The Dissonance of Lent
The Dissonance of Lent
A Sermon for Pleasant Street Congregational Church, UCC
March 7, 2010 (Third Sunday in Lent)
Rev. Reebee Girash
Text: Luke 13:1-9
Luke 13:1-9
1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 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? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” 6 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. 7 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?’ 8 He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”
Prayer
Sermon
God gives that fruitless fig tree one more year. In all things God is merciful.
God may be merciful but that’s no reason to waste your life.
God’s mercy still demands fruitfulness of each of us.
There it is, that’s my sermon in a nutshell. For those of you who would like to tune out the remainder, in which I will travel to fire and brimstone land for a rare visit, you may now pick up your pew Bibles and begin to study.
Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Christians in America would like to believe in a God without wrath that saves a world without sin through a Christ without the cross.” No fruit produced there. Dietrich Boenhoeffer considered this kind of faith, “cheap grace.”
There are at least two ways of looking at suffering.
One is to say, it was caused by something. By someone’s actions. A popular variant on that theme is, if you sin, bad things will happen to you, in order to punish you for your sin, or bad things will happen to people you love, as part of God’s punishment of you. There are two corollaries, for those who believe this: If something bad happens to someone, they must have sinned to cause it. And, if you are good, good things will happen to you, because you deserve them.
Jesus blows that set of beliefs right out of the water, when he says: “”Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you…”
So Jesus seems to support the opposite view of suffering: God doesn’t send suffering as punishment for sin. Sometimes bad things just happen, without explanation. God’s judgment of sin is not the cause of all calamity. As the New Interpreter’s Bible says, “life is uncertain, death is capricious…” (NIB 270) Jesus says, there’s no simple explanation here. God is not an arbitrary punisher, but rather one who judges with compassion; one who is merciful in all things. One who gives even unfruitful fig trees more chances.
This, generally speaking, is the mainline, UCC view of suffering: we may not understand it, but we don’t blame God for it. God is merciful, God loves us, God is love, God offers grace to all.
But in the same breath as he says, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you…,” Jesus also says, “but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”
Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “In the South, this is what we call giving with one hand and taking away with the other. No, Jesus says, there is no connection between the suffering and the sin. Whew. But unless you repent, you are going to lose some blood too. Oh.”
God loves you, God is merciful, God eye is on the sparrow and you know God watches you, God would even have mercy on an unfruitful fig tree.
But that does not free you from responsibility.
In our 21st century mainline Christian lives, we seem to get off easy. We get to focus on the institution of Christianity, rather than the Christian life. When our work as Christians – either that institutional life, or our own soul searching – gets too hard, we can say, I’m not doing that any more. It’s too hard. I want an easier, more peaceful, more fun, more convenient Christian life. I’d really prefer not to teach Sunday School more than twice a decade, thanks, and don’t even talk to me about tithing, that’s evangelical stuff. Doing more work for church, so that we can be serving the community in God’s name – sorry, no time. Also, I come to church on Sunday morning for peace and refreshment and then I will go back to my real life. Doesn’t matter what I do there, you know, because God is merciful.
Well, that’s bogus. And by now, in our fourth Lent together, you know the gloves come off just a little bit in this season. I’m gonna speak the truth, even the dissonant truth of Lent.
Yes, the Christian message is hopeful, comforting, resurrection-filled. But it is also challenging, calling us to bear the cross, carry the load, and produce a harvest-full of fruit.
The world is not a better place because you’ve come to church this morning. In fact, you’re not a better person because you’ve come to church this morning. Maybe, just maybe, the world will be a better place because you take your faith out into it. Maybe, just maybe, you will be a better person because God’s mercy causes you to bear fruit. But it’s not gonna happen unless you repent. You’ve got to put God’s call to you first, regardless of the difficulty.
Lent ought to feel hard. Lent ought to make you squirm in your seat. It ought to make you stare sheepishly down at your shoes and try to avoid God’s eyes. It ought to make you take out your wallet and look deeper into it, wondering where all your money goes. It ought to make you look deeper in your life, wondering where all your time goes. It ought to make you look deeper into your relationships, wondering where all your love goes. And it ought to make you change something.
Jesus’ parable declares: God is a just judge and merciful creator. The two are in balance. God doesn’t send earthquakes, or cruel Roman governors. God sends a Messiah and messages of love and resurrection. But God still has demands of us: that we bear fruit.
The New Interpreter’s Bible sums it up this way: “The lesson of the fig tree is a challenge to live each day as a gift from God. Live each day in such a way that you will have no fear of giving an account for how you have used God’s gift.” (NIB 272)
I told a colleague this week, that every sermon I’ve preached these last few months has some how been about merger. And so is this one.
A year ago, the Trailguides wrote,
Pleasant Street Congregational Church, UCC is called to
serve God by:
• Offering to our church family a deep and rich Christian life through Sunday morning worship,
fellowship, pastoral care, social action, discipleship and Christian Education, and
• Offering ourselves in service to the wider community through hospitality, social justice work
and community care.
Part of the reason we wrote down that call, which seems kind of obvious, is that we felt we weren’t doing these things, or weren’t doing them as well as we wanted to. And indeed I see our process of considering merger not just as an attempt to follow that call in the future, but also as a repentance for not having fully followed that call in the past.
Which is why I feel so strongly that any merger has to be about furthering our ability to worship God joyfully, deepen our spiritual lives, nurture our members especially our children, and serve God more fully in the world. It cannot be about sustaining ourselves as an institution. For there is no fruit there.
One more quote from Barbara Brown Taylor. “It is not a bad thing for [us] to count [our] breaths in the dark – not if it makes [us] turn toward the light. That way, whatever befalls us, we will fall the right way.”
May whatever we do, as individuals, or as a congregation, bear fruit in God’s orchard.
Amen.