“Repent? Who, Me?”
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When you hitch your preaching wagon to the guidance of the Common Lectionary, sometimes you get stuck with Scriptures you’d really rather not have to deal with. This is one of those times. The passages for today from both Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and Luke’s Gospel are pretty heavy. Paul goes to great lengths to detail the trials and tribulations of the Israelites during the Exodus, and Jesus is calling his listeners to repentance for what would appear to be unknown sins. Truth be told, I could have chosen to preach on the Psalm for today, or the Old Testament passage from Isaiah but as I thought and prayed about what the message for this week needed to be, I kept coming back to the epistle and Gospel as containing the gold to be mined and shared. We’re not comfortable with talking about the penalties for disobedience, whether it’s disobedience to God or to our parents, and we’re certainly not comfortable with being called to repent. That sounds so, I don’t know, so fundamentalist. John the Baptist stuff, not twenty-first century Presbyterian stuff! And for cryin’ out loud, Paul warns us not to complain or we’ll be killed by angels! Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it? Did you say something bad about breakfast this morning? Mutter about the driver in front of you on the way to church? Were you planning on being less than complimentary about the sermon?? What is really being said in these two passages, and how do they inform our lives today? Are they really as heavy and depressing as they seem at first blush, or is there actually a message of hope buried in there? I vote for the latter, but it’s going to take a little work to dig out the hope, and at the end of the day it’s going to take more than a little self-reflection which does fit pretty well with the Lenten season.
Nothing that Paul has to say in his letter to the Corinthian church is new. We’re familiar with the Exodus and some of the things that happened during the forty years the Hebrews spent in the wilderness. We may well have forgotten some of the details, like complainers being killed by angels and immoral behavior being punished with death by snakes but in general I think we have a pretty good idea of what was going on during the journey. Over the course of their wanderings, most of the first and second generations of the freed Hebrews died off for a variety of reasons up to and including turning their backs on God when Moses went up the mountain to receive the tablets containing the Ten Commandments – and worshipped the idol that was the golden calf. Paul puts a uniquely Christian spin on things, tying the rock that provided water in the desert to the rock of our salvation, Jesus Christ, and the crossing of the
And what of Jesus? His words in the first part of today’s Gospel lesson are equally scary, talking about the blood of Galileans being mixed with their sacrifices and workers being killed by falling towers. Repent, he says, or the same fate will befall you. But there’s another message here, one that begins to touch on the idea of bad fortune being the result of sinful behavior. How often have we heard that? Something bad happens to you, and a helpful soul tells you it’s because God is testing you, or it’s because you did something wrong like eating the wrong food or being unkind to a stranger or wearing mixed fabrics that are forbidden by the Deuteronomic laws and God is punishing you. There’s an unfortunate tendency amongst human beings to want to assign cause-and-effect explanations for everything that happens. We talk about “karma,” “what goes around comes around,” and “no good deed goes unpunished.” We especially like to try pointing the finger at God when something bad happens to us or someone we know and ask “why me, God? What did I do to deserve this?” Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his classic book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” answers this eternal question with “most likely nothing.” Sometimes things just happen, you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, somebody didn’t complete a maintenance task properly, or the metal in the door hinge was old and had fatigued so the door fell and someone was injured. He points out that in the story of Job, God doesn’t do anything to Job, he allows the devil to afflict him to see how he responds. And that gets to another thing we’re not comfortable talking about, the presence of evil in the world, but that will have to be a topic for another day. In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus is told of some Galileans whose blood had been mingled with their sacrifices. History suggests that Pontius Pilate had ordered the murder of Galilean pilgrims in Jerusalem while they were offering their sacrifices in the temple, possibly out of fear that they were part of a Zealot plan to incite rebellion against Rome, which explains how their blood was mixed with that of their sacrifice, and Jesus asks those who have given him this news if they believed this happened because these particular Galileans had somehow committed worse sins than their fellow countrymen. He then asks the crowd if they thought those killed in the collapse of the
Let’s take a look at the word “repent” and what it means. Webster’s defines repent as “to be sorry, self-reproaching or contrite for past conduct; regret or be conscience-stricken about a past action or attitude. To feel such sorrow for sin or fault as to be disposed to change one’s life for the better; to be penitent. Aha, there it is! To feel such sorrow for sin as to be disposed to change one’s life for the better. Jesus isn’t telling us to say we’re sorry, he’s telling us to change! And to do it now, before it’s too late. Jesus knows what’s coming in only a few weeks, so time is of the essence to adjust the way people are living. He emphasizes this with the parable of the fruitless fig tree in the last part of today’s reading. And here we’ll find the message of hope I told you was buried in the passage.
A fig tree, planted three years before, has borne no fruit. The owner of the vineyard wants it cut down so as to not deplete the soil, but the gardener appeals to him for a little more time, a little more care, a little more fertilizer to make the tree bear fruit. A second chance, if you will, for the fig tree. A second chance to be fruitful, a second chance to change. Now we know that the fig tree can’t just decide on its own to bear fruit, it needs the help of a skilled gardener to realize its potential, and the same is true for us. We can want to change with all our heart and soul, but we need some help to actually do it. Jesus Christ is that helper, my friends, the skilled gardener in our lives. The one who tills the soil around our feet, who adds fertilizer to the soil of our lives, the one who loves us into full fruition.
In a few minutes, we’re going to come to the table and share the Lord’s Supper. The doctrine of our denomination requires that we come to the table with a clean heart, having confessed our sins and been forgiven; that’s why we have a prayer of confession early in our service. But today, I invite you to come to the table having done more than say “I’m sorry.” I invite you to come to the table having committed to make a change in the way you live your life. Halfway through the Lenten season is a good time to start putting action to the preparations you’ve been making. You may have found yourself asking what’s up with all the talk of repentance in today’s Gospel, wondering how that applies to you. Repent, you ask? Who, me? Yes, you.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
