March 11, 2007: Third Sunday in Lent

In the text preceding today's Gospel lesson, Jesus has informed his listeners that he came not to bring peace, but division, and while they know how to read the sky for signs of impending weather, they do not know "how to interpret the present time".

So in today's gospel, Luke tells us about a sign in the present time—Galileans come to the temple to make sacrifices to God and Pilate's soldiers not only slaughtered them in that holy place—but the soldiers mixed the victims' blood with the blood of animal sacrifices—a shocking act of profanity and desecration in holy Jewish space. The text doesn't tell us why Jesus was told about the murder of the Galileans, but his answer reveals he intuited what was on his questioners minds. They wanted to know two things:-- One, WHY this massacre happened in the temple and—two HOW can I prevent this happening to me? Aren't these the same questions we want answered when we learn of shocking tragedies? These two questions are so deep in our psyche's that more than one of you have joked with me that due to all the deaths we had recently you're thinking of changing your church membership! It's one way of answering these two question—Why? Well, the one thing these departed souls had in common was they were members of First Moravian, and how I can avoid the same fate is by moving my membership! Others of you have wondered will another church want me as an interim pastor after they've learned about all the deaths here? Different answers to these two questions. Why? Margaret Leinbach was their pastor. How can they avoid the same fate? Don't let her become their pastor!

When calamity strikes, we want to think the victim could have seen it coming. We squirrel around in our minds searching for some mistake that explains why they were victimized, because if we can figure out what the victim did or did not do, then so much better our chances of not being the next victim! We crave control over the bad things that may befall us and live in the fear caused by our lack of real control.

I'm reminded of scenes from the movie, "Schindler's List." The camp commandant kept a rifle in his upstairs apartment and occasionally picks the rifle up, steps out onto the balcony, takes aim -- and pulls the trigger. A prisoner falls to the ground dead, and the other prisoners scurried for cover. Why would the Camp Commander bother to kill a prisoner at random, when he could order his guards to shoot prisoners by the dozens -- or work them to death by the hundreds? So inefficient -- and Nazis prized efficiency. What was going on?

What was going on was this -- the commandant knew his prisoners were trying desperately to figure out what to do to survive, so if he just shot a prisoner every now and then, all the rest would be driven crazy with fear, wondering, what had the victim done to deserve getting shot? What camp rule had he broken? What must I do to avoid the same fate?

Like the prisoners in Schindler's list, these Jews in today's gospel lesson, have an unspoken assumption that the slain Galileans must have done something wrong, committed some sin deserving of punishment. If I can figure out why Pilate murdered my fellow Jew in the temple, perhaps I can avoid a similar fate when I'm there offering my sacrifice to God. What, what did they do wrong?

So our gospel story opens with the implicit age old human questions when tragedy strikes near us. Why did this happen? And "How can I keep this from happening to ME?"

Jesus first answers -- the WHY question. The slain Galileans are no worse than anyone else. Their massacre was NOT God's judgment -- it was just one of those facts of life in First century Palestine . According the ancient historian, Josephus, Pilate's governorship was marked with extreme cruelty and heavy handedness. Under his orders Roman soldiers routinely committed public acts of violence to keep their conquered subjects in line. After all, Rome had a large empire to police and could ill afford the military cost of constantly squashing rebellions.

Jesus then reminds his listeners of a natural disaster--an accident where a falling tower killed eighteen people. People who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, much like many New Yorker's were on 9/11. Was the falling tower God's way of punishing them? No. On a fallen planet, towers fall -- earthquakes and tsunami's bury thousands. Bombs go off. Civilians are killed in crossfire. Bad things happen because we live in a world immersed in both individual and institutional sin.

I bet we are all with Jesus to this point in the text. We know in our minds bad things happen to good people, and it's not their fault. We can just look around our congregation and be reminded of all the missing faces of our members battling illness and cancer or worse dead. We can't point to anything they did or did not do to cause their illness or death.

But when Jesus goes on to answer the second question -- the WHAT CAN I DO to avoid this happening to me? He sounds illogical. No, Jesus says, there is no connection between their suffering and their sin, but unless you repent, you are going to perish just as they did. What Jesus gives with his right hand he takes away with his left.

Some of the suffering in our lives is because of random events, natural disasters, or the acts and nonacts of others. And some of our suffering is caused by our sin, and the sin of others. Or as one theologian put it, Christian theology is neither no-fault or full fault, but something in between. For example when the catalytic converter on my station wagon went out spewing pollution into the atmosphere—adding to global warming-- it cost two weeks salary to get a new one, so it wasn't something I replaced right away, but I still needed to drive my car. Neither full fault, nor no fault on my part, but something in between. We live in a web of creation that binds us to all other living beings and our actions and non actions ripple out affecting other living beings in ways we can scarcely comprehend, but nevertheless are real.

Both tragedies in today's gospel reading happen suddenly and their devastation is total. Without warning, worshipers are murdered while offering sacrifice to God. Without warning a tower collapses on people going about their daily business in Jerusalem . They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. No chance of repentance remains for these victims. This I think is the crux of Jesus' warning: repentance cannot be delayed, for death can come at any time, so repent now.

The biblical meaning of repentance is literally a turning, a change in direction. It is more than confessing your wrong behavior before God, and who ever you have wronged, saying you are sorry and asking for forgiveness. That is expressing remorse and acknowledging your guilt. These are a good first step towards repentance, but it's not repentance the way the bible teaches us.

Repentance is more than feeling remorse or guilt about having sinned. Repentance is a continual, ongoing attitude of orienting one's life towards the life God yearns for each of us to have. The Quaker Douglas Steere reminds us that to come near to a God of revealing love is to change. It is to repent!

When we understand repentance an ongoing attitude of reorienting our behavior away from sin and towards God, sin becomes not simply a set of behaviors to be avoided, but rather, sin is a way of life to be exposed and changed by our repenting, by our changing direction toward God and the abundant life God would have us live. Sin is not so much a violation of laws, but the violation of relationships, our relationship with God through Jesus Christ and our relationship with our self and others. In other words sin is not loving God with our whole heart, mind and soul, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

The forty days of Lent is all about our turning away from superficial concerns, worldly priorities that lead to spiritual and physical death and turning towards God, towards abundant life. .

What in our lives claims our closest attention? The latest fashions and celebrity gossip? How our basketball team is doing in this week's tournament? Fluctuations in our net worth or retirement plans?

What relationships in our lives are we neglecting? Our relationship with our own health? Our family relationships? Our neighbors? Have we given as much attention to feeding hungry children as we do our pets?

What do you need to turn away from and turn towards? What unwelcome behaviors and attitudes thrive within you that persist because of an unwillingness to practice restraint and self-discipline, as Paul describes in today's reading from Corinthians? How is this Lent of 2007 an opportunity to change that? Do we trust Paul's words that we will upheld by our faith that “God will not let [us] be tested beyond [our] strength”?

The good news today is that Jesus' warning to repent is followed immediately with a parable of divine patience. "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?' The gardener begs the owner to let it alone for one more year, until he the gardener nourishes the tree so it can more easily bear fruit. If it fails to after the gardener tends to it, then cut it down.' "

This parable indicates that if human beings are murdered or killed in natural disasters it is not because God has arbitrarily chosen to punish them for their sins while sparing others. Here we see God would give even an unfruitful fig tree another chance. But, but the parable also confirms there is a judgment. God's abundant mercy is not limitless.

Before it is too late, turn away, repent, from whatever it is causing you to perish,

Turn towards making amends. Live out the Biblical proclamation of God's work and desire for salvation, healing, wholeness, well-being, peace and justice for you and for all people. Turn towards, the abundant feast God invites each of us to in the Isaiah passage read this morning! Why spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy or sustain life? God has flung wide the door to the banquet hall! Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.