First Presbyterian Church
March 23, 2025, Lent 3C
Current Events and Ultimate Things
The beginning of this particular passage just seems…odd. On the surface it seems very much a non sequitir. It’s as if in the middle of a difficult, intense lecture or speech or sermon with a challenging question-and-answer session, someone suddenly blurted out “hey, didya hear what happened to Uncle Milton and those boys from over in Caney when they went down to Dallas?”
Jesus has been teaching, just before in Chapter 12, about avoiding hypocrisy, not being arrogant, avoiding worry, being watchful and not being caught, Jesus himself as a cause of division, and settling grievances with your adversary. It’s difficult stuff, to be sure, all these hard teachings one right after the other. And Jesus isn’t being at all sideways or sparing in his teaching; it’s all imperative – “beware…do not…therefore I tell you…be…know.” No wiggle room, no fudging, no passing the buck to anybody else. It’s all on you, dear listener, to hear and to change.
Given that background, one could argue that somebody in the crowd miiiight just have been feeling a bit stressed by all of this talk and looking to at least provide some distraction or relief. Having heard of an awful incident in the Temple in Jerusalem, where a group of Galilean pilgrims had been massacred while there to offer sacrifices; perhaps he first told it to his companions, and maybe somebody got up the courage to bring it up to Jesus. Luke doesn’t tell us much about how this happened aside from that vivid metaphor of their blood “mixed with their sacrifices.”
One thing about Jesus in the gospels and is that he is an extremely effective teacher. A lot of folks across Galilee think so, anyway, since his teaching – not just the miracles or exorcisms, but the actual straightforward teaching – was drawing and holding crowds across Galilee for hours or even days at a time. Some of you out there know just how startling an accomplishment that is.
In this case, Jesus takes this out-of-left-field interjection and makes it a teachable moment, in two parts.
Part I: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no!” Here Jesus addresses a rather pervasive belief in the Jewish culture of the time. In short, without a lot of foundation, the folk tended to assume that if something really bad happened to you, you must have been really bad or done something really bad to deserve it. That belief has spread even today.
The late TV preacher Pat Robertson, for example, used to get a lot of attention for blaming natural disasters on the affected city’s or area’s sinfulness – and it was usually a “sin” that was a favorite of Robertson’s to pick on. New Orleans got that treatment from Robertson after Hurricane Katrina, for example, and it wasn’t for tolerating so much poverty. The New York/New Jersey region also got such accusations after Hurricane Sandy. On the other hand, Robertson never seemed to blame horrible tornado outbreaks on the sinfulness of Alabamians or Mississippians or Missourians.
So first Jesus takes down that old belief, but then continues to use that interjection to make a point that brings the discussion back to his sermon subject, Part II: “…but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”
Wait, what? If those interlocutors had hoped to distract Jesus or get him to let up on them … well, it didn’t work. Jesus is right back on the subject he had been teaching, all of which can be understood as part of the broader theme he now names as repentance.
As if this weren’t enough, Jesus himself brings a second “current event” into the discussion, one in which a tower had collapsed at the town of Siloam, killing eighteen. Unlike the previous story, in which the Roman governor Pilate is clearly identified as the villain, this looks to be a tragic accident. A tower collapsed. As far as we can know, it just happened. But again, Jesus hammers the point home: “unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
“Repent” and “repentance” are words that get used a lot in religious circles without much definition. You get told to “repent of your sins,” which sounds as if you go down a laundry list of bad things you did and say “I’m sorry,” you’ve repented. No. What Jesus is calling for is far beyond that.
To give one example Jesus turns to a parable, in which a rich landowner is quite done with an unproductive fig tree. The gardener, though, pleads for one more year to give some extra attention to the tree. He’ll agitate the soil and add some extra fertilizer, and if it still doesn’t bear fruit, it can be cut down.
Unlike some of Jesus’s parables, this one is bluntly obvious. We – each of us – are the tree, and Jesus is the gardener pleading for us and promising to nurture us even more. Still, though, there is that looming “promise” that our time to bear fruit is not infinite.
And here also is the “repentance” Jesus commands of the disciples, and of us. A fig tree exists to bear figs. If it doesn’t bear figs, it’s kind of pointless not to cut it down and replace it with a tree that will bear figs. Even the gardener doesn’t pretend that the tree should be given forever to bear fruit.
So, to get to the point: what does it mean to “bear fruit”?
Again, that’s a term that gets used a lot without a lot of clarity of definition. For some, it consists solely of turning other people into "Christians" – conversion is all, nothing else matters. For others, it’s all about good deeds or charitable giving or other obvious outward gestures. Those are good things, but in Luke, “repentance” cannot be reduced to outward changes. In true repentance, everything changes, both in each of us individually and in all of us as the body of Christ. We live differently, and we live together differently.
It’s possible that one of the best ways to understand how fully a repentant life changes might just be what we see in today’s reading from Isaiah. For some this presents an utterly joyful picture, while others are probably horrified by it (the idea that wine and milk are just being given away, with nobody profiting from it? That’s socialism, right?). <note: sarcasm>
Anyway, as Isaiah’s picture unfolds, we see what is really going on; the people have, at long last, accepted the providence of God, and submitted to God’s provision for their lives. We are called no longer to chase after what cannot satisfy, but to receive the true stuff of life from the Lord. Even here, though, the theme of repentance is sounded clearly:
Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their ways, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (55:6-7, emphasis mine)
Nothing changes without change. Turning away from the desire for what cannot fulfill, the desire for stuff and money and comfort; this is where repentance is found. And repentance brings pardon; we are given a double statement of this – the Lord will have mercy, God will pardon – for extra emphasis.
And that providence of God? This isn’t barely-get-by stuff. Don’t miss that last half of verse 2, and the invitation to “eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” To appreciate this one we need to lay aside our modern dietary scruples and understand what God provides is good stuff. We aren’t being asked to starve ourselves or deprive ourselves for God (which makes this a strange Lenten reading, I guess, but still); God wants to give good.
But repentance is still there, waiting for us to take it up.
Our lives being reoriented, turned upside down (or inside out, more likely) and faced only towards our Lord; it may seem an odd place to end up when one starts talking about current events, but when Jesus the teacher is in charge, the lessons you learn are not always what you think.
For The Great Teacher, Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #307, God of Grace and God of Glory; #435, There's a Wideness in God's Mercy; #800, Sometimes a Light Surprises
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