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]
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| 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. 
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