“Repent or Perish”

sermon on Luke 13:1-9; Isaiah 55:1-9

A few of you might recall Peter Fribley, whom I knew in another time and place, who was once described to me as having the most amazing eyebrows in our synod. He would frequently remark about the New York Times obituaries. His line was, “You don’t read to see who died. You read to see who lived.”

Incidentally, I also think about Peter Fribley every time we use this Service of the Word liturgy. When ELW came out, he was infuriated at the words in the prayer we’ll do next that didn’t square with his Presbyterian theology, or his background as an army chaplain then witnessing the Iraq War, that God would bring beauty out of chaos. He insisted it was order that God could bring from chaos.

Anyway, not reading to see who died but who lived may be analogous to what Jesus is saying in this Gospel reading.

I know, it can seem strangely brutal that he says, “Repent or die,” “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Clearly, he’s not saying repentance will spare you from death. At the least, we know we’re going to die. His point is that worse things don’t happen to worse sinners. God isn’t tipping towers on rotten people. Victims of violence didn’t have it coming. Jesus doesn’t believe in divine punishment. And he should know!

Pat Robertson infamously regularly claims he knows otherwise, attributing disasters to the LGBTQ community or abortion or God’s hidden operations through violence or because people are Brown and Black, or most anything else other than being willing to accept some of the blame himself.

Jesus shuts this out entirely. Even if we’d typically claim that bad things aren’t punishment from God, as if God were lurking to smite, catching us misbehaving, we nevertheless wonder how to escape calamity and avoid death, in personal habits or health care plans or military spending. When tragedy strikes, violently or accidentally, we wonder: why? Why did it happen? Why did God let this occur? Even, what did I do to deserve having a bad day?

Jesus doesn’t really answer, except to say Tragedy. Isn’t. Punishment.

That may or may not feel like relief. You may still want to protest it’s not fair, the most frequent upset I’ve heard in these days being that God is allowing Putin to get away with mayhem and carnage against innocent Ukraine.

But Jesus says God doesn’t operate that way. God goes by grace. One writer phrased that we say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but God, in divine grace, says there is.* “If you don’t have any money, come, eat what you want!” God declares (Isaiah 55:1). You can be a worthless, worn out fig tree, but God will keep pouring the fertilizer on you, keep you on life support, giving you another chance.

The Lord says, “My thoughts and my ways are not like yours,” because our thoughts are about getting what you deserve, about punishment, always circling around tragedy and death.

God, though, is more interested in life than in death. Jesus will suffer, be cut down, and crushed, and bloodied. But even that tragedy is in service of life. So repentance, in finding our minds transformed, sees that preoccupation with death isn’t worthwhile. Getting sucked in by the tragic, isn’t God’s perspective. Though we might imagine we’re staving off the inevitable for a time, we eventually have to confront that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all,”as it says in Ecclesiastes, “For no one can anticipate the time of disaster” (9:11-12a).

We’re not left as existential nihilists to throw up hands and say, “well then what’s the point?!” Rather, we have God’s question in Isaiah: “Why waste your money on what really isn’t food? Why work hard for something that doesn’t satisfy?” To go chasing after answers that will never appear and frantically and frenetically thinking we can evade and avoid death does not satisfy. It’s a waste, leaving us with buyer’s remorse. Or, in Jesus’ frame, liver’s remorse. We get to the end and have failed really to live, focusing the obituary on who died rather than who lived.

It’s not sufficient to boil this down to the little truism that “nobody on their deathbed ever said ‘I wish I spent more time at the office’” but there’s something to that. How do we spend our lives? Or what do we spend them on? If God is invested in you living, is it only being toward death, or is it for the sake of living?

Again with the obvious example, we can be sad and overwhelmed and shocked about Ukraine. We could waste time wishing that Putin would suffer consequences and repercussions, that “war criminals go straight to hell,” as Ukraine’s UN ambassador opined. Or we could let God renew our perspective and witness the beauty that can, indeed, come out of the chaos, the love of neighbor, the resistance for peace. We could focus on the death, or we could find ways to join in supporting life and relief and hope.

Again, I wouldn’t typically condescend to equate Jesus with a meme on Facebook, but here we go. With a picture of gas prices, it said: “so today I stopped and filled up my car and I was thankful. Thankful that I have a car. Thankful I have money to buy gas. Thankful there are no war planes flying over me. Thankful that I will be eating soon. Thankful that all of my loved ones are safe and sound… Thankful that the air I breathe is not filled with smoke and gunpowder. Thankful that I will sleep in silence and wake to a beautiful day.” Now, that could just turn to self-satisfaction or schadenfreude or even a gloating sort of patriotism.

But it could also be repentance, a change of perspective, a transformed mind that sees life instead of death.

And even when we do see death, when we can’t ignore its reality, when tragedy really is inescapable and diminishing of life, still we are reoriented by baptism, that you have already died with Jesus by baptism into death, so that with him you may walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

STATEMENT OF FAITH                                                            adapted from Debie Thomas

Like countless believers around the world, on Sunday mornings I affirm that Jesus

                  “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.”

It can imply that Jesus came to earth only to suffer and die.

Didn’t he also come to live? To embody life and life more abundant?   

I wish the creed included a few more lines:

         I believe in Jesus, who squealed with joy on Mary’s lap,

                  climbed trees and learned to swim as a child,

                  played pranks, and laughed with his friends.

         I believe in Jesus, who considered the lilies, gazed at the stars,

                  sang around campfires, cherished fresh bread, savored good wine.

         I believe in Jesus, who read poetry and told the best stories.

         I believe in Jesus who lived.

In these days of pandemic and pain, we need more holy delight,

         as a sacred and honorable gift from God, honoring the whole of human experience.

We acknowledge the reality of pain and death,

         but our faith is not about pain and death, it’s about life and joy. 

It’s about a God who died so that all creation can live abundantly.

Life is many things, and yes, it includes pain. But not to the exclusion and neglect of joy.

To follow Christ is to embrace Christ’s joy

         and to trust that God will make that joy complete in us. Amen

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/faith-matters/we-need-more-robust-theology-holy-delight

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* http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/lent3c/

Repentance for Tragedy?

sermon for 3rd Sunday in Lent (Luke13:1-9; Isaiah55:1-9; 1Corinthians10:1-13)
Among great philosophers, the ancient Greek Heraclitus said the only thing constant is change, while modern day mind Dan McGown reminds us that the only certainties are death and taxes.
With that, we’d have to expand the list to note that tragedies also seem all too regular and catastrophes much too common. The exact crises and numbers of victims may vary, but we’re never far removed from some sort of disaster. Unfortunately, it’s always been that way and likely will remain ever thus.

So also, today Jesus is discussing current events, two topics that would’ve been at the top of newspaper headlines or trending on Twitter in his day, though by all accounts, these persecutions and accidents are small potatoes. Other than this passage in Luke, there’s no record of these people killed by Pilate nor even of where the tower of Siloam was, much less the calamity of it collapsing. One is human-perpetrated evil, violence from a brutal despot. The other natural evil, an unintentional mishap, nevertheless causing devastating destruction.

By the fact that Jesus needed to address them, we might suspect these events were evidently a big deal at the moment, but soon faded from memory, supplanted by another horror, some new tragedy in the endless funeral procession. As I was reading past commentaries on these lectionary texts, looking back over three year increments the calamity du jour had been bombings in Madrid and federal government budget sequestration and an earthquake in Haiti and another in Chile and terrorist attacks and an immigration border conflict and after the “Titanic” movie won Academy Awards, which is a twist for not letting the wreckage disappear but resurfacing it for other purposes. Some of these moments you may recall, others are recessed farther back in memory.

I could similarly ask for three examples: what has been the worst news this week? In spite of still being able to name problems, we may say it’s a relief that today we don’t have to address the pressure of the hugest and hardest enduring questions confronting us with shorthand titles like “Paris” or “9/11” or “Katrina” or “Bangladesh” or “Exxon Valdez” or “Hiroshima” or any other days of infamy (a phrase itself that inescapably makes us continue to tremble from Pearl Harbor).

Large scale and small, passing or persistent, we’re continually prompted toward theological conundrum: Does God cause these events to happen? Are they punishment? Is God randomly cruel? Is God inattentive to suffering or impotent to repair it, or actually nonexistent? In official terminology of trying to discern issues of God, evil, and suffering, it’s the question of theodicy. Less officially phrased in protest, it’s “C’mon, God! What gives?!”
As we engage this topic, we might first do well to note that the deaths Jesus is talking about are remote. He isn’t dealing with the families of the victims or those who have been terrorized and traumatized by bloodshed and abuse. The question is more detached and speculative.

Yet we might also note that such distance has become more difficult for us. The pace of tragedy is increased by our 24-second news cycle that so continuously leads with what bleeds and updates us uninterruptedly with the latest shooting or senseless oppression or tower collapsing. The distance is decreased, as threats on the other side of the globe make us worry. Plus that somehow either is used to or unintentionally manages to keep us immobilized in fear. We stress at airports and for food supplies and in schools and over viruses and we attempt to barricade ourselves inside locked houses and big vehicles and with castle laws and even by conversing with those of like mind. This means we don’t do as well at assessing our fears and the problems and crises around us. All of it hits too close to home, so we aren’t able to remove ourselves to ask the larger questions. Even the answers of faith, instead of a firm foundation, become doses of a fleeting antidote, tiny disclaimers of responsibility rather than reservoirs of relief.

We would be well-served by more speculative examination. I always say that at a funeral or in a hospital room is the wrong time to try changing somebody’s theology. We need to be working on this and asking the hard questions so that we’re ready and well-prepared for when we need it, not as we’re grasping at the edge and gasping for breaths in the midst of trauma.

A starting point is exemplified in a phrase from 1st Corinthians, about past deaths being for our sake. Paul recounts stories of Exodus and Deuteronomy about those who died in the wilderness. He writes, “these occurred as examples for us.” This perhaps parallels the concept “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Yet we need to use it cautiously. If a past event may be employed to make things better for us, we are using it well. But we should not and cannot say that the crimes and disasters of history were caused for our sake, as mere learning opportunities. To say from the Holocaust “never again” is a lesson we must continue striving after not just in genocides but in our broad patterns of prejudice, exclusion, and hatred. But to claim that any death any suffering is worth it in order for us to know better or try harder is more than we ought to claim.

There’s another problematic phrase in this 1st Corinthians reading. (For how full of grace Paul can be, this reading instead seems densely packed in obscuring good news.) Besides the stuff on making examples and whether former difficulties were for your benefit, another questionable concept comes in a phrase that gets used at all the wrong times and becomes itself abusive. Though it tends to be offered with kind intentions, I’d almost like to eliminate this idea from our theological grab bag. The phrase is that “God will not let you be tested beyond your strength,” with a corrupted paraphrase as “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

First of all with this, we should clarify that nowhere in Paul’s understanding do the temptations come from God. It is not God who is putting you to the test or trying to see how much you can endure. It’s a despicable direction to say that you just need to put up with it because God won’t give you more than you can bear, so whatever you’re suffering must not be yet to your threshold. That leaves God as the bad guy and is essentially a message for you to buck up.

That distinction may not prove to be much resolution in the face of oppression or natural disasters, but it is critical amid crisis to be ready to declare that God is not causing those harms, or arbitrarily inflicting hardship on you. Instead, as Paul uses this concept, it is we who are testing or tempting ourselves. We are liable to lead ourselves astray and forget about or turn away from the good news of Jesus we share in community. That direction of turning is fundamental to this season of Lent, when we again focus specially on gathering together and being renewed by baptismal blessing from the God who promises to care for us. We re-turn to God.

This also at last returns us to our Gospel reading, which could have a difficult or misleading notion with Jesus talking about repentance. Again, it’s a critical trajectory to trace. Some of Jesus’ neighbors were killed by the vindictive Pontius Pilate. Did God cause it or allow it because they were worse sinners? Our hopeful answer is resoundingly reinforced by Jesus: By no means! How about those smushed when the tower toppled? Was it because they were worse offenders? No, I tell you! Are some lives worth less, because of location or religion or morality? No. Because of gender or age or how much or little good they accomplish? No. Because of some indeterminate quality, an attribute known only to and judged solely by a hidden God, and of which we nevertheless need to be extraordinarily cautious lest we too perish?

Here, for our typical understanding, is where the rub lies. Jesus says, “repent, or you’ll perish like them.” Having been assured that God is not vengeful, capricious, or malicious—much less simply careless—these words cannot stand as threat. Since God is not testing you and since the misfortune of others cannot stand as a warning of divine displeasure, the issue of repentance is not a question of shaping up or reforming your status as a bad sinner or worse offender.

The better solution is to notice what Jesus means when he invites you to repent. Contrary to a sense that repentance is acknowledging how shameful or miserable you are and just how awful your existence must be and turning from the error of your ways, this repentance is turning toward a gracious and loving God who invites you to abundantly shared life. Even in the worst moments, you have hope.

The repentance here is precisely turning away from the distorted image of a God who is out to get you, who is lurking with punishments, standing in the way of your wellbeing. That is the worst of oppressive inventions and the opposite of who God strives to be in your life and for the life of this world. This is not a God who surprises you by dropping towers on you but who surprises you with love, constantly and unconditionally. This is a God of patience. Like when a fig tree refuses to bear fruit and is unable to bring about any good, God is a gardener begging for more time, getting God’s fingers dirty to dump manure around you. This God is like Ann Ward walking into the office in the middle of a cold winter afternoon with a bag of bright green flavorful spinach from the hoop house, bringing good from unexpected places.

“My ways are not your ways,” God proclaims in our 1st reading, “my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” When we expect retribution, God in Christ is ready rather with abundant forgiveness, and continues begging your pardon, with hope for the despairing, who won’t abandon you in the time of trial, won’t give up on you even when you’ve given up.

Repentance isn’t earning that from God, but turning to see God is already and always there