And still we say that GOD punishes and we treat one another with great cruelty because we believe that GOD is in the business of hating and punishing and driving the immigrant out of the community in spite of everything written in Scripture which bears that as a lie, which reveals how false a claim that is.
The true power of repentance in the season of Lent
Lent 3C | Luke 13:1-9
This morning in our gospel story we are lamenting over Jerusalem. We talked about this last week, when the Pharisees warned Jesus that Herod wanted him killed but Jesus was pressing on anyway – that his mission, his calling is to go to Jerusalem, where he will be killed in the city which kills its prophets.
Today we turn to the beginning of the same chapter, Luke 13, in which we find these three curious elements:
- about Galileans whose blood was mixed with their sacrifices,
- those who had been killed by a tower falling, and
- a parable of a fig tree which hasn’t produced for three years.
Elements which, I think, are pointed by Jesus at Jerusalem.
With these first two, Jesus is asking them what they think about these two moments, then giving his own spin on it.
He asks them if they think GOD is doing this to them – that they are being punished. That these people are more sinful; somehow worse people. Jesus doesn’t think so. This is significant because this is about as divisive an idea for people of faith as there is. It is about as important now as it was then as it was in the Exile and in the reign of David.
Does GOD punish people here and now for sin? And, in the same, does GOD bless people here and now for their good works? Jesus says emphatically NO!
And still we say that GOD punishes and we treat one another with great cruelty because we believe that GOD is in the business of hating and punishing and driving the immigrant out of the community in spite of everything written in Scripture which bears that as a lie, which reveals how false a claim that is.
We need to hear that Jesus doesn’t mince his words here: these people weren’t punished because of sin.
But! And it is a significant but… But, our deaths are inevitable. GOD doesn’t take people, but when we all die inevitably, GOD receives us.
But! Unless we repent, we will die without peace. GOD doesn’t provide torture, GOD relieves it.
Inevitable Death
The parable Jesus tells about a fig tree which is condemned but given a second chance, one more year to grow fruit before it is cut down is an interesting juxtaposition with the collapsing of a building and Roman persecutions. Here we’re led to see this parable as a depiction of mercy; an example of GOD staying the hand of an execution.
It is also a chilling reminder of the sin for which Jerusalem needs repenting. For the story carries with it a weight of understanding that fruit won’t be born this extra year, either. In spite of this act of mercy, the tree will face its inevitable death.
This parable really is for us, it seems. We are constantly speaking to the inevitable and the certainty of events. As surely as the previous three years yielded nothing, the fourth will as well. As surely as the church is doomed, we’ll be doomed this year, too.
And we do this because of all of the evidence. All of it points to death and destruction. For the Temple in the decades soon after Jesus’s death. For the church as the trends go away from worship, as new generations are not being raised in the church, as three decades of wage stagnation and rising costs have left our worship communities with fewer resources and even fewer trend lines toward vitality. We literally have to work twice as hard for half of the yields as we did in the late ‘50s.
We can see this as inevitable. We can skip ahead to the failure and see our destruction as the will of GOD, even when Jesus shouts at us to stop making that stuff up! Stop declaring that GOD punishes and blesses like a fickle deviant.
We can do this. Or we can hear what Jesus is actually saying to us.
One Year
Jesus seems to be rejecting the fatalism of the human mind and our tendency to make inevitable what need not be so.
n this example of the fig tree, Jesus describes a mercy year, a Sabbath, a Jubilee, in which this fig tree can beat the odds. It can go against its precedent and do something truly radical – not just stave off its impending death, but come to new life and vitality.
Jesus is speaking about Jerusalem, of course, but we can listen intently to what this can tell us, can’t we?
The leadership is corrupted by Rome and isn’t invested in the problems of the people. The leadership at the Temple is defrauding the people and is making their central house of prayer into a den of robbers. This is the critique Jesus will bring to the Temple leaders themselves shortly.
The fig tree that Jesus will curse that week will be cursed for not providing fruit out of season. Not because Jesus is mean and irrational. But because in GOD’s eyes, the Temple never has an “off-season” and its leaders must provide in lean times and in abundant times. Their job is to provide fruit when it is needed, not when it is convenient.
So Jesus tells them that the avenue for help is repentance: is turning away from evil and literally turning one’s self toward GOD; lifting our hearts and minds and even our physical bodies toward GOD so that we might be in perfect relationship with GOD. This is the way out of inevitable doom. This is how we literally change the course of inevitable history.
Re/Turn
This is why we have Lent. To not only remember we are dust, but to do the work of repentance anew. That we can again turn ourselves to GOD. That we might make this year the year of mercy, of Sabbath, of Jubilee. That our inevitables might be removed and we might remake our world.
In our church history, as we recall each Ash Wednesday, this season of Lent was created to be the 6 weeks of preparation before the Great Vigil of Easter, in which the people preparing to be baptised are brought up into the life of the community.
We’re also reminded that it is the season in which those with notorious sin (not just cussing and drinking and lying, but serious, community-breaking sin), the kind of sin which could destroy the community, and the people who are responsible for the sin work toward repentance and absolution. That they might join those new members as new members themselves, absolved and washed and made new.
And the community which has been standing with these people, the new and the old, the saint and the sinner, are changed and allow themselves to be changed by these people. So that the whole community, newly whole with these new people might be that kind of community. Not the same-ol’-same-ol’ that they were with their anger and their bitterness and their walls of separation.
A new community. Of love. Trust. Faith. Inspired by GOD to be different.
This is why I love Lent. Why I’m not big on giving something up because my mind is on these big things. How I can accept the notorious, how I can forgive as GOD is seeking to forgive.
And it is why every year I say this could be our year. This could be the year in which we remake the inevitable history and we go against the tide of cultural irrelevancy and local indifference. That this is the year in which we make the gospel the heart of our action and the love of Christ our currency.
Because GOD isn’t in the business of carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments. GOD is in the business of embracing a call to bringing good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed. GOD is in the business of finding disciples who are willing to do the work, replacing the crowds who just like to watch what’s going on. GOD is in the business of giving us second chances to be that kind of disciple.
And third chances. And fourth. And I hear even 49 and 77 chances. To live a life of mercy and reconciliation. Of hope and communion. Of sufficiency and equality. Not because we think we have GOD at our back, but when we turn to put our Christ in front of us.
May we continue to have a holy and world-shattering Lent. Amen.
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