Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
From Foundry UMC's Lenten Series: Renovation Realities
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, February 28, 2016, the third Sunday in Lent.Text: Luke 13:1-9
Renovation work is fraught with the potential for disaster and disappointment. Whether the renovation is of a physical space, a relationship, a congregation, a community, an institution—there is always the possibility that the work will fall apart, that harm will be done, that the process or the outcome will be disappointing. At our worship team meeting this past week, when the conversation turned to the scripture and sermon theme for the week, the reaction was palpable. I saw and felt everyone at the table having their own feelings and thoughts about disaster and disappointment. My guess is that if I turned you loose in small groups to discuss what comes up for you, there would be no shortage of thoughts and feelings. The truth is that it is easy to name disasters and to recognize the disappointments in our lives. The harder thing is to figure out how to respond as people of faith. This past week, I heard theologian N.T. Wright suggest that people of faith can “read the news with Jesus.” This echoes the classic liberal protestant notion that we should read the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other; that is, read the headlines of our lives and of our day with a Spirit-led, Jesus-focused lens so that we might find some guidance about how to respond.
N.T. Wright’s comments about reading the news with Jesus struck me as timely—not only because I certainly need some guidance responding to the headlines these days but also because I was preparing to preach the text we’ve heard this morning. Today our Gospel gives us an example of how Jesus reads the news. Jesus responds to two headlines of disaster: both were news stories of people who died unjustly and tragically, one in a political massacre and the other through a tower collapsing. One way that our ancestors—and many in our modern world—try to make sense of these painful and confusing events is by assigning cause and effect. For example, those folks who were brutally killed by Pilate must have been worse sinners than others; or those folks in America who were brutally attacked by kamikaze airplanes must have done something to deserve that kind of punishment. According to this way of thinking, if you are killed unjustly or randomly or tragically, you probably did something to deserve it. It’s your fault. God is punishing you.
Jesus reads it differently. What he says is, “do you really think these people were being singled out because of their sins, or that they died because they’re worse than anyone else? Of course not!” With both examples, Jesus unequivocally denies the cause-effect nature of the deaths. But there is also a “but…” But if you don’t repent, if you don’t change, then you can expect consequences.
When Jesus says that unless we repent, we will perish just as those in the Biblical examples did, he is not saying that God is out to get you and is going to make you a victim of some awful tragedy if you don’t shape up. After all, he has just rejected that kind of response. So what is Jesus talking about? I think the only way to know is to set this passage in context: Just before what we hear today in Luke, Jesus has been teaching about the need to trust God and to live a life according to the love, care, mercy, justice, and humility of the Kin-dom of God (Luke 12:13-48). Jesus has taught about the rich man building bigger barns to store his crops and then dying with no “treasure stored in heaven.” Jesus has taught about attendants who need to be ready, keeping their lamps lit, as they await the bridegroom’s return. Jesus has taught about the servants who have been given responsibility for their master’s possessions, but who are cruel and frivolous and thoughtless; the master will show up when they least expect it and will see what they are doing (or not doing). In all of this, the teaching is: do what matters most today; live a life of deeper trust and surrender today; do justice today; be prepared to meet your maker, be ready to come face to face with God. This is what leads up to Jesus’s reaction to the news in our passage today.
The people who perished died in different ways—one was an act of brutal violence the other a “natural” catastrophe. The thing that both scenarios have in common was that the deaths were not expected—they came upon people unaware. When something happens we aren’t expecting, we might very possibly be unprepared—we might not be ready. When Jesus says that unless we repent, we will perish just as those in the Biblical examples did, it seems to me that the point is that no matter how long we live and no matter how we die, we might very well come to the end of our days without being ready to go. Perhaps some folks will hear this as a fearful message. But it is really an invitation. Jesus is calling us to repent—to turn away from—anything that keeps us from living each day as one who is “ready to go,” as a person who has her relationships cared for, who has as little unfinished business as possible, as one who is living a life he wouldn’t be embarrassed to lay before God.
Jesus encourages us to “read the news” of disaster and disappointment in our lives and world not with an eye to placing blame, finding a scapegoat, and identifying upon whom our vengeance should fall (common responses!). Instead, Jesus wants us to take responsibility for our own selves. We are challenged to respond to disaster and disappointment with honesty and conviction about what we can or should do, about where things need to change in our own lives, about what we need to learn from what has happened so that we might incorporate that learning into our lives. We are challenged to persevere in faith, hope, and love even when we are the victims of tragedy and injustice. This is not to say that we should not identify and actively stand against perpetrators of harm. Rather, we are called to follow Jesus who provides powerful examples of how to challenge and stand firm against evil, injustice, and oppression without succumbing to hate or violence.
Jesus follows up the questions about untimely deaths with the parable of the unfruitful fig tree—a story of disappointment for sure. A couple of notes about fig trees: fig trees absorb an especially large amount of nourishment and therefore can drain the earth of nutrients, depriving other plants of sustenance. Further, according to Levitical Law (Lev. 19:23), fig trees were given three years’ growth in order to become “clean.” We are told that the gardener has been looking for fruit on the tree in question for three years. Therefore, we can deduce that after six years this tree has produced no fruit. It is alive, but it’s not doing anything much or being anything much. It’s just taking up space, wasting the soil. Japanese poet and Christian peace activist, Toyohiko Kagawa says this:
I read
In a book
That a man called
Christ
Went about doing good.
It is very disconcerting to me
That I am so easily
Satisfied
With just
Going about.
The fig tree is “just going about” and, therefore, is in danger of being cut down before it has really lived the life it was created for. This tree, all of a sudden, becomes a symbol of us in all the ways that we waste our chance to flourish, that we live our lives in ways that may leave us at our end not being “ready to go.” But does the tree get destroyed by a vengeful God? The story Jesus tells here is not just one of disappointment, it is one of grace. The tree is not destroyed, but rather is given a second chance and more than that—it is given “fertilizer,” the things that it needs to be able to bear fruit.
As we confront disaster and disappointment in our lives and in our world—imagine reading the news through the lens of the Jesus who tells this and so many stories of grace, who reminds us that every day—every moment—of life is precious and an opportunity live with love and care. Read the news with the Jesus who came to preach good news to the poor and to set the prisoners free, who broke religious rules for the sake of love, who crossed all the boundaries of race and tribe, who hung out with those whom others despised, the Jesus who was himself homeless and an asylum-seeker from a murderous political power. Read the news with the Jesus who loved children, who railed against the tyranny of empire, who saw the gifts and potential of every person, who practiced what he preached, who forgave even those who had betrayed, denied, and killed him. As we “read” the painful and troubling headlines of our lives, look through the eyes of Jesus. Doing so will not only highlight the need for repentance and renovation in our lives and in the world, but it will also ground our response in the grace and mercy that flows from God’s self-giving love. God’s grace and mercy enfolds us through every circumstance of our lives, giving us strength and courage to persevere, to change, to hope, to go about doing good, to live each day “ready to go.” And that is Good News after all…
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