A sermon for the third Sunday of Lent given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on March 3, 2013.
I
imagine the beginning of Luke chapter 13 taking place in the Village
Store.
Jesus
and his disciples walk in and someone calls out,
“Hey
did you hear about the Galilean tourists?”
another
chimes in “Big massacre”
a
third concludes: “those radicals had it coming to them.”
This
exchange. Sharing the news and giving our take on it.
This
is what we do. In the workplace, in the home, at the store, at the
transfer station,
leaning
over the hood of a pickup truck.
What's
so interesting to me about this part of our lives.
Is
the way that we make sense of things
and
help each other do the same.
We
hear the news story and we speculate.
How
could this happen?
What
should we do?
Here's
how I imagined it:
Jesus
took the bread off the shelf and headed over to the counter to pay.
It
was 5:00 and Jesus and his disciples
had
journeyed a full day and we're on their way to dinner
with
a townsperson who had welcomed them as they entered the village.
It
wasn't until Jesus was at the counter with the bread
that
he realized some of his disciples had gotten themselves
into
a heated discussion with a few of the people from the town
who
were sitting at the counter
sipping
their coffee.
“What's
going on?” Jesus asked as soon as there was a lull in the exchange.
“News
from Galilee”
“Seems
that Pontius Pilate has done it again.
Those
Romans. Do they have to be so harsh?”
“What
happened?” Jesus pursued.
One
of the townspeople spoke up,
“There
were some Galilean pilgrims in Jerusalem,
on
their way to the temple to make their sacrifices...”
“And,
well... let's just say they didn't make the kind of sacrifice they
were intending...”
“What
my friend is trying to say, teacher, is that
the
lamb's blood isn't the only blood that was spilled....”
“The
Romans took their cut, so to speak...”
A
deep voiced man from near the mailboxes interjected,
“If
you ask me, they had it coming.
I
heard on the radio that they were some of those radicals
that
weren't paying their Roman taxes.”
The
woman next to him added
“I
heard that they resisted a perfectly legal random search and
seizure.”
“At
any rate,” the man continued, “I'm sure they could have submitted
to the soldiers
and
got out of it with only slap on the wrist.”
“They
had to make it difficult.”
“still,
it's tragic,” another said.
“Yeah,”
others agreed, “it's tragic.”
“I
still think they asked for it.” the man stubbornly insisted.
Jesus
waited until the commentary died down
and
stood, bread in arm, thinking.
After
a few moments of pregnant silence,
He
looked up at the deep-voiced man and replied.
“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.”
I
can imagine the shock that would fill the store if Jesus were to
speak those words.
They're
uncomfortable words.
What
does he mean, “unless you repent, you will all perish as they did?”
If
they don't repent, they too will encounter harsh Roman police
brutality?
Is
that what he means?
I
don't have this text pinned down.
But
I do see something important that Jesus is doing here.
It's
a similar thing to what he does in the Sermon on the Mount
as
recorded in Matthew's gospel where we read in chapter 7:
‘Do
not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment
you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the
measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your
neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or
how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out
of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite,
first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly
to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
We
are meaning makers.
When
something happens, we make sense of it the best we can.
Some
things are easier, some things are more difficult.
But
this is a knee-jerk impulse: it's the foundation of learning.
And
so when we hear news that scares us, that confounds us.
We
flounder to try to give some repair, some patchwork
to
the tapestry of meaning that we have maintained.
This
is why we blame.
Blaming
helps restore order when something tragic happens.
We
all listened to the radio and watched the news networks make meaning
in the days and weeks after the Newtown shooting.
We
saw how this process of meaning-making gets all tangled up
in
the games of politics and religion
where
some were insisting that guns were to blame
while
others were adamant that it was an impoverished mental health system
and
some of the conservative religious voices claimed that the real
reason Newtown happened was the change in morality in American
culture,
the
dissolution of American families
or
the absence of prayer in school.
While
so much of this commentary frustrated me,
bred
as it was by the 24-hour news machine's need to say something all the
time,
I
did appreciate the words of one commentator I read on the Newtown
shooting,
responding
to the all the blamings and proposed solutions,
“...I
often find that our efforts to find the causes and articulate the
fixes,
while
good and right and proper,
seem
too simplistic and even simple-minded.
Each
of the speculative causes
and
each of the proposed cures,
even
if taken together,
seem
to cover over something deeper.
It
is as though we are putting a bandage
on
the rawness of the human condition itself.
It
might feel good at the time,
but
the next massacre that occurs,
or
the next evil that touches our lives,
rips
the bandage away and we experience the hurt all over again.”
I
think Jesus is bringing out a similar point in his response to the
news about the Galileans.
While
some were claiming that the only reason
something
so awful could have happened
was
that they had sinned.
Jesus
doesn't deny that these Galileans had sinned.
He
just turns the accusation around.
Are
they worse sinners than other Galileans?
We
want to distance ourselves from tragedy and scandal.
And
we have wonderfully creative ways of doing so.
And
one of the most popular ways is labeling.
Those
people were sinners. So they died.
Jesus
wants to break us of these labels that separate us from one another.
Sure,
they may have made mistakes, but haven't you as well?
“Let
the one who is without sin cast the first stone,” we hear Jesus say
in John's gospel.
Jesus
concluded his point true to form, telling a parable.
There
we have two responses to human brokenness.
There's
a fig tree. And the fig tree is fruitless.
And
he saw it, was disgusted, frustrated,
called
it a “waste” and dismissed it: “cut it down!”
But
the gardener, the one who loved the tree,
who
had cared for it and understood
that
there was a lot more to the story than the word “fruitless” could
capture.
The
gardener replied, “Give it more time, let me aerate the soil, add
fertilizer...
I
think it can and will produce fruit.”
And
here is the human perspective and here is the divine perspective.
Humans
see brokenness and we dismiss it
or
in our impatience we seek to blame someone, something
and
yell in our frustration: “Cut it down.”
But
God is a patient gardener,
who
is cultivating through God's Spirit,
patiently,
a
new humanity through love, not coercion,
through
grace, not labels.
And
our gardener-God full of compassion whispers with a smile, “one
more year.”
so
when a something awful happens to someone we know or are acquainted
with
let's
remember Jesus' words:
“Are
they worse sinners than other Galileans?”
And
the call upon us is to not separate, distance ourselves from tragedy,
but
to remember that in Christ, God has broken down the dividing walls
that separate us.
To
love our neighbor we must see them as God sees them.
Like
the gardener sees the fig tree.
Jesus
and his disciples shook hands with the men at the counter
as
they made their way through the door out into the dusty parking lot.
They
walked along the road following the directions they had been given
to
the house of someone who had welcomed them even as the strangers they
were.
And
in the darkening evening, a man came up behind them and called out,
“Jesus,”
he said, “Can I come along with you and your disciples for a
while?”
“We'd
be glad to have you.” came the reply.
It
was the deep-voiced man from the store.
Amen.
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