Lent 3C
Luke 13:1-9
You
may have noticed that as our Lenten series on hunger continues, I have been
doing a sermon series on spiritual
hungers. First week was hungering for fulfillment, and we talked about the
temptation to seek out earthly things that we think will satisfy our longings.
Last week was hungering for safety, and we talked about how God keeps us from
letting doubt and our spiritual enemies have power over us. So this week, in
hopes keeping with this theme, I set off to figure out what spiritual hunger
was apparent in our texts… and I have over two pages of notes full of different
ideas, including: hungering for the Word, for God, for repentance, for
goodness, for food that isn’t real, for food that is real, for change… and then finally one morning,
exasperated that I couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of these passages, I
thought, “I’m hungering for understanding!” Aha. There it is. Hungering for
understanding.
This
is certainly a hunger we have felt lately, especially in Webster. How can it
be, we wonder, that 20 children were shot and killed while at school? How can
it be that first responders were attacked while coming to people’s aid? How can
it be that so many have lost their homes – to fires, to super storms, and so
on? How can it be that there is just so much tragedy in the world? These are
questions that have come up on almost every home visit I have made in the past
two months. People just cannot understand why the world is like this.
And
they are the very same sorts of questions Jesus’ first followers had. Luke
tells us that some people approached Jesus as he was teaching, and tell him
about a recent tragedy in Jerusalem. Some Galileans had been worshipping and
offering sacrifice, and while they were doing this, Pilate had them murdered,
such that their own blood mingled with that of the animals they were
sacrificing. They were just doing their jobs, and they were brutally killed. A
truly horrific event! And Jesus asks the question they were probably all
wondering: were these people somehow worse sinners than anyone else, and that’s
why this happened to them? Jesus brings up another recent tragedy – 18 people
were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and when the Tower of
Siloam fell, it fell right on top of them, and they were killed. Why would this
happen? Was God punishing them for something bad they had done?
No,
Jesus tells us. They were not worse sinners than anyone else. The God we love
and trust does not punish in this way. Our God is a loving God, who doesn’t
cause evil, but rather, promises to be with us when evil happens. We know this,
and can usually remember it in our better moments… but in the midst of tragedy
or conflict, it is easy to forget, isn’t it?
We
hunger for understanding in these situations. But there is no understanding! And so in our desperate attempts to
come to grips with difficult situations, our tendency is to resort to the blame
game. It’s the liberals’ fault! It’s the conservatives! It’s the Muslims! It’s
the fundamentalists! It’s video games! It’s the media! It must be someone’s fault, because if it is someone’s fault,
if we can place the blame somewhere, then the problem can be fixed.
Sometimes,
when there is nowhere else to go, we even resort to putting the blame on
ourselves. One chaplain tells a story about a woman she met in the hospital
waiting room. The woman’s young daughter had a terrible headache, then loss of
eyesight… then the diagnosis of a brain tumor, and surgery as soon as possible.
As the chaplain approached the woman, she was in a daze. Finally, the woman
started to talk. “It’s my punishment,” she said, “for smoking these cigarettes.
God couldn’t get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick.” Then she
started crying so hard that what she said next came out like a siren: “Now I’m
supposed to stop, but I can’t stop. I’m going to kill my own child!”
Why
do we blame ourselves? For the same reason that we blame anyone else: because
if blame can be neatly fastened to something, anything, even ourselves, then we
can come to grips with the situation. We can understand it. And maybe, just maybe, we can do something about
it, and then we don’t feel quite so helpless.
Jesus
suggests we seek help in a different way. “No, these people’s sin was not
greater than anyone else’s,” he says. Phew! “But,” he goes on, “unless you
repent, you will all perish like they did.” Wait, what? That doesn’t sound like
very good news, does it?! In fact, it sounds like exactly the opposite of what
he just said! So which is it, Jesus? Bad things don’t happen because you’re bad? Or, repent or else??
At
face value, “repent or perish” does seem very fire and brimstone. But let’s
look more carefully at what is implied, especially in that word, “repent,” and
especially how it differs from self-blame. First, some things about blame: Blame is easy, it is quick, but it is ultimately
unproductive. It allows us to keep a problem at arm’s length, because it
doesn’t require any personal investment. It becomes its own end – once the
blame is affixed, we can let it just sit there and fester, and even as blame
falsely promises that a solution can follow, in reality, it only eats away at
us, offering us nothing nourishing. It leads to false understanding, and ultimately, to self-hatred.
Repentance
is different. Where blame is easy, repentance is hard, like a tough piece of
meat that is difficult to chew and hard going down, but ultimately nourishing.
Where blame is quick, repentance can take weeks, even years, because it is a process
that requires deep, personal, and intentional reflection, and doesn’t allow us
to keep a problem at arm’s length, but rather, forces us to face it head on and
come to terms with it. Where blame is unproductive, repentance leads to growth,
restoration, and a deepening of relationship with God and with each other. It
requires, in short, a change, a
turning of our hearts away from ourselves and toward God. But we can only reach
that point if we are prepared for a healthy dose of humility, self-awareness,
and vulnerability – prepared, that is, to allow a space without walls of false
protection for God to enter into us, and turn out hearts toward Him.
Perhaps
the question that still lingers for you is, “But if you’re saying not to blame
ourselves for bad things that happen in our lives, then why do we even need to
repent? If we haven’t done anything wrong, what’s to repent?” It’s a great
question. I’m glad you asked. J Let’s look at the woman in the story I just told you,
the woman in the waiting room. She is blaming herself for her daughter’s
illness, because she smokes. Tell me: is this blame fairly or helpfully placed?
… Do you think her smoking caused her daughter’s tumor? … Can anything
productive come from her blaming herself?
Now,
what if instead of blaming
herself, she repented? For what
might she repent? … Well, she might still repent for smoking. Even if it isn’t
the cause of her daughter’s tumor,
it isn’t good for her daughter, or her, and she knows it. She has not taken
care of her body. She obviously has known for a long time that she needed to
quit smoking – that’s why she jumped so quickly to that habit as the cause of
the tumor. It is her own insecurity about her lifestyle. She knows she has to
change. She knows she has to turn her heart toward more godly living, and take
better care of herself. She knows she has to… you got it, repent.
And
that is what Jesus is getting at. No, these evils were not caused by people’s
sin. But that doesn’t mean they can’t serve as a catalyst for repentance. They
give us pause, give us a reason to look into our hearts and admit those things
we know have to change about ourselves, things that have kept us from being in
a close relationship with God – even if, at the end of the day, they have
little or nothing to do with the tragedy or conflict itself. God wants our
hearts to repent. God wants to offer healing balm for our pain. God wants to
feed us with abundant food when we are hungry, and drink when we’re in a dry
and weary land with no water. And while repentance doesn’t always lead to
understanding, at least not immediately, when we are willing to open ourselves
up to the fragility, vulnerability, and opportunity of repentance, God is able
to provide us with so much more than blame ever could, so much more than we
could ever find on our own.
Let
us pray. Abundant, forgiving God: We face many difficulties in this life,
and our first tendency always seems to be to blame ourselves or others. Help us
to use these challenges as opportunities to reflect on the state of our hearts,
so that we might be led out of ourselves, and toward you and your life-giving
ways. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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