Lent 3C
February 28, 2016
2 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9
Since we
began in January, there is a steady group of us who are diligently reading our Daily Bible every day, in hopes of
making it all the way to the end by December. I have to say, I’m really proud
of the folks who are sticking with it, because the Old Testament, which of
course is where we started, can be incredibly difficult to digest. The early years
of God’s chosen people, the Israelites, is when God has first given them the
Law, and is when God is trying to establish them as God’s chosen. As a result,
God appears to be quite harsh when laws are broken. Paul refers to a couple of
the harsher stories in our reading from 1st Corinthians – the time
when people practiced sexual immorality and 23,000 people were struck dead in
one day, or the time a bunch of folks were killed by serpents. It’s not easy
stuff to take! For a couple weeks there, we talked a lot about punishment, and the
question that kept coming up in Bible study was, “Is suffering God’s punishment
for our sin?”
Every time that question comes up, I feel
uneasy. I don’t want to think about our God of love as a God who punishes. It
troubles me on a personal level, but it also troubles me on a larger level,
because that theology makes it too easy to blame the victim, to point fingers,
to say, “Well that person had it coming. He deserved it.” And as soon as we
point the finger at someone else, it becomes easier to let ourselves off the
hook. Or maybe, if we look a little more deeply, pointing the finger and
blaming the victim makes it easier to ignore our own responsibility in a
difficult reality, or even to ignore the question that is really nagging at our
hearts: “Will God – or is God already – punishing me for something? Is that why I’m suffering like I am right now?”
Assuming
suffering is punishment for sin seems like such an easy answer to a difficult
situation – and complex problems never have easy solutions. And this particular
easy answer leads us down a troubling path. Applied to other people’s
suffering, it only leads to blame and hate and fear. It gives us all the more
reason to hate and disregard the “other,” because we can write them off with,
“Well, they just got what was coming to them.” Applied to our own suffering, it
leads to self-loathing and hopelessness, to a sense that we are not worth much
to God. Either way, the possibility of God punishing us according to the
severity of our sins is never a path that leads to life.
Lucky for
us, Jesus puts the kibosh on this theology straight away. The people come to
him in today’s gospel reading with a couple of recent calamities of the day:
one in which Pilate slaughtered some Galileans while they were presenting their
offerings, and one in which a tower, a part of the Temple, crumbled, killing 18
people who were standing below. Horrifying tragedies, which the people are
trying to make some sense of. We can relate – how many tragic shootings, for
example, have we had in the past year, and each time we scramble to make sense
of them, blaming this religion, or that law, or those people. That tendency is
just as true in our personal lives, where we and our loved ones are faced with
challenging diagnoses, sudden deaths, and losses that turn life on its head,
and leave us wondering, “What did I do to deserve this?” It’s no surprise that
the people in Jesus’ time are concerned about these tragedies; we have felt the
same way!
But Jesus
takes each one of them and says, “You think that was punishment for sin? It
wasn’t, I assure you! These people’s sin was no less or greater than anyone
else’s.”
At first I am relieved to hear it.
But then I am once again troubled: if not that, Jesus, then why? Why this
trauma? I expect him to go on and explain – after all, the question of the
origin and reason for suffering is the question every major religion tries to
answer! What a great opportunity for him to take that question head on! But
instead of giving us a reason that will help us sleep at night, Jesus offers us
this: “But unless you repent, you will all perish like they did.”
Come again,
Jesus? This is your explanation for suffering? That we’d better buck up if we
don’t want to end up like these unfortunate people? I’m not sure I like this
theology any better!
But then
Jesus goes on – and in this strange little parable is where we hear a word of
grace. A
I admit when
I first read this, I wasn’t sure if this was good news or not. My first
inclination is to assume we are meant to be the fig trees who are not bearing
fruit, and God is the landowner wanting to be rid of us. That would fit with
the punishing God so prevalent in the Old Testament, the one Paul refers to in
his letter to the Corinthians. To me, even as someone who thrives under a
deadline, hearing an ultimatum like, “You’ve got one year to buck up or get
out,” does not make me feel loved by God.
But the
beauty of parables is that there is not just one way to interpret them, and
often if you just turn it a little and look at it from a different angle, you
can get a completely different meaning. So try this: instead of the angry
landowner being God, ready to do away with us, perhaps the landowner is all the
voices in our head telling us that we deserve the suffering we have been given.
God, then, becomes the compassionate gardener, the one who is certain that, if
given more time and some TLC, even this worthless, waste-of-soil fig tree
(a.k.a. you and I) can be well and bear fruit.
Suddenly,
our hopeless, blame- and fear-inducing theology of sin and punishment becomes a
theology of grace and compassion, a life of faith in which there is hope for the hopeless, in which God does care for us and in fact, actively
works to bring us back into God’s loving embrace. Now, Jesus’ declaration of
the need to repent becomes not a threat, but a way forward, a way out of
hopelessness. It is no longer, “Repent or die,” but rather, “Repent, and live!
Repent, and find a path to life, a path to God!”
Repentance
is also not an easy answer, of course. For it requires a good hard look at your
heart, and seeing what might be growing in there that you hadn’t seen before
can be a shock.
Maybe you’ve seen on the news orsocial media that several people have discovered in their children’s sippy cups
that inside a part of the lid that is unwashable, there has been mold growing.
People are posting pictures of the horrors they found once they cracked open
these sippy cups: mold that was making their children constantly sick. As I
grimaced at the grossness people didn’t even
“Repent, or
you will perish,” Jesus says. And now I believe him. Because without taking
that good, hard look at our own hearts, and asking Jesus, as we do during Lent,
to “create in us clean hearts,” we will go on suffering until we perish,
because our hearts – moldy and grimy from all the pain and suffering we have
endured – taint and contaminate the way we see life. Repent, Jesus advises, and
come out with clean hearts. Repent, and your barrenness will become
fruitfulness.
And the best
news of all? Jesus is there, with us and for us. He is that gardener, tending
the soil around our roots, nourishing it and making sure it is getting all that
it needs to be fruitful. He is the gardener, pleading for another chance for
us, speaking up to all those voices that would love to tear us down, and assuring
instead that we will, eventually, blossom and bear fruit – assuring us that,
with Jesus’ loving touch, there will be new life.
Let us pray…
God our gardener, tend the soil of our
hearts. Help us to see what prevents us from growing closer to you. Help us to
rid our hearts of that which keeps us from bearing fruit, so that we may
continue our walk toward your cross, and toward the new life that you bring to
us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
