A Sermon from Falmouth Congregational Church…

A Sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship service of the Falmouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Falmouth, Maine on the Third Sunday in Lent, March 07, 2010. The scripture reading was Luke 13:1-9.

“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 just as they did” (13:3).

“Standing Firm, Watch Out!”

The life of Jesus sometimes seems almost too idyllic in its simplicity, and the open road he walked a land of pastoral calm. Jesus, however, moved through a time and place of turbulence. Life was complicated. Roman legions were an ever present source of provocation for the Jewish people. On occasion, the patriots among them hurled themselves vainly against Rome, and reaped a savage penalty. An echo of that is heard in the report brought to Jesus concerning certain Galileans slaughtered by Pilate while they were in the midst of their religious rites in the Temple. Human and animal blood flowed in one stream.

His informants hoped to receive an endorsement of the view that the victims had induced their violent deaths by their sins. It was the popular view that misfortune was the result of some transgression of God’s law. The theory is inviting, at least to those who have been spared as it obviously reckons them among the virtuous. It was the answer in ancient times and for some still is. The answer is much like Pat Robertson’s recent explanation of the Haitian earthquake, namely, it was the fault (or ‘sin’) of the Haitian people.

“Do you think that these Galileans…were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”  Then, Jesus tells them of another disaster fresh in their memory. Eighteen workmen had been buried beneath a collapsed tower in Jerusalem. “Do you think,” He asks, “that they were worse offenders than all those living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Jesus’ words do not say that wrongdoing has no consequences. But he refuses to say that disaster or tragedy is necessarily the result of the sins of the victims.

I take this all to mean that Jesus believes it is better to be shaken to our core by human events and then take a hard look at ourselves than it is to have ready, pat answers that save us from hard, self-examination. It is a worthy teaching for those of us who are on our Lenten pilgrimage.

Luke tends to present Israel (and, by extension, all God’s people) as having an excessive sense of their specialness and their entitlement as God’s people without the requisite sense of responsibility and accountability as God’s chosen ones. Self-complacence may well bring a calamity on one’s head.

Our theme is something like “Standing Firm!” We are to stand firm in the faith. But, if we think we are always standing firm, watch out! Lent is our season for personal and ecclesial or ‘church’ examination, a point readily supported by our reading. Did I say: a personal examination?

I have thought and worked much of my adult life and ministry to avoid the type of phraseology that exists twice in today’s scripture: “…Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” I have been afraid that if the Christian message is reduced to “repent or perish,” people will hear only an angry, vindictive God, a God who uses any excuse to punish the children. The danger is not only an simplistic reduction of God’s nature but also the possibility that I am guilty of trying to present a God with whom everyone can be very comfortable and a God I am not too embarrassed to talk about in public.

Still, I wonder if our modern world has read the deeper truth that requires the fruit of useful living – doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

Somewhere and somehow, I learned that my theological efforts often fail. I can not tame or fathom or soften the power of the words Jesus speaks.  

This morning, we are still on the road with Jesus going up to Jerusalem. He is railing against this and that and then telling an odd story about a fig tree, representative of you and me. No matter how I turn it, Jesus appears driven, determined, moody, demanding. He is a man who knows where he is going and what it is that he is about to do.

If you think, you are standing firm in the faith, watch out! It is not so much a matter of our interpretation of scripture. But how does scripture interpret us?

How do the difficult words “repent and/or perish” interpret us and our ideas about who we are as Christians and what it means to be a Christian in this modern world? “Repent or perish” is not just a rule set aside for unfortunate Galileans; it is for all Galileans. These words are not about one time repentance or one time perishing. It is ongoing: we continue to repent and we continue to die.

As followers of one who hung on a cross, we should not be surprised. We are repeatedly told to give up our illusion of being in control. We are called to confession, to turn, to repent so that we become openly dependent on the promises of God. On the cross God took on our limits and all the things that burden us – sin, death, rivalries, violence, prejudice, and indifference; and not to forget, an overly bloated sense of self. God invites us to the other side of “repent or perish,” which is “forgiveness and new life.”

This is “good news,” for out of despair and sorrow, out of our inability to do the good we would do, come redemption and hope and mercy. Repent or perish, the words are hard but true. We can not dismiss or ignore or alleviate the difficulty, but that is only half the story.

The rest of the story is God’s grace given in response. It does not depend on us, but on the One who will not allow us to be separated, even for a moment, from the love of God. The words, we would prefer not to hear or speak, are spoken by the One who bore them for us. In all things we are given new life through him.

Are we so much better, more sensitive, more humane, and more appreciative of sheer goodness than the people of the Galilee and Jerusalem two thousand years ago? In some ways, perhaps, but in general there is as much hatred, fear, corruption, and brutality now as then. Like Jesus’ contemporaries, it may be that we have not really understood what it was that brought him to his cross?

Still, he comes to us and we need him near. Over time we are drawn more into the world with him. We are opened ourselves and forgiven and renewed and become the imaginative bearers of God’s mercy to the peoples of our world.