Sermon: Repent and live (March 24, 2019)

Lent 3C

March 24, 2019

Luke 13:1-13

INTRODUCTION

         “Repent or perish.” This is the heading you will see in you look up today’s Gospel reading in your Bible. It is not the most comfortable message for us to hear, yet here we are, halfway through Lent, and we are told today in no uncertain terms that it is an important one. Repent or perish.

         If you don’t like that message, you might be drawn, as I am, to some of the more comforting images in the readings we’re about to hear. Isaiah offers an abundant feast, freely given by a gracious God. The Psalm reflects in beautiful poetry on finding sustenance and safety in the shadow of God’s wings – not unlike the mother hen image for God that we heard last week. Paul reminds us in Corinthians of all the times God has brought God’s people safely through danger, adding that “God is faithful!” Yes, these are all images I prefer!

         And yet in each of these readings, we will also hear that same refrain: repent or perish. Turn away from that which does not give life, and turn toward that which does: that same faithful, comforting, sheltering, providing God. So as tempting as it may be to listen for the most comforting images, I urge you as you listen today, to listen for that “repent or perish” theme, the words in Scripture that are urging us not to stay the way we are, but to change our ways so that we might have life. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Our bulletin cover, drawn by one of our youth, Gabi P.

In the wake of yet another horrific shooting, this time in two mosques in New Zealand, the world is once again asking the question: how did this happen? We wonder on a practical level (is it access to guns, mental illness, white supremacy, racism or Islamophobia, the media), and perhaps more troublingly, we wonder on a theological level: why does God allow things like this to keep happening? We desperately want to figure out what or who is to blame, so that we can come to some understanding about it. If we can name a reason, it doesn’t seem quite so scary or insurmountable.

But these efforts to understand never do much good for increasing love and decreasing hate. One of the more damaging ways we sometimes come up with to make sense of things, is to assume that whoever is suffering must have done something to deserve it. I remember after Hurricane Katrina, there was a pastor who said on national news that the hurricane was God’s punishment for a gay rights parade that was being planned in New Orleans. There is a lot wrong with this, and no matter your feeling on gay rights, I hope this theology makes us all uncomfortable! I know it does me! God doesn’t hate all the same people we do, and then punish them extremely. Ours is a God of love, not hate and punishment! It troubles me on a personal level, but it also troubles me on a broader level, because that theology makes it too easy to blame the victim, to point fingers, to say, “Well that person had it coming. She 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. If it’s someone else’s fault, it can’t be ours! Or maybe, it helps us 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 – but 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.

         Thankfully, Jesus puts the kibosh on this theology straightaway. He mentions 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 – each week seems to bring another mass shooting, another natural disaster, another plane crash, 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 of the fig tree is where we hear a word of grace. A fig tree has been barren, a waste of the soil it’s planted in. The landowner, being an efficient man, tells the gardener to tear it out. The gardener, though, sees its potential. “Give it another year,” he says. “I’ll tend to it and give it some extra help, and next year, I think, it will be better. If not, then you can cut it down.”

         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 today 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. And, it still makes me feel like if I suffer, it is my own fault.

         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. It’s all that negative self-talk. 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, and find the life that comes after the hard work of repentance.

         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! Repent, and turn away from all those things that were holding you back, keeping you from living into abundant life in Christ.”

         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.

I admit that, despite my best efforts, my children’s various sippy cups always seem to end up with some mold in places I can’t get clean. I’ll be washing dishes when suddenly, “Ah man!” How did I miss this?? It occurred to me: what if my heart is like that? What if I started pulling back some pieces and disassembling the nice clean exterior to reveal those hidden, hard to reach places – I’d probably see that there’s something growing in there, that I wasn’t even aware of, that is making me sick, that contaminates every swallow I try to take. Something that is keeping me from enjoying a life of fullness in the grace of God.

         “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.

Sermon: Lament that leads to life (March 17, 2019)

Lent 2C

March 17, 2019

Luke 13:31-35

INTRODUCTION

         On this second Sunday in Lent, we will hear a bit about lament. Lament is not a word we use terribly often these days, it’s kind of a churchy word, but it is a word I have come to love. How would you define it? … So in our Genesis reading, we will encounter a longing and impatient Abram (later Abraham), who has been promised by God that he will be the father of a great nation, and yet his wife, Sarai (later Sarah) remains barren. So when God comes to him to tell him once again, “I’m going to give you great things!” his response will be not gratitude, but lament: “But God, look at what I don’t have.” The Psalm will start off cheerfully enough, but after the first few verses, it too slips into that lamenting place, asking God for help. And in our Gospel lesson, we will hear about an encounter Jesus has while he is in route from Galilee to Jerusalem, to what he knows will be his death. This is one of the two times that Jesus will lament over the city of Jerusalem, expressing his sadness at how far Jerusalem has fallen.

         Lament is a powerful thing, so as you listen, try to do so with empathy, remembering a time when you, too, felt the need to lament – when you didn’t get what you felt you needed, when you longed for an awareness of God’s presence in the midst of trouble, when you needed a word of hope, when things had gone horribly awry and disappointed you greatly. Remember that time, and see if you can enter into the story with that feeling in your heart. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

         My husband and I have enjoyed watching the show, Parks and Rec on Netflix – anyone watch that one? It’s hilarious and charming – we’ve watched it through a couple times! Anyway, toward the end of the series, one of the characters gets pregnant, and she is miserable, and her partner, who is a busy-body and a health nut, wants so badly to make things better for her. So he cooks, and makes her special smoothies, and massages her feet, and does everything he can think of to ease her pain, but she only gets grumpier, telling people, “He totally doesn’t get it!” Finally someone talks to him, and says, “All you have to say is, ‘That stinks.’ You don’t need to fix it or make it better. Just let her know you care that she’s miserable.” The next time he is sitting on the couch with her and she grumbles about everything that is wrong, he starts to fix it, then stops himself and says, “That stinks.” She looks at him gratefully and says, “Yes! It does!” She goes on and tells him more, and he says, “That really stinks.” She smiles and nestles into his shoulder, happy as can be.

         I always think of this scene when I think about lament. A lament might be a cry for help, for fixing, but it isn’t always. More than that, the purpose of a lament is simply to get it out there, to put into words, or cries, or sighs, or whatever, that your heart is heavy, that things are not as you wish they were. And yes, usually we eventually want those things fixed, we want the pain to go away, but the very first step toward healing is simply to voice our pain, and to know that someone hears it and cares.

         Before we get any further, let’s spend some time thinking about what sorts of things we lament. Certainly loss is one of them – lament is a sort of grief, a sadness that we have lost something or someone we care about it. But I think if we distill it down to its real essence: we lament over things that do not turn out as we had hoped they would. One of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances is along the road to Emmaus. The resurrected Jesus joins two men as they walk toward Emmaus, but they do not recognize him. When Jesus asks what they are so sad about, they describe the events of his crucifixion, adding, “We had hoped he would be the Messiah.” I have a dear friend who gave birth to a stillborn son. Following that tragic event, she and her husband resonated with those words of the disciples. They said, “’We had hoped’ are the three saddest words in all the Bible.” We had hoped…. They contain all the grief and loss and disappointment of dreams unrealized and hopes dashed. In other words, they contain a deep lament. We had hoped.

         I hear that sort of lament in our readings today. Abram is told he will father a great nation, and he responds, “I had hoped I’d have an heir by now. Right now, it’s looking like a slave in my house is going to be the closest thing I have to an heir.” Dreams unrealized. As Jesus talks about Jerusalem, the city whose name means peace but who kills prophets, he says, “I had hoped for more from this city, home of the temple, the nexus where heaven meets earth. How I had desired to gather you under my wings like a hen gathers her chicks, and you were not willing. Oh, how I had hoped…”

         And I hear laments like this today. We lament division in our nation, and political unrest – in the United States, to an extent, and even more so in countries like Venezuela and Yemen. As a society, we lament things like hunger, and racism, and violence in our communities. This is not how we hoped the world would be, not how God hoped it would be. We lament when things happen like what happened in New Zealand this weekend – nearly 100 Muslim worshippers shot in a mosque, at least 49 killed, by a man who was inspired by a similar shooting committed a few years ago in Charleston, in which 9 people were shot and killed during Bible study. We lament each individual loss, but also the cycle in which hatred and violence begets more hatred and violence, and our seeming inability to break that cycle. With the Psalmist, we lift our prayers, asking, “How long, O Lord? Show us your face!”

         And of course there are our individual laments as well. We lament when our kids whom we raised in faith grew up and never set foot in the church again; when the children or grandchildren we dreamed of never come; we lament when we discover that a hobby we had always loved is no longer in our capabilities; when someone we love turns toward drugs and we can’t seem to pull them back; we lament when we see just how much cancer has taken from our lives.

         Yes, there is plenty in this life and this world to lament. And there is certainly value in doing so. When we lament, we voice a recognition that we need God’s help, that we can’t do this alone. It acknowledges our own brokenness, our insufficiency, and our utter reliance on God’s grace and providence. This is not a comfortable message for those of us who enjoy autonomy and the idea that we can do anything we put our mind to. But at the same time, it is also freeing, allowing us to put our problems into the hands of the One who can do anything. As one commentator put it, lament makes our problems into God’s problems. We no longer have to hold them alone.

         And so lament becomes the first step out of that place of despair. Once we have voiced our pain, and acknowledged our need for God, we can start to have our needs met. Like the character I mentioned in Parks and Rec – she needed someone to hear her pain, but she did also need a foot massage and a healthy dinner. But help and solutions don’t always come readily or obviously. So, where might lament lead us?

         In Abram’s case, his lament led him into prayer. That’s what I imagine that night waiting for God looked like. He has a conversation with God, in which he voices his concerns, and listens to God’s response – the very definition of prayer! And then he waits all night for God to show him how seriously God has taken his pleas. This, too, is a sort of prayer. We usually think of prayer as talking to God, but it is (or should be!) as much listening as it is talking! After vigilantly and actively listening for quite some time, God does, eventually, speak to Abraham, making what is now known as the Abrahamic covenant.

         Another example of lament leading us into prayer is in our Psalm. After the first few verses, the Psalmist turns from praising to pleading. And I love this line: “My heart speaks your message: seek my face. My face, O God, I will seek.” This has been my motto this Lent, especially as we have been working on having FAITH5 conversations in which we seek to find God’s presence in our daily highs and lows. This is perhaps the most important prayer we can engage in – the simple effort to seek God’s face in our daily happenings, to see how God speaks to the desires or our heart, and to our deepest laments.

         As our lament draws us into prayer, it may very well lead from there to confession. The theme echoing through each Lenten season is, “create in me a clean heart,” and confession takes a step in that direction. This helps us see how God is using the recognition of our pain to point us toward a different way of being, seeing, or living. Not to say we are somehow the cause of our own pain (though I suppose sometimes we may have a role). But a lament may still draw out of us a recognition for how we can change our ways as far as how we love and serve one another, and seek peace and justice in the world – which, in the end, also helps us to better live into our baptismal promises and God’s mission for us.

         And that is exactly what Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem did: it was a step on the path for him fulfilling his mission, and what he was sent to do. It gave him resolve to keep moving forward, to keep heading toward Jerusalem, where he would be crucified on our behalf, and rise again from what should have been the ultimate lament, thus proving that God does, indeed, have final power over all sadness and brokenness.

And that, ultimately, is what Jesus’ continuing path toward Jerusalem means for us: it is what allows us also to be pulled out of our lamenting place. Our lament knocks us down a notch, so that we realize we cannot do this alone. It shows us our human limitations. It demands that we look beyond ourselves, to the power that can only be found in Christ. And Jesus’ fulfilling of his mission – to go to Jerusalem, to die and to rise again – that mission provides our ultimate hope: that God will triumph, over all our laments and woes and sadness, and bring us finally into eternal life.

Let us pray… Lamenting God, our hearts are heavy with all the sadness and unfulfilled hopes in our lives and in this world. Grant us the courage to voice our pain to you, so that you might carry it with us, and lead us from there into new life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.