re-Turn

This sermon was heard on Sunday March 7, 2010, the 3rd Sunday in Lent.

Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

A good friend of mine strongly believes that whenever we study scripture, new things open to us that had escaped us in the past. He never speculates why, I figure there are many reasons. Maybe sometimes there is something else in the passage that caught our eye in the past, so there is still a morsel on the bone waiting to be devoured when we read it again. Maybe we think we understand it, but then something happens which makes us reconsider our earlier reading. Maybe it’s something that just seemed so obvious in the past that there is new meaning in the present.

Well, I had one of those epiphanies over our gospel reading.

Verse five reads, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” Suddenly I’m reading this and wondering just what in the world that means, “Just as they did.” In reading other translations, this distinction isn’t as obvious. It’s tempting to go with a simpler translation, treating the issue like an ostrich with its head in the sand, and ignoring it; but that’s not what we’re called to do. So what does it mean?

Let’s begin with looking at the Galileans and the eighteen killed at Siloam and see what’s so special about them. We come to this question at a disadvantage; because these stories don’t exist anywhere else in scripture. These events in Luke’s narrative are described nowhere else. The only things we know about these events is what we can gauge from Luke’s description and a little background knowledge.

The Galileans were killed with their sacrifices. While Luke’s gospel is silent on this issue, the others speak of Jesus cleansing the temple, toppling the tables of the money changers, and scattering the livestock. The reason for the money changers and the livestock at the temple was to provide animals for sacrifice and a way to purchase them. It would have been very difficult for anyone to bring livestock flawless and worthy of sacrifice from home to the temple, so enterprising entrepreneurs set up a market so that sacrifices could be purchased once people reached the temple.

This knowledge allows us to be quite certain that the blood of the Galileans that was spilled and mingled with their sacrifices did not take place in Jerusalem’s countryside; it took place at the temple. So the Galileans are more than simple victims of Pilate’s brutality. They are martyrs to the petty anger of a despot in the courtyard of the temple, in the front of the holiest place in Judaism.

So who were the eighteen killed at Siloam? The tower of Siloam was most probably at a corner of the great wall of Jerusalem by the pool of Siloam. It is to this pool that Jesus will send the blind man of John 9 to wash after the Lord restores his sight.

There is nothing particularly special about this pool. There is nothing particularly special about a tower falling. There is something particularly horrible about the death of eighteen people at this pool when the tower falls, but it certainly isn’t the same sort of death faced by the martyrs from Galilee. Perhaps they were doing their ritual cleansing; preparing to enter the temple, but that would be speculation.

On one hand we have the victims of a brutal dictator and on the other victims of a construction accident. What in the world is the connection between these two? Why is Jesus using these two examples warning us that we may perish “just as they did”?

Surely the greatest truth is that these victims are all sinful people, exactly like us. They were taking care of business. They were going to church, taking a bath, cleaning the house, dropping off the kids at practice. They were doing what made their lives not so different from ours. One group died while approaching the temple to worship the Lord becoming religious and political martyrs. The others were victims of an engineering failure as horrid as the I-35 bridge collapse in the twin cities a few years ago. It seems that the only thing that connects them is their humanity, their status as the Children of Adam.

This is one thing that makes us different from them. We too are the Children of Adam, and we are the Children of Christ. We have an opportunity these victims did not have, we can share in a life in Christ, a life in the resurrection that they could not.

Christ calls us to participate in His holy work, the work of reconciliation of all creation. We are called to prepare our very beings through confession. Bending our selves to the ways of the Lord we become able to bear fruit through the Lord our God. Joyfully, the parable that follows helps reveal truth vital to our ability to bear good fruit, the fruit of the Spirit.

We read of a landowner who had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. There are some things that we need to remember about these ancient landowners. They were very rich men. They were men with the power to do as they wished with their land and their people. This isn’t so different from rich men in every time and place.

Too, many landowners were absent from their lands much of the year. These farms tended to be kept by lease holders, share croppers of a sort. This is not so different from what we know in our age of corporately owned farms. Perhaps the only difference in the last 2,000 years is the speed of communication and the quality of information between the farmer and the landowner.

Landowners are the Lords of the Manor and Lords of the Lands. Their whims could move worlds, their fancies could change lives. Their eyes on the bottom line can move jobs overseas and their accounting can ruin the retirement funds for thousands of workers.

There is a hired gardener in this story too. The gardener is like the lessee or the share cropper. This is the one who tends the vines and the trees. This is the one who knows the soils and the plants and cares for all of the matters of the Master’s land. Again, this person is not so different from many who work the land in every time and place.

If the gardener seems like a simple person, it is only because the wisdom this person carries is so old and without nonsense that all pretense has washed away and all that remains is plain and simple truth. These basic truths haven’t changed in 2,000 years, but there is an even deeper understanding of the truth that comes with time and revelation.

These are the working farmers. These are the folks who tend the land. Their whims can’t move a dry pea across the hard ground; but by their work, what to some looks like arid land can bear great fruit. These are the people who carry the torch and till the land. These are the people who bring in the crop and present it to the landowner.

Erich Auerbach, a German Jewish scholar who immigrated from Germany to Turkey and then the United States before World War II wrote, “God’s grace is infinite, but so also is God’s justice, and one does not negate the other.”[1] The Lord God Almighty will come as the landowner to judge the fruit of our labor. Should our lives not bear fruit, then God’s judgment will be upon us.

In the same hand comes the Lord God Almighty tends and sustains us as the farmer tills the land. The same Lord will tend the soil and provide the best possible conditions for us to thrive. And as in the end of this parable, this graceful farmer also reminds us that judgment is upon us. If we bear no fruit, we will be cut down and our only use will be as kindling for the fire.

It’s not so much a question of whether or not we will be judged, because we will be judged. The question is how we will be judged by the Lord our God; and as we see through this reading we will be judged in the same way as the fig tree, by the fruit we bear, in our case the fruit of the Spirit. As the tree, to be able to produce good fruit, we must be willing to be humbled by our lord. The gardener works hard to prepare the soil around the tree, but the tree will have to bear the indignity, if you will, of being prepared.

The tree will have the soil around the roots prepared. This will involve shovel and spade. There will be digging around the tender roots of what makes us what we are to make it so we can grow. This digging will be too close for comfort. There is bound to be some times when the shovel will nick a root or worse, causing what we might think an irreparable scar. Still, the gardener knows how to work the soil. The gardener knows how to prepare us to get the best results.

Then the gardener will give us the best food so that we may provide the best fruit. This sounds wonderful when we read it like this, “the best food…” This is when we get to remember that in this parable the best food is manure. Yes, in order to provide the best fruit we have to be humble enough to be covered in the part of beef that’s not for dinner. We want to receive the best of all things from the Lord, we hear of the feast at the table of God; and in this case the best of what we can receive what comes from beyond the hindquarters of livestock.

In the words of the German worship and liturgy author Rudolf Peil: “The gospels that prepare for Lent indicate the springtime labor that must be done in the vineyard of the soul. The soul must be harrowed by penance and contrition in order that the divine seed of the holy season of Lent may bring forth an abundant harvest.”[2]

In this Lenten season, we travel with Jesus from the countryside to the temple to the cross and to new life. Only by this special revelation, only in the words and works of the Christ are we able to repent in ways the victims of Luke’s tragedies only prayed to know. Only in the words and works of Christ can we repent in ways that the world around us seeks, wishes, and needs to know. Only by Christ in this life and in the life to come do we know eternal life.

This repentance, spoken of so gloriously in the words of the prophet Isaiah, made real in the person and work of Jesus Christ, this repentance turns us to be able to bear good fruit. Yet it is not enough that we turn once and forever to the word of God written, proclaimed, and incarnate. As my friend pointed out, the Word of God is made new everyday. Our Redeemer lives and His revelation is not dead either. So let us not simply turn to God, let us return again and again to the signs and sacraments of our faith in Christ everlasting.

Other Resource:
“Feasting on the Word, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary.” Edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Year C, Volume 2. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, pages 92-97.

[1] Auerbach, Erich, “Dante, Poet of the Secular World.” Translated by Ralph Manheim. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
[2] Peil, Rudolf, “A Handbook of the Liturgy.” Translated by H. E. Winstone. New York: The Crossroad/Continuum Publishing Company with permission of Herder and Herder, 1960.