Lay Homily by Mark Lloyd Taylor
The Third Sunday in Lent (Year C)
Exodus 3:1-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
March 14, 2004
Three Sundays in Lent and three different preachers here at St. Paul’s, first a priest, then a deacon, and now a layperson. A reminder that the Bible belongs to all of us; that it is our common baptismal task to discern in community the claims of Scripture upon our lives.
Three Sundays, three different preachers, and three different weighty words or pairs of words in our lessons from Scripture. Two weeks ago, Father Wray helped us wrestle with temptation. Last week, we explored vocation and promise through Deacon Richard’s homily. Repentance seems to be the word assigned to me. But what a difficult gospel lesson! Galileans slaughtered by Pilate; people killed by a collapsing tower in Jerusalem; a fruitless fig tree. And in the middle of it all, Jesus’ demand: repent or perish. Is this anyone’s favorite portion of Scripture? If it is, then maybe you should give the homily.
Our lesson from Luke’s gospel does, of course, have a message concerning repentance for us and our Lenten journeys; not as obvious as the message from the familiar and beloved parable of the Prodigal Son we will hear next Sunday, but an important one, worth the effort to explore, and, ultimately, a message echoed in the Prodigal Son’s story. That, however, I to next week’s preacher.
Let’s begin at the end of today’s gospel, for Jesus’ words concerning the fig tree put his teaching on repentance in theological context.
“Then Jesus told this parable: ‘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 replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)
Jesus’ parable speaks of being given another chance, of the possibility for change despite the past. Don’t cut the unproductive tree down just yet – give it another year. The gardener is willing to work some more to coax fruit from the tree. Maybe the problem is in the soil and not the tree. Aeration and compost might help. Whatever else Jesus has to say to us today about repentance, his last word is about patience, forbearance, one more opportunity for change – God’s patience and forbearance toward us, another opportunity for change in us.
For Jesus tells a story of a fig tree – not an orange tree, not a palm tree, not an olive tree. Throughout the Hebrew Testament, the fig tree symbolizes God’s favor or blessing, when the tree is fruitful, and God’s anger or judgment, when the tree is barren. In Deuteronomy, the promised land of Canaan is portrayed to the Israelites still wandering in the wilderness as a place of abundance, full of laden fig trees (8:8). Jeremiah addresses faithful Israelite exiles in Babylon as fruitful fig trees (24:1-10); in the Song of Solomon the health and vitality of love – between human lovers and between God and Israel – is likened to blossoming fig trees (2:12-13).
On the other hand, Hebrew prophets such as Isaiah (34:4), Amos (4:9), Hosea (2:12), Jeremiah (8:13), and Joel (1:7) all speak of God’s judgment against a faithless Israel as the laying waste of fig trees: barren or blighted or withering fig trees, fig trees devoured by insects, splintered fig trees with bark stripped off and branches bleached white as bones by the sun. And so Jesus’ parable of the fig tree proclaims not the arrival of God’s judgment, but its delay. God is not yet ready to abandon Israel, or us, to destruction. God is patient. God is merciful.
Do you, do I, believe this deep down in our hearts? Perhaps this is a message we need today – that God is not impatiently waiting for the chance to punish us. God, like the gardener in the parable, wants to give us more time, to work with us even more energetically for change – no matter how fruitless and faithless our lives have been in the past.
With that good news in mind, we can move back to the beginning of today’s gospel lesson. Someone tells Jesus about a recent event in which Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, put a number of Galileans to death and in the process managed to profane their sacrifices. Apparently, Jesus is reminded of this news story in order to get his expert commentary – maybe even to coax him to blame the Galileans who had suffered at the hands of the brutal dictator. Jesus will not play the blame game. “Do you think,” he says, “that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you” (Luke 13:2-3). And to ensure that his point is understood, Jesus calls to mind a second current event from the other end of Israel: “Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you” (4-5).
Here, Jesus rejects a powerful strand of ancient Hebrew theology: good fortune in life – health, wealth, success – is a sure sign of moral goodness and God’s blessing, while misfortune – sickness, poverty, failure – stems from sin and reflects God’s displeasure. Like the book of Job before him and Rabbi Kushner’s best-selling book long after him, Jesus knows that bad things sometimes do happen to good people. Remember the story from John’s gospel when a man blind from birth is brought before Jesus and the disciples want to know who sinned, the man or his parents (9:1-3). Jesus says: the man’s blindness has nothing to do with human sin – neither the man’s nor his parents’. Likewise, Jesus refuses to blame either the Galileans or those killed by the tower of Siloam for their misfortune. Human suffering, tragic human suffering – whether resulting from accident or malice – has nothing to do with the sufferer’s sin or divine punishment. All human life is precious, equally precious; but all human life is also vulnerable, equally vulnerable. This common vulnerability ought to bind us together in great compassion and a boundless hunger for justice.
Do you, do I, need to take this message from Jesus even more deeply to heart? We probably do. Isn’t there still a tendency in our culture today to account for misfortune by blaming its victims for moral failure? The Lenten Quiet Day here at St. Paul’s this Saturday offers the occasion to meditate more deeply on God and human suffering. Listen to the titles of Fr. Alan Mack’s three meditations for the quiet day: “Why me, God? Why me?” “But I am innocent, officer!” “It always gets darkest just before it gets pitch black.”
Finally, we come to Jesus’ words concerning repentance: “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 as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did” (Luke 13:2-5). We have learned from the parable of the fig tree that God’s mercy and forbearance give us the opportunity to repent. And we have just seen that Jesus refuses to single out a few misfortunate sufferers who need to repent of their sins, while us righteous and fortunate folk sit back safely watching. But what does it mean to repent?
You may recall that line from the movie Love Story, “love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Not a very helpful understanding of love. But doesn’t our culture tend to think of repentance merely as a kind of apology? For Jesus, however, “repentance always means much more than saying we’re sorry.” The word in New Testament Greek is metanoia – changing one’s mind or heart or deepest self. Not just altering, but going beyond our current state of mind or heart or self to a new heart, mind, and deepest self. To repent is to act and relate and be differently than in the past, not just to feel sorry or say I’m sorry. Repentance means no more business as usual. Repentance means conversion; turning the direction of our lives around – in little and big ways. How phony, how cowardly, for example, when we knowingly hurt someone we love to say quickly that we’re sorry, but then act out of the same insecurity or frustration next week – instead of really repenting, examining our actions and their motivations and working not to repeat the hurtful behavior.
John Woolman was an American Quaker of the 18th century. He had a radical conversion in which he repented deeply. Woolman became convinced that true, Biblical religion means to love the invisible God and God’s visible manifestation in all living creatures. With a shock, he saw that he had not been living and acting as if his love for God had anything to do with his relationships to other human beings and animals. Once he saw the connection, he repented – not just saying he was sorry, but changing the direction of his life in concrete and dramatic ways. He sold his grocery business because it was too successful and profitable in a world of poverty, then spent the rest of his life walking around the United States speaking against excessive wealth, slavery, the mistreatment of Native Americans, and the abuse of animals. He walked because of the cruelty to horses he had witnessed. He only wore white clothing because he knew that the indigo dye industry was dependent on slave labor in the southern colonies. Woolman embarrassed his hosts at dinners by refusing to drink from silver goblets, again because of the slave trade. Woolman changed what he ate, how he dressed, how he traveled, what he did with his time. He aimed to simplify his life and his possessions because he was convinced all luxury had some connection to human or animal oppression. He lived in Indian villages and sailed to Europe in steerage, all to experience first hand how the poor and miserable lived. And in all this renunciation he experienced life more abundantly than ever before.
How profound the changes would be for many of us in this church today if we were to repent as John Woolman repented; if we truly saw the extent to which our affluence depends on the mistreatment of others – humans and animals, yes, but also plants and soil and water and air. Unfortunately, it’s not our weekend or leisure activities that harm the health of this planet, but the day-in and day-out realities of where we live, what we eat, how we dress, what we possess, how we consume energy. I would invite you to consider such repentance and conversion this Wednesday evening at St. Paul’s Lenten Series. Tanya Barnett from Earth Ministry will address the topic “Sharing Lent with the Rest of Creation”; she will talk with us about the God’s life-giving gift of limits.
So, repent. But: “unless you repent, you will perish?” What are we to make of these words of Jesus?
Not because our God is impatient and just waiting to punish us. Not that those who suffer misfortune get what their sins deserve from God. Jesus’ demand, “repent or perish,” is not so much a threat as a deep insight into our reality, one whose truth we have all experienced in ordinary as well as extraordinary ways. There are those times with our cars and homes when we just have to take decisive action – no matter how long we’ve put off the inevitable. Unless you pull into that service station right now and do something about that tire, you won’t get back to Seattle. Unless you fix that leak today, even if it means canceling all your other plans, the ceiling in the guest room will be ruined. Or with our health: unless you lower your cholesterol or reduce your level of stress, you will have a heart attack. Or an intervention – voluntary or involuntary – in an addiction. Unless you stop drinking, you will get into an accident, lose your driver’s license, lose your job, your partner or spouse, maybe kill yourself or others. Repent or perish; make changes or lose it all.
Life is precious, but it is fragile, vulnerable. We have time to repent – thanks to God’s forbearance. But we have only one moment of time in which to make radical changes in heart, mind, and deepest self. That one moment is the present. Repent or perish. Jesus means, unless you, unless I, can become truly present in this present moment – not forever dwelling in the past on some misfortune or mistake or woundedness, not always projecting into the future about some work to be done – we will miss time and life and God’s staggering gifts completely. Unless we can wash the dishes when we are washing dishes or peel the orange while we’re peeling the orange or listen to a sermon while we’re listening to a sermon or weep with a friend when we’re weeping with a friend, our very lives will pass us by. They will perish; we will perish.
We end where we began. “Sir,” the gardener in Jesus’ parable says, “let the fig tree alone one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” We have today to repent; we have this Lenten season to make changes in our lives. May we use our God-given opportunity wisely.
