March 24th, Luke
SERMON: MARCH 24, 2019
Luke 13:1-9
Time does fly, and this morning we find ourselves on the third Sunday of Lent as we journey with Jesus toward the dark days in Jerusalem and the cross. In this dark period, we examine our hearts and our actions to make sure that they are pleasing to God. We are also reminded that someday we will stand before the throne of God, and give a full account of the fruit, like the fig tree in today’s Scripture lesson, that we have borne or not borne during our life here on earth. A sobering thought for most people.
This brings us to the question of what God’s judgement will look like. We do know that those who refuse to turn to God will be cut off from God forever when they die. Many people believe that we are punished for our sins here on earth even before we die. Just listen to what the people around you say when something disastrous happens, whether it be a natural disaster, like the recent tornado in our southern states, or a man-made disaster like an automobile accident that kills two young teens on their way to the prom.
In today’s passage, two disasters are recounted in the Scripture, both of which would have been familiar to the audiences in Jesus day. First, we are told of Pilate’s horrific mingling of the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices referring to a massacre of a group of Galilean pilgrims in Jerusalem. A story that highlights the propensity of Pilate for brutality, and provides us with a grisly example of a man-made disaster.
Then Jesus refers to the eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them without warning, a natural disaster that emphasizes the random accidents happen every day. Bad things do happen to Christians and Non-Christians alike. In fact, both of the stories Jesus recounts make us realize just how precarious life really is.
We would not be human if we did not ask ourselves when disaster happens, the question, why? Why would God let this happen? It just isn’t fair. Why did this happen to me, or why did this happen to my loved one? Like us the Galileans wanted Jesus to answer the question of, why? Why these people? The logic in Jesus time, a logic that still exists in today’s world, is that the tragedy or misfortune was tied to sin. The idea is that horrible sin equals some type of horrible punishment. Most of you are familiar with the story of poor Job, who was a very righteous man, but suffered terribly in body and mind. Everyone thought that Job must have done something really awful for God to let this suffering happen to him. Yet, Job had not done anything to deserve his pain.
Jesus is quick to answer, “Do you think that these Galileans suffered in this way, they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you.” In short, were they worse people than those who were spared? No, they were not. Alluding to the fact that God does not send us punishment in this way. These disasters were not from God. However, Jesus was not done, and He went on to say, “No, I tell you, but unless your repent, you will all perish as they did.”
This begs the question of what “repent,” really means. The word, repentance, literally means to “turn around.” In fact, in the early days of the Church those being baptized would actually turn their bodies as they made their baptismal vows as a symbolic gesture of repentance. They would renounce Satan and all the ways of evil facing the west (the direction of darkness and despair) and then, turn east (toward the sun), to confess their faith in Jesus Christ.
For us, repentance means turning our lives, our views, our perspectives around, and re-orienting our lives as disciples to following the ways that Jesus has taught us. It means embracing the counter-cultural ways that Jesus treated the people around Him and the way He saw the world.
Jesus then goes on to tell a parable about the fig tree. Interestingly, fig trees are mentioned over fifty times in the Scripture. Figs were, as they are still today, an important economic crop as well as a means of providing the nutrition that we all need. A man who owned an orchard of fig trees in Jesus’ time would have been considered a rich man indeed. We might also remember that it was the fig tree that provided the leaves that Adam and Eve sewed together to hide their nakedness from God.
Beside this, there is a message of hope for all of us in the parable of the fig tree. The man who had planted the fig tree wanted to chop it down because it was taking up space in the rich soil, yet bore no fruit, but the gardener begged him to give it another year. The owner said it was wasting the soil, but the gardener said he’d aerate the soil, put some fertilizer on it, maybe some of Perry County’s “liquid gold,” and he felt sure the tree would bear fruit the next year.
The point that Jesus is making is that the tree did not deserve to continue living because of its lack of producing fruit. Likewise, those who are not producing fruit in God’s kingdom here on earth don’t deserve to continue on. Yet, God does not want them to perish, and so allows more time for them to repent and turn back to God. God’s patience with all sinners, the giving of more time to each and every one of us is nothing more than pure grace. Because of God’s great grace, we as Christians need to continue producing fruit that is part of God’s great mission here on earth. Instead of being passive church goers, Christians need to be action oriented; ready to put in the time and effort to help those who are unchurched find the love, hope, and joy of knowing Christ. We need to be the ones who are preparing the soil of their hearts, and spreading the fertilizer by showing God’s love for them through us. We need to help and encourage them to also bear fruit in God’s kingdom.
As we leave here today, we need to remember what Jesus did for each of us on the cross so that if we repent, and believe we may have eternal life. We need to continue building our intimate relationship with God, for bad things can happen to each of us when we least expect them to. The disasters happening around us often lead us into denial, denial that these disasters can never happen to us. Yet in our hearts, we know that it is not so. Although God is patient and gives us more time to repent and turn our lives around. There will come a time when out time will run out and our physical life here on earth will end.
Especially in this season of Lent, let us search our soles and repent of our sins and misdeeds. We are God’s fruit trees here on earth. May we allow God to continually cultivate and prune us so that we will increase our ability to provide the fruit of the good news, for those who desperately need it.
Amen