Sermon March 7, 2010 - Lent 3

Year C - The Year of Luke

Pilate slaughters a group of Galileans. A tower in Siloam kills eighteen others. "Do you think they are worse sinners than anyone else," asks Jesus?

What is going on in these questions about calamity and sin? First, Pilate was the Roman who governed Judea. He was always afraid that Jewish crowds would disturb the peace. We do not know what happened in this incident, but people of Jesus' day had come to believe that the Galileans had committed some sin that led to their deaths.

When the tower fell, people were thinking the same thing. We think the building may have been part of Pilate’s plan to improve the water supply to Jerusalem. Although this was necessary, the Jews were angry. Pilate took money from the Temple to pay for it, and was hated for it. These men may have been working on the water system. The common view was that the workers should not have accepted money, which came from the Temple as their wages. They died when the building fell down. Therefore, people thought that God had punished them. Jesus denied that they were guiltier than anyone else was who was in Jerusalem.

We might think the blame game is some kind of ancient mindset, but we may as well admit that we all get into it at one time or another.

Jesus made it perfectly clear that the sun shines and the rain comes down on the good and the bad. However, in Jesus' day, it had become popular to think that if misfortune falls on someone, it is because the person sinned in some way. It was a theology of blame.

Consequently, Jesus says to repent of this kind of thinking; he says to turn away from the blame game altogether, and show some mercy – the kind of mercy that God shows for everyone, everywhere. See for yourself in the Book of Jonah, which Jesus quotes in both Matthew and Luke.

To repent means to turn around or turn back. In other words, we are walking with God, and suddenly, we find ourselves walking against God by the choices we make. We need to turn around.

Consequently, to repent means to turn or better yet, to re-turn, to walking in the Way with Christ. If we do not, the weight of our sin will crush us.

Repentance is an acknowledgement of our sin. It is an affirmation that we are walking in a direction contrary to God. We are heading off a cliff, and we need help to turn us back. We cannot do it on our own because we are lost and without direction. We need God to turn us in the way of life.

Jesus essentially says that those who died by Pilate's hand or in the fall of the water tower were no greater or lesser sinners than anyone else. Bad things happen in this world. However, all sinners, and that includes those wanting to cast judgment on those who died, all sinners need to repent. We need God to steer us back to the way, the truth, and the life.

Then, the parable in today’s gospel reading follows, which seems like a strange transition. It is a story with an agricultural metaphor of judgment and grace. Does this parable have any connection to what just came before it? Does it have any message that relates to accidents happening? Does it connect in any way to repentance, confession and forgiveness, and turning around?

Jesus' short parable about a fig tree speaks of imminent judgment. Remember John the Baptist used similar language in Luke 3:9: "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

Like Jesus' earlier words in response to the recent tragedies, the parable warns against false reassurance. Just because you have not been cut down, do not presume that you are bearing fruit. In other words, just because you can make all manner of judgments about other people, do not think that you are free of sin. Do not think that God's judgment will escape you.

Lent is about repentance. It is about confession of our sins. It is about God nurturing us. The tree has not been left to its own devices. Everything possible is being done to save it. This is why we have these readings today on the Third Sunday of Lent. It is about looking at our need for repentance. It is not about seeing the need for this person or that person's need to repent. Lent is telling us that now is the time for us to confess our sins. It is time for us to turn around. It is time for us to call upon God to lead us in a new way, a new direction, and in a new way of being. We observe Lent so that we focus not on the blame game, but on us and our need to confess. Lent is here so that we might hear this truth and repent. Amen.