The Audio Link and Manuscript for my Sermon from Sunday, March 07, 2010

Here's the Link to the Audio File for the live recording of my sermon, as delivered, on Sunday, March 7th.  The link will be followed by the manuscript I worked from. 


http://www.box.net/shared/fovcsaamk0



The Third Sunday in Lent; March 07, 2010
Park Avenue Presbyterian Church; Des Moines, Iowa
Texts: Isaiah 55: 1-9
Psalm 63: 1-8
1 Corinthians 10: 1-13
Luke 13: 1-9 *

“It's Not Too Late to Get the Manure on Your Shoes?”

--} Lent is a time when the Church turns toward Jesus’ death—not resurrection, DEATH. The old wisdom is: “you can’t have an Easter resurrection without a death”—so, we walk with Jesus toward his death. And let’s face it, that just “feels” weird.

Death almost always makes us uncomfortable—especially unusual circumstances. One of my Facebook friends, a seminary colleague, a pastor in Houston, posted this earlier this week:

Visited a friend of a friend in hospital... This young couple's son, age 14, is slowly suffocating due to rejection of a lung transplant. No hope for survival. They are hoping for a swift and painless death because that's the best they can hope for.

Last year they lost their other son, age 16. He had cystic fibrosis and went septic after a visit to Universal Studios in Orlando and died in the car in his mother's arms on the drive home. The mother is 40 years old. GOD help her and her husband and their son who's dying. Keep them in prayer.

Death bothers us so much, that we Americans cling to life as if any kind of death were bad. We even try and legislate for it, or often find ourselves labeling it, “a shame,” or “a tragedy”—perhaps like some of the people coming to Jesus. Stanley Hauerwas, a well known Christian ethicist and theologian says that if most Americans were asked to name the purpose of life, we would answer, “the purpose of life is not to die.” [Really?]

Yet Christian doctrine, like Jesus in our gospel lesson, has an emphatic corrective. Commentator Ralph Wood asserts:

“Christians… believe that we have come from and that we will return to the God of Jesus Christ. Our central conviction, therefore, is that the purpose of life is indeed TO DIE—faithfully, graciously, perhaps even in martyrdom—so as to indicate that God’s kingdom is indeed our reason for living.”

I take it that he means our “reason for life” isn’t captured only in being with family and friends, that it isn’t simply a desire to live longer, or to give up or throw away our lives easily, but that we would be intentional about living out our FAITH that says, “we belong to God.” Not tragically, not shamefully.

Luke’s gospel reports that when Jesus is told about the “Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices,” Jesus throws back at them a longstanding question about life and death:

“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? …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?”

Jesus acts as if people were asking “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” or more pointedly, trying to answer the question about the relationship between one’s sinfulness and personal accountability. In searching for the “reason” someone dies, too often we think people must have done something wrong to cause God to get mad at them.

This presumption has led Pat Robertson and other irresponsible Christians to conclude that the Haitian earthquake was the result of some “deal made with the devil,” or that New Orleans—for its well-known parlors of iniquity—brought on itself the destruction of Hurricane Katrina or that Chilé must have done something even more self-destructive in earning God’s wrath. In response to all such proclamations hear the voice of God in Jesus answering with an emphatic: “NO!!!!!” For us, Jesus forever breaks the link between sinful behavior and supernatural consequences. Life and death ARE NOT related to sinfulness. Sinning more or less does not effect one’s chances for premature death or survival of tragic happenings. We cannot and must not presume that particularly moral or righteous behavior is rewarded by less tragedy or that less righteousness earns more wrath. After all, the central story of Christian faith is that a sinless Jesus suffers and dies because of the sins of others. Humans beware! Sinfulness alone doesn’t keep people out of the kingdom of God. [Thank goodness!]

What Jesus does say, however, is that unless we experience metanoia, we can never leave death behind. Metanoia is the Greek word which is often translated in this passage as “repent,” but the word literally means to turn, or to turn around—“to change one’s mind,” or perhaps even better, “to have a change of heart.” “Repentance” is a loaded term implying for me some kind of sinfulness has occurred. I think what Jesus is saying, to break the link between sin and death, is that unless our hearts are changed, we can’t leave death behind. And here, Jesus offers us a 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?’ [The gardener] 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.’ ”

Notice in the parable that change was expected, but not achieved; but also, that the tree was not without an advocate. Advocating for a change, the gardener proposes a kind of intervention—that judgment be suspended until such time as the roots could be dug around and manure applied. Even despite no apparent change in 3 seasons, the possibility of fruitfulness yet remains. It would seem that every opportunity might be given for the desired change to occur before judgment is rendered.

Many commentators suggest these stories are meant to emphasize that the “time” is short, that Jesus is declaring something like, “repent, before it’s too late!” But to me, there’s a difference between saying, “repent before it’s too late,” and “it’s not too late to have your minds changed,” or “it’s not too late to start bearing fruit.” After all, it seems to me that the Jesus is saying as well, “the ‘gardener,’ the ‘advocate’ is with you to help enable your fruitfulness—prepare to receive the manure.

The difference between Jesus demanding a change of heart that I have to accomplish for myself and Jesus who declares a change of heart is necessary and that he stands ready to help bring it into being—is huge. The one results easily in the attitude, “well, I guess the Haitians or the Chileans didn’t change their ways, or they wouldn’t have suffered God’s judgment.” The other possibility, that of Jesus standing ready to help us, means that we can “be changed” by our relationship with Christ. Jesus, breaking the link between sin and death, is the shovel-er of manure for our sake—declaring for us, “it’s not too late to bear fruit.” The one providing the manure to “feed” the tree and its produce is the same one who becomes our bread, that we too might be nourish and bear fruit. Or could it be as well, Jesus reminding us that we, too, have hands and tools and can help others by helping to dig and shoveling manure for them, too.

About that manure… one of my other Facebook pastor-friends shared some thoughts recently about our relationship to God in light of the things that can happen to us. He wrote:

As pastors, my wife and I live in a church “manse,” a house owned by the church in which the pastor lives while serving that congregation. Ours is a beautiful old 3-story home, built in 1872. In between the church and the house is an equally historic cemetery. The well-groomed cemetery is separated from the house by a hillside that is covered with trees and brush and is home to a family of deer during the summer and foxes and squirrels and groundhogs the whole year long.

I’ve decided that if these woodland creatures have any concept of a higher power, it is probably similar to that of many Christians. That holds especially true of the squirrels. Knowing that we have so many animals living right next to our house, we often toss bits of fruits or vegetables or breads up on the hillside, instead of throwing them away. When our Halloween pumpkins are done, we toss them on the hill; if grapes, apples or oranges start to spoil, they get tossed on the hill. Stale cookies or bread, up they go to the hill. And in a very short while, you’ll see the squirrels appear from everywhere, gathering food as quickly as it was tossed on the hillside.

There’s one other thing that ends up on the hillside – dog poop. We have two dogs, a Black Lab and a small dog of indeterminate breeding. They generate the usual amount of dog poop and, having grown up in farm country in the Midwest, I tend to just scoop it up out of the yard and toss it back into nature – right there on the hillside. So I imagine that the squirrels must think there is some deity out there, sometimes tossing gifts of fruit and vegetables and at other times, throwing some poop into their lives. Do they wonder what they’ve done to deserve either? Do the squirrels wonder what they’ve done wrong when the poop starts to fly? Do they reflect on what they could have done better so that the “God of the hillside” wouldn’t poop on them? When the fruit and vegetables come raining down, do they congratulate themselves, thinking they’ve finally lived the kind of “squirrel life” they were supposed to?

Or maybe the squirrels say to themselves, “Well, I don’t know where this poop is coming from, but it must be part of God’s plan for us. The poop is being thrown at us to test us. God surely won’t give us more poop than we can handle.” Does any of this sound familiar? I’m really not making fun of people’s faith, but I do have to wonder what we base some of our beliefs on – maybe nothing more than some random instances of gifts and poop. After all, sometimes “poop” happens – all on its own, not God-sent.  [My thanks to Rev. Mitch Trigger who share this story about his own experience and observations.] 

Perhaps it is important that we Christians say as boldly as we can that God loves us so much, that God takes every opportunity to provide the metanoia—the change of heart—that is necessary for us to live with the vision of the Kingdom of God, and not be caught up in the suppositions of the world. There is no way to insure ourselves of better things or longer life by avoiding sin. The truth is that even with all the manure and careful digging, the tree cannot live forever. Jesus doesn’t say that by living a more moral or fruitful life, we somehow avoid dying. Even if it isn’t cut down, but bears fruit, the tree eventually will die—so did Jesus, and so do we.

The difference is what we believe about God; and what we believe about death.



--+ AMEN.