Sermon Archive
Readings for 11 March 2007
Third Sunday in Lent
Year C
Exodus 3:1-15
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up." When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." He said further, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" He said, "I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain."
But Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM Who I AM." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you':
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.
Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play." We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
Luke 13:1-9
There were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "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."
Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
Sermon
The Rev. Jack Zamboni
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. (Luke 13:2-3)
People come to Jesus with a terrible tale: Pilate, the Roman governor of Jerusalem known for his brutality, has had some Galilean pilgrims killed in the very act of offering sacrifice in the Temple. They want to know what Jesus has to say about this horror. Surely he will condemn Pilate! And maybe he’ll answer that nagging question we ask when a particularly chilling evil takes place– why?
Why in God’s name do such things happen? Why did these particular Galileans suffer this awful fate? Did they do something to deserve it?
In Jesus’ day, people thought that visible suffering could be traced to the sufferer’s own wrongdoing. To be sure, it could be tricky to figure it all out sometimes: In John’s Gospel, when the disciples meet a blind man, they ask Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Still, everyone agreed that someone’s special sin was at the root of the suffering they saw. Everyone, that is, except Jesus – who seems quite uninterested in trying to figure out who is to blame or why these things happen. “It was not that this man or his parent’s sinned,” Jesus says, before healing the blind man, “but rather that God’s works might be revealed.”
In today’s story, he challenges the crowd’s assumption yet more directly: "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you!” Then he uncovers the dirty little secret behind our tendency to blame others for their suffering -- that if they suffered because of their wrongdoing, then we must be better than they. “No way!” says Jesus: “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” To emphasize the point, Jesus reminds them of another local tragedy: “Those eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them-- do you think that they were worse offenders than everybody else in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
“Don’t waste your time trying to figure out who to blame for the suffering you see around you,” Jesus says. “Get to work on your own need to repent.” St. Paul makes the same point in different words: “If you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.”
Both Paul and Jesus know how much human beings like to focus on others’ sin as a way of avoiding dealing with our own. But for the good of our souls and the wholeness of our lives Jesus won’t let us get away with it: “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." Jesus knows that we all are in need of repentance – he knows that much better than we do, in fact. He knows the truths of today’s Collect that we have a hard time embracing: “that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves;’ that we are subject to “evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul;” and that we are capable – and more – of evil actions that will damage others’ lives and our own. Jesus is crystal clear: We all need to repent.
OK – but of what do we need to repent? It didn’t take me long – starting from own life – to put together is a short and very incomplete list of sins we need to repent of. It begins close to home and moves outward from there.
As individuals, we need to repent of our tendency to judge others, to think that they deserve their suffering or to imagine that we are superior to them. We need to repent of the desire to control life that Susy spoke last week, and the fearful violence it often provokes in us. We need to repent of our perfunctory prayer and half-hearted worship. We need to repent of our captivity to money and the false security it offers. We need to repent of our addiction to the creature comforts we cannot imagine living without. We need to repent of our selfishness, impatience, self-righteous anger and lack of love.
As a parish, we need to repent of our preoccupation with institutional stability, a preoccupation that saps the energy needed for ministry. We need to repent of our lack in trust that God will guide us and provide for us. We need to repent of our failure to care more concretely for the poor. We need to repent of our unwillingness to share the Good News of God’s love with others. We need to repent of how love of our comfort zones makes us resistant to change.
As a wider Church, we need to repent of the walls we put up to keep people out and opponents at a distance. We need to repent of the battles lines drawn between brothers and sisters in Christ. We need to repent of the fear that keeps us from making courageous stands. We need to repent of the violent language hurled across ideological divides. We need to repent of spending enormous amounts of time, energy and money on our disagreements with each other when God’s world is in dire need.
As a nation we need to repent of the growing gap between rich and poor. We need to repent of imagining that we can fix the rest of the world and the folly that violence is a good tool for that job. We need to repent of the racism that continues to divide our peoples. We need to repent of leaving huge debts to be paid by our children and grandchildren. We need to repent of our wasteful use of fossil fuels and the global warming the next generation will inherit.
As a world we need to repent that nations spend billions on weapons while millions live in hunger. We need to repent that thousands die daily of preventable disease. We need to repent that corporate profits are a higher priority for governments than the well-being of their people. We need to repent that leaders’ egos and nations’ pride cause conflict again and gain. We need to repent that genocide continues in Darfur while the world watches.
Is it hard to listen to all of that? It is hard for me to say it – and not only because I know this isn’t a feel good sermon of the sort congregations usually like. It is hard for me to say it because I know I need to repent of all that – and more – as much as anyone else. These are hard truths we don’t like to hear or face – but Jesus makes us today: “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” -- and we can’t repent if we don’t name what needs repentance.
We’ve already made our confession today, and chances are good that in the brief silence after Deacon Cornelia’s invitation, very little of what is on my short, incomplete list came to our minds, not to mention what more we each might need to repent of. That’s OK –we’ll get another chance next week, and you can do your own praying at home.
But in making our prayers of confession, we need to understand that repentance includes more than saying we’re sorry that “we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” Repentance also includes “amendment of life” – that is, a desire and commitment to change our behavior to put it in line with our words: to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist tells his hearers to “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” (Luke 3:8). Jesus picks up that image in the parable that ends today’s Gospel story.
“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'Look! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”
There are 2 things to note in this story: First, bearing fruit matters. Repentance is about actions, not just words. Second, God offers time and grace (I love the image of manure as grace!) for us to become fruit-bearing. We don’t have to get it all right immediately – and that’s a good thing, because we won’t.
But we do need to repent:
to name our sin;
to say we are sorry;
to ask God’s forgiveness;
to seek God’s grace;
to let our lives be changed;
to bear fruit;
to live.
Amen
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