people; but the desire they feel is not merely for the material sustenance which water provides. Indeed, they are a people who thirst for God’s presence; their own bodily well being, and the physical well being of the land, becomes tantamount to an expression of the covenant’s well-being, so that spiritual health is tied up in the health of the earth. Literally, they are a people whose eyes are ever turned skyward, waiting; but this directionality evokes the Temple, and the literal presence of God, on high as much as it anticipates the actual gifts from the sky. They thirst for God’s love, and rejoice in any manifestation of it, and water becomes a significant trope. Quench our desire, they beg; as much as the cultivation of the fields and of their beasts, what God offers to quench that thirst will lead to a deepening, and a continuation, of the relationship of God to the people.
Perhaps these readings are a reminder, to us, to look skyward, or, more specifically, to look to God to fill us where we remain in want. We’re lucky in that our blessings abound; what was scarce to the Israelites is not to us. But this is also a potential trap, because when such necessities are readily available to us, we forget to receive them as gifts. Rain becomes a nuisance, and not a promise that we’ll eat well in coming months; and why seek a distant oasis when we can flick a wrist and turn on a faucet? But if we wish to cultivate the same kind of intimate relationship with God which he shared with the people of Israel, we cannot receive things so easily. What the earth gives us remains a gift; we should try to remember, at least in scattered moments, to shelve our grumblings and turn our faces to the rain, and offer the same kind of thanks, with the same sort of joy, which we see in Joel and the Psalms.
The temptations are great to continue to take things for granted; after all, it’s so easy to do. But it’s dangerous to stock, and zealously count, our blessings as though we always warrant them. God’s generosity deserves gracious receipt.
Our chapter in Luke this week reminds us that gratitude is, in fact, necessary. We can brush aside blessings impatiently, or refuse to acknowledge them as such; we can sap up greedily that which is scarce for our neighbors, and never think twice about it. But then we defy Jesus’s parable, and become like the errant Pharisee, the fool whose prayer to God runs “’O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous’” (Luke 18:11). This preening ‘prayer’ has no value in God’s Temple, for it is built on the absurd premise that any of us can claim separation from, or innate superiority to, the rest. Jesus warns that all who so “exalt themselves will be humbled” (Luke 18: 14).
Yet a hopeful alternative exists, here in the figure of the tax collector. He won’t “even raise his eyes to heaven,” won’t even look for the blessings which God bestows, but instead humbles himself and prays, “’O God, be merciful to me, a sinner’” (Luke 18:13). The gospel tells us that it is he who will be exalted. He confronts a human condition: that he is somewhat “unworthy” of God, as a sinner, as we all are. But because he expects no reward for this, he’s better positioned to receive any gift God sends earthward. By being humble, by not expecting, we prepare ourselves internally for joy.
I suspect that, unlike the tax collector, we do need to presume to raise our eyes a bit, if only because we’ve gotten used to ignoring the source of our blessings. He knew what we forget: that what happens here proceeds from Heaven, and that thanks for the gifts which we sometimes thoughtlessly store needs to be directed there. We have to engage in actively remembering that gifts are gifts, even before we begin the work of receiving them humbly. It’s a great task in our busy lives, but undoubtedly, a valuable one. If we now and again dare to cast aside our umbrellas, and all other tools which enable us to avoid feeling God’s gifts, and thinking about his graciousness, perhaps we can move toward living in the continual joy exemplified in these chapters of Scripture.
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