| Scriptures: | Isaiah 55:1-9 Luke 13:1-9 |
Where was God when the earthquake hit Haiti – and now here again in Chile last week along with a tsunami following? How could God let such tragedies as these happen? Questions like these arise whenever there’s a huge natural disaster – the tsunami in southern Asia, Hurricane Katrina, the drought and famine in Biafra in the late 60s – or whenever the catastrophe is human made – the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot, the atrocities at Abu Ghrab. They are also agonizingly there when the tragedy is very personal – the death of Bob Grandjean, much too soon, Betsy Stone telling me about her 51-year-old sister struggling with cancer, and, of course, as Ann and I experienced it last year with the death of our son. We want to shake our fist, don’t we – at God – at something. If God is a loving God, how can such things happen?
And somewhere hidden behind our outrage and grief is the nagging suspicion: was there some sort of sin involved to cause this to happen? Our logical mind tells us, “No, of course not,” but something deep within us makes us wonder if somehow blame needs to be assessed. And so are joined together the intertwined issues of judgment and suffering. These issues form the core of the argument in the book of Job, as Job’s three supposed friends seek to discover what it is that Job has done to bring all this suffering upon himself. Several years ago Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book that was quite a best-seller for awhile: When Bad Things Happen to Good People – which sought to refute the argument that there was any correlation between evil-doing and suffering.
The people who came to see Jesus as he was making his way to Jerusalem (Luke doesn’t tell us who they are, simply referring to them as “there were some present”) are bringing this kind of a question to him with their rather strange story “about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” They must have been pretty big sinners to have suffered like that. And, of course, Pilate is the biggest sinner of all.
But Jesus turns the tables on them (he really loves to do that, doesn’t he?). He rejects the assumption behind the question, and instead he wants these questioners to focus on their own judgmentalism. There’s a parallel story to this one, by the way, in the Gospel of John (9:2) where Jesus came across a blind man and the disciples asked Jesus whose sin it was that resulted in him being born blind. Jesus rejected that view when he replied, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him." Likewise, here in Luke Jesus rejected the assumption that there is a necessary correlation between suffering and sin. The Galileans that were killed were no worse sinners than all other Galileans.
Jesus’ reply is shocking. One would expect that Jesus would at least lash out against Pilate and call down curses on such a cruel man. But no such venomous vindictiveness is pronounced against Pilate. Instead, the tables are turned against the reporters: "unless you repent, you will all perish." They themselves are in need of repentance, implying that Jesus is more concerned about hatred and a vengeful spirit evident in the reporters than with the injustice of a political regime.
Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem – heading toward his date with destiny. He is in a hurry to do the work that will fulfill his creator’s will. And we are there with him, following in his steps, as we have been each of these weeks of Lent. But these people will not leave him alone. They need a piece of him, and the best way to get that, they figure, is to pose these difficult, almost unanswerable questions. In response, Jesus tells them what they must do – and they really don’t want to hear this: “repent [or] you will all perish.”
Ah yes, repent! We liberal Protestants don’t really want to hear this word either, do we? But sometimes that’s the word the Bible – and Jesus in particular – throws at us. Here he seems to be saying to these questioners: turn around – come at this matter from a whole different way – don’t judge the Galileans or Pilate until you’ve taken a good hard look at yourselves. And when you do you will find that participating in the promises of God means that you will give up your pride, give up the illusion that you are in control, give up the need to find fault with someone else. That’s what it means to repent – to turn around and find that Jesus is there waiting for you on the road to Jerusalem.
The other implication of what Jesus is saying here is just that -- stuff happens (I know there’s a more colloquial and perhaps more appropriate way to say that, but since this is a sermon I thought you might not want me to use that particular locution). Stuff happens. Tsunamis and hurricanes and Holocausts and senseless deaths are part of our human existence. Deal with it. This kind of “stuff”, Jesus is saying, has nothing to do with sin (well, OK, maybe we shouldn’t include the Holocaust as being unrelated to human sin – but the larger point is that it is not up to us to judge).
And the further larger point is that precisely because “stuff happens” we need to be prepared. That’s the other meaning behind “repent” – get yourself ready for all that is going to happen to you – both the “stuff” and the promises of God. As the African-American spiritual puts it, "Not my brother, not my sister, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.”
Life is going to be unpredictable, and so it is up to us to be prepared for whatever we are handed. One way to do that is to examine our own lives and see where we need to turn around.
There’s a poem by Linda Ellis that some of you may be familiar with called
The Dash. I’m not going to recite the whole thing, but it’s about a man at a
funeral talking about the life of the one who has died. The key verse goes:
He noted that first came her date of birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.
That little punctuation mark – the dash on a tombstone – represents the sum of who we are on this earth. Inez, a character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, No Exit, says the same thing in an almost despairing way: “One always dies too soon -- or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are -- your life, and nothing else.” We who know of the promise beyond the grave realize that that “nothing else” is not accurate. But Inez’s comment that “You are – your life” resonates with our need to look at the days that are our lives, and to prepare for what may come. What’s in your dash? How are you living your dash? What do you need to do to be prepared – to turn around?
Second Isaiah gets at this same need for repentance in familiar words that,
fascinatingly for an Old Testament prophet, lead directly to the reality of
God’s mercy:
“Seek the Lord while God may be found,
call upon God while God is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord that God may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for God will abundantly pardon.”
That line – “and the unrighteous their thoughts” – relates directly to what we have been talking about in terms of preparation. It is not just physical preparedness – like battening down our house when a hurricane is about to hit – but our very thought processes themselves that need to be turned around in order for us to be strengthened in our preparations. Repentance is not something to be done once and then we just go on to other things. Repentance is an ongoing attitude. We say it in the Lord’s Prayer: “forgive us our sins, as we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us."
And look then at the promise! – “for God will abundantly pardon.” Not “may” – will. That mercy and grace are there for us throughout the preparations that we are making.
In order to strengthen this point for those who have accosted him on the road to Jerusalem Jesus tells the parable of the man with his barren fig tree. Three years is a long time to be waiting for a tree to bear fruit. No wonder the man wants his gardener to cut it down. But the gardener – who is Christ in this parable – urges the man to give it another year. The fig tree seems like it deserves to be cut off, but is given more time – which is what God does with each of us. As Bill Long puts it, “Jesus' point will be that if we just wanted ‘justice’ from God, none of us would survive. We need the grace of ‘one more year’ to ‘produce our fruit.’" Note that there is no indication that the tree will bear fruit,but, nevertheless, the gardener expends extra effort in preparing the tree.
That’s really the point, isn’t it? Jesus is going to extraordinary lengths to prepare his listeners, to prepare his disciples, to prepare us for the journey that lies ahead.
Are you ready to turn around? And then look for the promise that is there when you do? Lutheran pastor Kae Evensen sums up this whole dynamic beautifully for us when she says, “Repent or perish. These words are hard and true. We cannot dismiss or alleviate their difficulty in any way, but they are only half the story. The other half, the grace that is given in response, does not depend on us, but on this One who will not allow us to be separated from God’s love. These words we would prefer not to hear or would rather dismiss are spoken by One who ultimately will bear them for us. We repent, we die, and in all things we are given life.”
God who offers judgment also offers grace. If we are prepared for what happens to us along life’s journey, we will know that grace in abundance. Yes, stuff happens, but we have been strengthened by the preparations that Jesus has given to us. Part of that preparation we participate in as we come before this communion table.
Next week our steps in following Jesus will show us how we can continue to offer extravagant love.
Amen
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
March 7, 2010