People are talking…People are gossiping…people are worrying
about the wrong things.
People have heard rumors of a brutal execution of some
Galileans who were worshiping. Then their blood had been somehow allowed to be
mixed or accidentally mixed with the blood of sacrifices. Now this sounds like
it was a political act for a killing to be allowed to happen at a place of
worship and then to allow the blood to be mixed with the sacrifice is high sacrilege. People want to know what these people could
have done to be allowed to die in such a fashion what was their sin?
Last week Jesus has just finished telling the crowds and the
Pharisees that he is going to keep on preaching his message, that today and
tomorrow and the next day he will continue to heal, to bless, and to walk with
the marginalized. But today we go back to the first of this chapter. We go back
to the crowd which today is more concerned with a political act and claiming
outrage and wondering what could these gallileans have done to deserve such a
death and how can this sacrilege of the sacred offering happen.
Now that I hear myself saying this, I wonder what was the crowd’s
true intention or where was their anger directed? Remember many expect the savior to gather
people, to rise up against imperial power in a violent and revolutionary way. It sounds as if the true question may be did
you hear about this and what are we going to do about this Jesus?
The crowd wants an angry Jesus. A Jesus who is going to take
up arms against the powers that be but instead Jesus answers the question on
the surface and deflects the veiled call to arms.
Jesus brings up another top news story, another current event
of the day–the 18 people in Jerusalem who are killed when a tower fell on and
crushed them. There is no difference between the two events,
Jesus states. It’s not a matter of degrees of rightness or wrongness, sin or
sainthood.
Jesus also notes a sense of superiority in the question…some
are better because we have sinned little or not at all or not in the fashion
that these others did.
“He seems to recognize that they are arguing that the
violence of one’s death relates to the darkness of one’s sins – an idea that is
misused and popular throughout the Christendom of the middle ages and continues
even today in some circles of believers. Jesus goes right to the point and is
unwilling for his listeners to believe they are greater than or that they sin
less or that their sins are lesser so he says: “Everyone must repent. Everyone
is called to repent, repent early, repent often, repent now, and repent.” He
tells them they are going to die too and suddenly and unprepared.”[1]
Ouch, so harsh! I had a professor at Claremont that would
gently remind his class that death is not a matter of if but when. For us older
students it was a bit comical yet for some of the younger ones it appeared to be
a divine revelation.
To me it sounds as if
Jesus is reminding everyone these are sad and tragic events and they happen. It
is not an account of sin.
Jesus addresses their concept of sin and judgement and turns
it on its ear.
It isn’t about who sinned more. It isn’t about who deserved
to die. It isn’t about how they died. It
isn’t even about the mingling of blood. This
isn’t about saint peter at the gate with an abacus tallying up your sins and
the rate of which they have been forgiven to see if one can get in. Oh, by the way there are no electronics in
heaven that’s why Peter uses and abacus.
What this whole dialogue comes down to is this…In the end
its about how they lived.
Jesus first makes the comment That unless you repent you
will die as they did…
"The word translated as 'repent' is, at its root, about
thinking and perception. It refers to a wholesale change in how a person
understands something. It implies an utter reconfiguration of your perspective
on reality and meaning, including (in the New Testament) a reorientation of
yourself toward God."[2]
A reorientation toward God.
Remember last week I said my concept of original sin is hiding ourselves
from God. Others would say turning away from God. If God is omnipresent, all
around us how can we hide? But if we
look at this way, we are all invited to the table with God but if we sit with
our back turned…
So, repentance is more than about being sorry for what we
have done it is about reorienting our self towards God. Changing our behavior so that it is more
representative of our call as children of God.
“So, we see hear that Jesus is teaching those who will
listen that they must repent. They must repent because they do not know what
may happen and death may come at any moment. They must all repent. No one has
more or less sin than someone else. Repentance is the daily work of the
follower of Jesus. It is important and key as a daily exercise not because it
prepares you for death but because it aerates the soil and provides fertilizer
like the fig tree. A daily diet of repentance provides room in one’s life for
the following of Jesus and eventually bears fruit in the work with Jesus
bringing forth the reign of God.
How is repentance something that bears fruit? Repentance is
the act of bring the ego into alignment with the soul and the Holy Spirit of
God. Repentance is the taking of a fearless inventory that helps one to
understand what the individual’s role is in brokenness and dysfunction.
Repentance helps us understand the individual acts we take or do not take that
have effects on the wider community. How do my habits of consumption affect
others? How do my wants and desires get bruised when I don’t get my way? How do
I lash out and blame others when I am at fault? How do I seek to have others
give me esteem so I feel good about myself instead of understanding that God
esteems me and loves me?”[3] and I would add
for just who I am.
But then Jesus offers the parable about the fig tree. In the parable he puts forth the concept that
being sorry is not enough, but you must bear fruit. There has to be something productive from one’s
existence. You must be contributing to
the kindom of God here on earth. If you
are not then God will just Chop, you down.
At Least, that is the thinking of those around Christ, but Jesus
puts forth this new loving concept. That
perhaps the one not bearing fruit just hasn’t been nurtured or cared for
properly…hasn’t been exposed to the Loving gardener that is Christ…Give me some
time to nurture the tree then if it still doesn’t bear fruit one can chop it
down.
One commentator states;
“That’s right. You heard the man. Bear fruit or die. Might
that be heard as a stewardship imperative? If we as individual disciples have
been given life, then aren’t we responsible for making the most of it? Or, as
the poet Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one
wild and precious life?” Likewise, as the Body of Christ, what are we doing to
bear fruit, to bloom where we’ve been planted?”[4]
I find some merit in the question asked but I am not sure
this is what I hear in the parable Christ puts forth. I live in the confidence of the Gardner. I am being tended too and loved by Christ and
as long as I live in Christs care I will bear fruit. It is almost as if we can’t help it.
Richard Rohr puts out these daily reflections and one of
them this week had a quote from Meister Eckhart
“God’s seed is in us. If it were tended by a good, wise and
industrious laborer, it would then flourish all the better, and would grow up
to God, whose seed it is, and its fruits would be like God’s own nature. The
seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, the seed of a nut tree grows to be
a nut tree, the seed of God grows to be God. —Meister Eckhart (1260–1328)[5]
As the body of Christ, we struggle with and strive to live
better. We struggle with and seek to
care for the community around us. We are
called to seek out the margins and see where we can do better. How we can serve
our community better.
You see If a
congregation is merely existing, longing for an era past, too worn down to
invest the energy, creativity, and passion in sharing the Good News of Jesus
with a broken and hurting world, then what’s to make it any different from a
social club? If a congregation stands on holier than thou ground pronouncing, we
are better than… it is nothing more than a noisy gong.
It is when our congregations provide a place to equip
disciples and build one another up, it is when we live in the love of Christ that
we cannot help but be excited to get out into the world and help to make it a
better place.
Have you ever had a plant in a window? What happens to it? It grows outward from the plant into the
light. In Just the same way healthy church grows outward while still
maintaining its deep-rooted connection to Christ.
Reverend Sharron Reissinger reminds us;
“We are called to be good stewards of the gifts God has
given us–our time, our talent, and our resources. God expects us to be fruitful
to the best of our abilities. We are not supposed to be “wasting the soil”
forever. Sure, we will have times and seasons when we are less than fruitful in
our ministry, mission, worship, and generosity. Even plants and trees have
fallow seasons or “manure years” during which they rest and replenish. …
One wonders why the church can’t take a lesson from this
story and from the principles of the good steward of land and orchard. Why do
we resist change, languish in a fog of scarcity, and pine for the good old
days? What keeps us from investing fully in flourishing and taking risks by
pruning away the useless and that which chokes and binds us? We do these things
to our own peril, and in the process deny our neighbors the opportunity to see
Jesus.”[6]
This is the trial many Congregations are facing. Now we here have remained relevant to the
community around us and yet the challenge of the 21st century lie before us. What
will church look like in 20 years, 10 years or even five? What are we going to have to do? Do we need to change some behaviors? Old habits? Do we need to seek new ways to be
present and relevant? We do need to be prepared for new life–even if that life
looks a whole lot different from the way things have always been?
“It bears repeating that Jesus does not explain the causes
of violence that nature and human beings regularly inflict upon unsuspecting
people. He does not blame victims. He does not attempt to defend creation or
the Creator when "why?" questions seem warranted. At least in this
scene, he offers no theological speculation and inflicts no emotional abuse. He
asks, with an urgency fueled by raw memories of blood and rubble on the ground:
What about you? How will you live the life you get to live?”[7]
“Do we build our lives upon those rationalizations that
allow us to get through the day feeling blessed, safe, and able to presume upon
a better fortune… (or)do we build our lives on the knowledge that God's
judgment is certain? Do we build them on the efforts that God, like the
parable's gardener, undertakes to prepare us for that judgment? God transforms
us through grace, a grace that calls us to be generous toward those still
trapped under the weight of poverty, want, and devastation of all kinds.”[8]
There’s a big world out there that needs God’s love. Go and Bloom
in the image of Christ.
[1] http://hitchhikingthebible.blogspot.com/2013/02/lent-3c.html
[2]
"How to Survive the Sequester, Syria, and Other Threatening Headlines,
“Matthew L. Skinner, ON Scripture, Odyssey Networks, 201
[3] http://hitchhikingthebible.blogspot.com/2013/02/lent-3c.html
[4] http://www.stewardshipoflife.org/2016/02/where-are-the-figs/
[5] Meister
Eckhart, “Of the Nobleman,” Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons,
Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn
(Paulist Press: 1981), 241.
[6] http://www.stewardshipoflife.org/2016/02/where-are-the-figs/
[7] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=530
[8]
Ditto
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