admin

Lent 3

March 7, 2010 (Year C)

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

 

Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

 

“Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

 

Repent or perish – that is Jesus’ message for us today.  And it’s a difficult one to hear.  It conjures up images of fundamentalist preachers and people in sandwich board signs bearing messages of impending doom, the fires of hell painted across their chests.

 

Repent or perish!

 

We are tempted, as progressive Christians, to distance ourselves from this message.  We don’t want to be confused with ‘that kind’ of Christian.  We don’t want to scare anyone off, or lose our credibility as a people of love and justice.

 

We are tempted to separate God into the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.  “oh, all those laws and stories of a vengeful God – that’s the Old Testament.  The God of the New Testament is a God of love.”

 

Not only is this approach antisemitic, it’s just not true.  God has been, and will always be, a God of love.  There is no more loving act God could have done than create, and creation, last I checked, was in the Old Testament.  Nor is the New Testament free from judgment, as today’s Gospel testifies – from the mouth of Jesus himself.  “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did,” Jesus says.

 

God’s wrath and judgment of God’s creation; It’s a challenging part of our lives of faith, and one we’d rather skip over, but it is there.  To avoid it, is to cheapen the Gospel message.  To pretend it doesn’t exist is to proof text our scripture, pulling out only those passages that feel acceptable to us – the very thing we condemn others for doing.

 

So our only choice, as I see it, is to stare God’s wrath and judgment right in the face and ask, if God is a God a love, which I believe God is, and if Jesus – God With Us – came to spread the message of God’s justice and love, and if, as St. Paul writes, nothing – nothing – can separate us from the love of God – if all of that is true, what need does this God of Love have of judgment or wrath?

 

If God causes earthquakes and tsunamis as retribution for our wrongdoings; if God sends hurricanes and pandemics as punishments for sin, why wouldn’t God have just scrapped the whole thing by now and started over?  If we haven’t gotten yet, given the suffering we have seen even in our own generation, what chances are there that another natural disaster will do the trick?

 

 

So if it isn’t about that, then what does Jesus mean in his call to repent or perish?  The only place I seem to be able to arrive at is mercy.  God’s mercy.  God’s unrelenting and unceasing mercy for the world God created – mercy yesterday; mercy today and mercy for as long as God’s creation endures.

 

The message in today’s Gospel isn’t about God’s wrath or punishment for sin – it is about God’s mercy, it is about God’s call to us to use the time we have to turn our lives toward God.

 

There are many who use the natural and  human-designed catastrophes of our day to wag their finger at us, and then point their finger at God.  These disasters are our fault.  They are God’s doing.  They are God’s judgment upon the world.  Most recently, T.V. personality Pat Robertson made the unbelievable connection that the people of Haiti suffered the earthquake because they had made a pact with the Devil to get out from under French rule.  Conveniently ignoring what God has historically had to say about foreign rule and oppression, Robertson’s remarks seek to prove that God is after us and will punish us for our sins in the most dramatic of ways.

 

But his comments serve another purpose, too.  They seek to place God’s judgment in a time and place other than our own;  those people deserved that wrath because of something they did, that has nothing to do with us.  Earthquakes happen over there, Hurricanes happen to them, AIDS is God’s wrath for those kind of people.  As long as you are not over there, one of them, or one of those kind of people, you’ll be okay.  The message to Roberston’s audience?  It can’t happen to us.  It won’t happen to you as long as you fall in line.

 

But Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel from Luke is just the opposite.  Every time I read it I am amazed that, for people who like to take every word of the bible to be true, they seem to be able to set this one aside.

 

The people following Jesus tell him about a massacre of Galileans as they were presenting their sacrifices.  What do Jesus’ followers really want to know?  “Could that happen to us?”  “Are we on the right road, or will God’s wrath come slamming down on us when we least expect it, like it did to them?  Tell us we’re okay.”

 

Jesus asks them if those who were massacred had sinned any more than anyone else.  No, they hadn’t.  Jesus presses on.  What of the 18 who were killed by the tower at Siloam?  Were they any more deserving of judgment than anyone else in Jerusalem?  No, they were not.

 

The message back to Jesus’ followers and to us?  No.  God does not punish for sin.  God does not cause wars or disease to prove lessons.  God does not bring down towers made of stone or of glass to teach lessons.  God does not punish for sin.

 

Sin is anything that separates us from relationship with God – nothing more, nothing less.  It is us who punish ourselves by putting ourselves outside of relationship with God.  When we return to God,  God, like any loving parent looks at us and says, “Hey, you’ve punished yourself enough already.  Now, go get ready for dinner.”

 

 

That being said, we are all at risk for the changes and chances of this life.  Earthquakes happen.  Human violence happens.  Life is fragile.  And it is our responsibility to use the time we have as best we can to God’s purpose for us.

 

Did those killed by Pilate have a chance to turn their lives around before Pilate’s forces took their lives away?  Were those crushed under the tower at Siloam able to speak words of repentance and reconciliation to those they loved before the tower came down on them?

 

Maybe.  Maybe not.  But those with Jesus – his disciples and followers – they do have the chance to do those things.  And Jesus begs them to take it.  We have the same chance.  And Jesus begs us to take it.

 

We are like the fig tree in today’s Gospel.  Each day, each moment, each breath is another chance to turn our lives around and point them in the direction of God’s expectant embrace.

 

God, our gardener, constantly intercedes on our behalf and says, “Let’s give ‘em another year.  Let’s turn up the soil and feed them with what they need to grow, and then we’ll see….

 

Jesus calls his followers to turn again toward God – that’s the repent part – or perish – that’s the living our lives without God at the heart of it part.

 

Jesus invites us this Lent to live into God’s mercy; to see each day as a gift, an opportunity to do something a little differently than we did yesterday.  To bring a little bit more of God’s Kingdom into the world each day than there was the day before.

 

That is where Jesus invites us to spend time and energy.  That is what Lent is for.  It isn’t to punish ourselves or to try to get pious enough so that the tower might not fall on us, or so plates deep in the earth won’t shift under our feet.

 

It is, however, a chance to repent, to turn around; to turn, once again, toward God.

 

It is a time to decide how we want to live the days we have left to live.  Time to see the gift we have in another day to say “I’m sorry;”  The gift of God’s mercy in another year to turn again toward the life God created us to live.  The gift of another breath to know that we are loved.

 

AMEN.

 

© 2010 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello