Year C Lent 3 2022 Holding On In Hope

 Year C Lent 3, 20 March 2022

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Holding On In Hope”

Collect: Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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.”

Luke 13:1-9

At that very time 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.'"

Repent, for the Kingdom of God is right here, right now. Some hear a threat in that. Some hear a promise.

Perspective matters so much.

We still combat the age-old wisdom that people get what they deserve. We still fight the perspective that the rich are blessed and the poor are suffering judgment.

It comes out in phrases, admittedly well-intentioned, like “I must have done something right.” Or, “God has particularly blessed us!”

Jesus fought that mindset. And if he did, why do we delude ourselves that if we are good we will have smooth sailing. And if we are bad then we are cursed at best, or doomed at worst.

The oldest story in Scripture, according to biblical scholars, is the story of Job, where we are emphatically told that bad things happen to good people. Not because they are good, but suffering is the human condition. In a world grappling with the weight of Free Will, things spin positively and sometimes they spin out of control. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

With Great Power, Free Will, comes Great Responsibility. God knows that. God sees that. God is with us, through thick or thin, and God bets that we will do good, grow up, and make the right and proper choices.

“Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” This is, as I have said, Jesus’ message and mission statement at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark explicitly stated. [Mark 1:15]

Threat or Promise?

I remember when my kids were in elementary school, the principal had a program where he and teachers recognized kids who were “Caught Doing Good.” We do not do good to get caught, at least I hope not. We do good because it is the right thing to do.

In our Gospel reading this morning, we have some people, fellow Galileans coming to Jesus and asking questions. They are trying to get their head around the idea how God could let happen the suffering of folks who were killed and their bodies desecrated by mixing their blood with sacrifices. Soon after that we jump to another tragedy where people were crushed by a falling tower in Jerusalem. In both of these stories, we see Jesus give the same response when asked about those who suffered…

“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

In the season of Lent, we give space and attention to Repentance. Repent is a command. The etymology of the word that we use is to feel intense sorrow or remorse for an action, idea, or attitude. It comes from old French. But here is another example of where our translations mess us up. It is not about feeling sorry, or anything else, though it makes sense that it would accompany that.

It is about upgrading your operating system. It is about swapping brains. Literally, metanoia, change minds. About Face. Repent. Change your ways by changing how you think, and act, and talk, and live. And you may feel sorry when you see how things were before the change. That is normal, and natural, and right.

When Jesus is asked about tragedies, human-caused when Pilate was a cruel and vindictive leader, or when there were “acts of God” as the insurance company would call it, not the theologians, by the way, wherever tragedies occur and their cause, in our suffering we can see that it is God smiting us and then we have insult added to injury. But if we swap out our old way of thinking, we see that bad things happen. They happen to the bad. They happen to the good. They happen. And it all comes back to how we see it.

When Jesus says, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” I have to see it differently. They did not perish because of a lack of repentance. They perished through external forces, man-made and natural. But their condition is perishing in the thought that they had somehow caused this through something done or left undone, as we put it in the confession.

Jesus came to change our minds, to have us Repent. God is not out to get us, some angry sky god with lightning bolts at the ready. But rather that God is loving, and kind, and caring, and betting on the idea that we can and will get better.

We are all accountable for our actions. That is the nature of being Grown-Ups. We have no excuses or reasons that do not come back to what we have done and what we have left undone. But the thought that God gives us all the space to come into the state of God’s grace is beautiful beyond words.

Jesus’ parables teach so many things. The nature of God and God’s Kingdom way of living are primary. The parable Luke includes points directly to that.

"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.'"

It does not start with cutting down the tree. It does not give up on the tree, either, letting it do whatever it will. It holds the tree to what a tree should be doing. The “gardener” here is God. The owner, the director of what is to be, the “man” wishes to chop down the tree. But the gardener wants to give the tree one more chance. '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?' But what does the “gardener” say? “Give it one more chance! Another year even! Fertilize it! Give it a chance to bear fruit!”

Friends, how many times has God looked at us and said the same? Thank God that God is like the gardener and wants us to have a chance to be fruitful.

God is not only wanting you to bear the fruit of a good and growing life of faith, he is equipping you to do so, and even more betting that you will make it.

We bear fruit not because we have to! Serving God is not an obligation. Serving God is a gift! We are given the opportunity to be who God made us to be, to learn and grow, to live and love, to serve and sacrifice. We are made to bring glory to God, intentionally and joyfully. Thanks be to God!

Every so often, we see when God steps in to bet on us. The reading from Exodus shows that. Moses was just tending his father-in-law’s flocks when God said, “Psst, buddy! Have I got an offer for you!” And it changed the course of history. And remember, Moses had written himself off for decades. He was an escaped murderer on the lamb, and had moved on entirely from being a Prince of Egypt. But God had not written him off at all.

This last week was the 64th anniversary of God stepping up on a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky. March 18, 1958, the monk and author Thomas Merton was standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district when God broke through. He was surrounded with people and he was given a brief moment of seeing people with God’s eyes. From Merton’s words:

“…I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine & I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers… It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities & one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake. I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could all see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed....I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down & worship each other." Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp. 154-155

Sure sounds like a God-broke-through-burning-bush-moment to me! God still breaks through. You cannot plan on it. You do not get a warning. It happens when it is the fullness of time. But what we cannot do is ignore it when it happens. It changes everything. God is betting on you!

God breaks through still because God believes in you, bets on your outcomes, and wants nothing more than you to be who God made you to be. Thanks be to God! Amen.