Third Lent
Luke 13:1-9; I Corinthians 10:1-13; Isaiah 55:1-9
The other day I received a telephone call from an older member of the congregation who was having difficulties with her computer's printer. She indicated that she had had the printer for barely a year. She didn't use it a great deal. In fact the last time had been in preparing a Christmas letter that she had printed in red ink. At any rate, she called because she couldn't seem to get the printer to work. It printed her red ink Christmas letter just fine but would not print anything in black ink. She had tried to use the manual to reset all the defaults. She asked me to walk her through her printer settings to print black ink but she was sure that she had either messed up the printer or the computer by all the buttons she had pressed and settings she had changed trying to solve the problem. "What am I doing wrong?" she kept asking.
Assuming that the problem was with something she was doing. Since pastors are in the business of absolving people I assured her that I really doubted that she had done anything all that wrong. At least nothing that deserved being treated by her printer in such a way. Then, since I had some errands to run and would be passing near her house I told her I would stop by and see what I could do. The moment I arrived she repeated her lament. "I just don't know what I am doing wrong" I repeated my absolution to make a long story short. After a few quick checks I determined that the problem was that her black ink cartridge was empty. There was nothing she had done to cause the problem. There was nothing she could have done to prevent the ink from running out. Ink heads dry out and need to be replaced. No fault. No judgment. She had done nothing wrong. Her experience however, illustrates a too common perception of our world. A belief that nothing happens without a cause.
When things go badly, either you did something wrong or someone around you did something wrong. In this litigious age we are probably overly conscious of faultfinding. Who do we blame? Who is the cause? Placing the blame. It makes it so much easier to evaluate world events and explain away those things we do not understand. Earlier this week 200 people boarded trains in Spain to go to work. School. Shopping. They were what the press would call ordinary people. Urban dwellers. Suburbanites. Mothers and fathers. Students. Tourists. Children. Living their ordinary lives, when suddenly ten bombs exploded proving fatal to the 200 and injuring hundreds more. The question immediately was who to blame. Who was responsible? Earliest suspicions fell on the Basque separatist movement while now suspicions seem to point at a terrorist group with links to Al-Qaeda. Depending on who is blamed we will feel safer or more at risk. Placing blame does that.
The one thing no one suggested was that the victims of the blasts were in any way deserving of such a violent death. Had no one to blame but himself or herself. There was a time, beginning thousands of years ago that the primary explanation for evil and suffering in the world was what is known as the retribution doctrine. This doctrine held that good things happened to good people or as a reward for good deeds while bad things happened to bad people or as a consequence for doing something that displeased the gods. When something bad happened to people who appeared to be good the question was always asked about what secret evil must have been committed to deserve such suffering or punishment. In the ancient book of Job this is the type of question that those who come to comfort him in the midst of his suffering use as their starting point. The so-called comforting friend tries to help Job reflect on what evil he must have done. Even if only accidentally. To deserve the kind of suffering he was experiencing Job ultimately cries out that he has done nothing wrong and challenges God to explain why bad things happen to good people.
Job's challenge moves the Bible and us in some bold new directions concerning God and the nature of evil in our world. Centuries pass as the faith community continues to interpret and strive to understand the prophets and teachings of scripture. Until we arrive at our Gospel lesson for today. Our lesson begins with a headline report coming to Jesus of violence by the governing authority Pilate. The same Pontius Pilate under whom he would shortly suffer and be crucified. This Pilate was a Roman governor of extreme violence with little regard for religious authorities or practices of the day (this is not the psychologically tormented but seemingly well intended Pilate of Mel Gibson's recent movie The Passion of the Christ ). This Pilate of history and the Gospels committed one atrocity after another against the Jewish people whose land he occupied with Roman forces. In this case it is reported that he ordered the massacre of a group of worshipers from Galilee going so far as to mix their human blood with the blood of the sacrificed animals. Jesus immediately goes to that place that he knew every mind was at least flirting with. The question of why had these Galileans died? . What must they have done wrong? Further, Jesus relates this political tragedy to another recent event where the culpability was hardly obvious. A tower had collapsed, killing eighteen people who were standing nearby.
In our post September 11 th world we know too well the suffering and loss of life from a tower collapse. Even two towers. And the challenge of innocent deaths. Every day we encounter in the news and media the deaths of too many that die violently, tragically, disastrously. Who seem to perish unjustly. Jesus makes it clear in our lesson that those who die in these disasters and incidents of violence are no worse than anyone else. Bad things do not happen to good people because they are secretly doing bad things. God is not some great score keeper tabulating the pluses and minuses of our lives to calculate who dies and who lives. What happens in our lives is not just a matter of getting a good heavenly report card. Our world and God is guided by a higher goal than good grades and merit badges. No, Jesus insisted. Those who died were no worse than any of us. You cannot draw conclusions about a person's morality from the tragedies that occur in their life "But," Jesus continued, "Unless you repent you will all perish just as they did."
I don't know about you, but to my way of thinking, if repentance, asking for God's forgiveness for my sins, can spare me from perishing as others did in these disasters it sounds to me an awful lot like there is a connection between sin and suffering in a person's life. Which is exactly why Jesus immediately related the parable of the fig tree in our lesson. Jesus wanted to make it clear to us what was really wrong with the old way of thinking. First, we need to remember that there is nothing wrong with the idea of divine judgment Just as the fig tree, if it failed to produce in response to the gardener's careful attention would be cut down at the end of the next growing season. So there will ultimately be a judgment by God of each of us. No one lives forever. But the point of the parable is to place each life in ongoing relationship with God. To remind us that no final decision is made before its time. Each act of faith, each action of caring is new in that moment. Just as each fig tree is assessed new each year it matters not what fruit it produced in the past. What matters is the moment and into the future. The communities in which we live have been especially blessed when compared to most any other place in the world.
There is a danger of believing that since my life is so blessed I must be so special to God that I no longer need to worry. If it is not luck or fate or even God that keeps my life removed from the disasters that fill the newspapers then it is easy for me to begin to believe that I have been separated from the rest of the world. That I need not worry about crashing planes or capricious Pilates. I am special. I have decided this. I know this and I live accordingly. The Greeks had a word for this. Hubris. Hubris . Self-elevation into the realm of the divine. The centering of the self beyond the ordinary of this world. This is not just pride. Hubris is believing that we have become the final and ultimate authority because we have transcended the common moments. We live the good life. We have survived the disasters.
The sin that grows from this condition darkens our world in so many ways. Out of our individual sins of hubris we join others in claiming that our societies, churches, or political parties possess the best good. The most just justice. The most beautiful beauty. There is no question that Pilate and the 9/11 terrorists should be condemned for their actions. They earned no rewards heavenly or otherwise for their presumptions. They imposed their particular understanding of the world on others claiming that it was a universal perspective that others had to acknowledge and accept. All who did not accept their views or values were subject to judgment--a visitation of death and destruction in an attempt to prove the superiority of their position.
The problem begins when those gathered to hear Jesus or any of us post-9/11 Americans. begin to call for retribution based on our presumptions. We replace one act of hubris with another. Trade one act of destruction for another. The social and political forces of our world regularly act as if those with the greatest power also have the greatest ideas. The belief is advanced that wealth and health and military might are the product of the superior systems that we have created. That is what Rome did in the first century. The history of empires is the chronicle of such hubris. Societies and cultures have time and again declared their lifestyle, religion, economy or political system to be the ultimate triumph of humanity to that point in history only to find that time does not stop. God does not declare perfection achieved and heaven to have arrived on earth.
Twice in our lessons Jesus calls us to repentance for such thinking. And twice he denies that his request for repentance has anything to do with who has done the most harm or who has earned the greatest favor in the sight of God. The good that we do in the world is no more proof of God's preference for us than the evil we suffer is proof of God's judgment. God is not the heavenly book keeper that checks off against the name of an individual what they have done that is good and subtracts blessings when they have failed to live up to God's expectations. Our calling as human beings is to repent of the sense of separation and the notion that our sins keep us from being loved by God. We need to repent of the idea that we can earn the grace of God by virtue of our own merit, good deeds or right ideas. Our challenge is to accept the fact that God loves us. God accepts us. God offers continuous forgiveness and grace. And God does this not because we have earned God's approval but because God is God.
This doesn't mean that there are no consequences. In the absence of repentance Wars and rumors of wars. Dissention and fear continue to plague our human existence. God does not visit such suffering and calamity on us as punishment. They are the consequence of the unrepentant heart. The hubris of societies visiting this painful sin on others, exploiting, using, abusing. Claiming privilege without accepting responsibility for the present or future generations. But Jesus tells a story. Even a fig tree that has borne no fruit for three years is offered a chance to bear before being cut down. A bit of extra attention in the form of fertilizer and water might make the difference. The tree may yet produce. What did the tree do to earn that chance? Nothing. What made the gardener willing to take the time to give it another chance? The outlook of the gardener had nothing to do with the tree. But it provides a grace moment. The fact that we are each here today is witness to the fact that while tyrants may kill and towers fall, without taking particular aim at the wicked or the righteous, we are the ones who have been granted yet another moment of grace. We have been given yet one more year to bear the fruits of God's kingdom. We repent of our past failures and we rejoice in the blessings of new opportunities. We do not presume to be privileged in any way but through our experience of God's love and grace revealed in Jesus Christ.
This is no small thing. Whose fault is it? Where does the evil come from? He was a good man doing well when the stroke took away his mobility. His job. What he thought was his reason for living. But it did not take his faith. That was a gift from God. At the time not particularly strong or tested but still a gift. Over the next few years there were times when that was all he had. He admits now that he probably would have tried to kill himself if he could have. But he couldn't move. So he could only wait. Wait as each year passed. Wait and watch his children grow. Wait and experience the care of others. The support of others. The prayers of others. And his faith became stronger. Stronger I know than the faith of the Pastor who visited him regularly. Of course he doesn't know that yet. He's learned to wait for life. Wait for grace. Wait for God.
Bearing fruit is not a measure of our place in God's kingdom. But it is the case that anyone who is in the kingdom wants to bear fruit. So Jesus told a parable about a fig tree. And the story ended with the words: "He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year... If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not you can cut it down.'" No one lives forever. But we do live by grace.
Amen.