Turn

Turn

Third Sunday of Lent

March 24, 2019

The Text: Luke 13:1-9

At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them–do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'”

The Sermon

My mother used to say some funny things – things we later laughed about when I became an adult. It was no laughing matter when I was a kid. She would tell my brother and me to do something, and then she would end the sentence with “and I don’t mean maybe.” By the time she got to the maybe part, we were pretty sure maybe was not an option. My neighbor’s mother would say to us when we got in trouble – because when I was a kid if one kid got in trouble we were all given a dressing down, she would say to us “Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”  Twice and loud.  We were all like “yah, and so can the Filipones next door and the Cooney sisters down the street. Yah, we can hear you.”

So, Jesus is sort of doing this in our Gospel lesson for today. Twice he tells his audience, “unless you repent you will all perish.”  He is trying to drive home the point that everyone needs to repent – no one gets to be above and beyond the need to repent.  Now, Jesus has to say that twice?  Why? For the same reason my friend’s mother had to say things twice.  His audience was hearing but not listening. And why didn’t they listen to what he has to say? Because they have their mind elsewhere. 

So, what are these people hung up on?  They are held up in the age-old question of cause and effect.  Humans are very interested in cause and effect. So, in today’s Gospel we hear two stories – first about these poor Galileans who somehow got caught up and were slaughtered and became part of the burnt sacrifices that Pilate offered to the Emperor who was considered a demagogue.  The second incident is the fall of the Tower of Siloam which was in a town near Jerusalem which crushed 18 people.  The people present are asking the age-old question if their suffering was caused by their notorious sin. 

It is that age old question that the Old Testament wrestles with throughout its pages – does God inflict punishment and suffering when we sin.  In the year 200 BCE, the author of Ecclesiastes made the startling claim that there seemed to be no correlation between sin and suffering – that our lives aren’t cursed by God because of our sin.  That is, there really is no cause and effect.  Trying to figure that out is as profitable as chasing after the wind.

So, 2,200 years later – what do we believe? It varies.  From my experience as a college chaplain – I have been told by students that there are some Christian Churches that do teach that if you are not faithful to God, and you do not read your bible, and you do not pray, and you do not order your life around the church’s teaching, let me say that again, the church’s teaching, of what God wants you to do, God will punish you by not giving you what you want and thereby making you suffer.

Mercifully – that is not an Episcopal teaching.  What scripture seems to say, especially in our reading for today, and in many of Paul’s letters, is that all people sin and fall short of the glory of God.  In short, we are not perfect. We make mistakes, we are sometimes selfish, self-centered, and self-satisfied – sometimes we are stingy with our love, we do not always put God first in our lives, etc..  We are all in same boat.  Does God punish us for that?  No.  However, it would be remiss of me to suggest that our sin has no correlation with suffering.  Sin does cause suffering for us and for others – yes – definitely.  We have all witnessed the suffering caused by corruption and evil.  Sinfulness can and does create suffering.  But it is not heaven sent.

So where does suffering come from, if it is not the result of our own actions?

I think it is helpful to understand suffering in the way that I have come to understand my frozen shoulder.  About a year ago I went to an orthopedic doctor, had an x-ray and was given a prescription for Physical Therapy.  They said I had an impingement in the shoulder joint. So, I did the exercises and it just got worse and worse.  And I was blaming myself. I thought I must not be doing the exercises right – I felt like I had to figure out why my shoulder was getting worse and not better. Surely I was contributing to it somehow.  And if you have ever had an injury – you know – people will ask you – how did you do it?  As I said earlier, human beings are very interested in cause and effect. 

So, I finally went back to the orthopedic doctor after my range of motion in my shoulder was so restricted that I couldn’t really go on.  I was relieved then that doctor did not know immediately what was wrong. So I had an MRI. And I was diagnosed as having “frozen shoulder”.  First step to getting better – a cortisone injection. Next step, three months of PT.  So, I asked my PT what I did to get frozen shoulder. I must have done something.  And she said “in your case, it is totally idiopathic.  The body just does this to shoulders sometimes – it seizes up, and eventually, after a year or two, it will resolve itself. The only contributing factor is that you are a woman between the ages of 40 and 60 – that’s the most at risk age group for frozen shoulder.”

Now why am I telling you this story about my shoulder – well it’s to talk about suffering as idiopathic.  We live in a world where suffering just happens – sometimes, often through no fault of our own, people get injured, people get sick, people sometimes don’t get better. Some families seem to have far more than their share of problems and tragedies- through no fault of their own.  None of us will live forever.  And the point is – if we keep on looking at the question “why”, “why me?”, “why them?”, “why us?”,  we suffer not only the presenting condition we find ourselves in, but we will suffer with the kinds of answers we give ourselves – we deserved it, God is punishing us, etc., etc., The most important thing to remember is, God does not punish us for our sins.

And so, the point of this Gospel passage is really to remind us that life is precious and it is fragile.  It’s why we tell our loved ones to drive safely. And what acknowledging this fragility helps us realize is there is an urgency to live a life right now that is in accordance of our values as Christian people.  We can’t put off being those people we want to be.  The time is now. And realizing this is what leads us to repentance.

Jesus says we need to repent lest we perish.  Jesus is not talking literally.  He is talking about our souls perishing. What repentance calls us to do is re-orient ourselves to God like a heliotrope to the sun. 

Last week I talked about the Way of Love – which is our Presiding Bishop’s dream child of ways that we can live our lives as the Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement.  One of the first steps of that process is to “turn” – like we do in our baptismal promises. We say “we turn to Christ”, just like the congregation figuratively turns to Christ when the Gospel is processed to the center of the church to be read during our Sunday service. On the Way of Love website, it says this about turn:

With God’s help, we can turn [i.e. repent] from the powers of sin, hatred, fear, injustice, and oppression toward the way of truth, love, hope, justice, and freedom. In turning, we reorient our lives to Jesus Christ, falling in love again, again, and again.

And so, to end, I would like to leave you with a quote from Professor Matt Skinner, a professor of theology at Luther Seminary about this Gospel reading we had today:

Jesus’ words about judgment and repentance are scary, yet they depict human life as a gift, albeit a fragile one. Vulnerable creatures that we are, we can presume little and do little to preserve ourselves. Too many Lenten observances assume that taking our humanity seriously requires morose expressions of piety. But the Christian outlook on repentance arcs toward joy. And it finds grace experienced within the awful precariousness and strange beauty of our fleeting existence.[1]

Amen.

Final Blessing:

 Life is short. We don’t have much time to gladden the hearts

of those who walk this way with us.

So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind

And the blessing of God Almighty,

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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[1] www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=530