Lent 3C, March 24, 2019
Ex 3:1-8a,13-15; 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9
Brookdale
So, is God our loving and compassionate father? Or is he our judge, who will punish us for our sins?
In the first reading, God calls Moses to rescue the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. He wants the Israelites to be free and will give Moses the power to help them. In the second reading, we hear that many of the Israelites were later struck down by God in the desert, because they desired evil things, or took God for granted and groused that he wasn’t taking good enough care of them. Saint Paul tells us that even though God loves us and wants us to be free and fulfilled, we can’t just do whatever we please and presume on his friendship and forgiveness.
In the Gospel passage, Jesus responds to some people who are talking about recent calamities. They mention that Pilate has had some Galileans killed while they were in the act of sacrificing to God. When such things happen, we often hear, “Where was God? Why didn’t he stop that?” In biblical times, it was more common for people to ask, “What terrible thing did they do, that God punished them like that?” These responses are even more common when people die because of a natural disaster or some fluke, such as the tower of Siloam falling on some people in Jerusalem.
Jesus isn’t interested in complaining about how awful Pilate is—though his brutality and disdain for local religion are well documented outside of the Christian scriptures. He’s not interested in complaining because the tower fell down. He is not interested in blaming the victims or blaming Pilate, or blaming God. For Jesus, this is a wake-up call: don’t put off repentance. The time to repent is NOW.
But repentance means a lot more than beating your breast and saying how sorry you are for your sins. Repentance in the scriptures means to turn back to God and look at everything in a new way. Jesus is calling on his followers—that’s us—to see things as God sees them. It’s time for us to stop worrying so much about money, clothes, and taxes, or about being in the right, and start thinking more about how we can do something beautiful for God. Maybe a small thing like smiling at someone who is alone, maybe a big one like making peace with a difficult family member.
For Jesus, the time to repent is NOW. Jesus tells the story of the fig tree’s reprieve. A fig tree is supposed to give figs, but this tree has been sitting barren for three years. So the owner of the orchard tells his gardener that the fig tree is a waste of space. He should get rid of it and plant something useful. But the gardener argues that maybe the fig tree can do better if it has another chance.
I can relate to this parable. My husband and I have a garden, and in this garden my husband planted an asparagus bed. It’s hard work to plant asparagus, since you have to prepare the soil very far down. Asparagus is a perennial and can live for many years, but we noticed that our asparagus bed was producing less and less each year, until it produced no usable spears. The beetles were eating the leaves, and weeds hid among the roots. We thought of digging it up and starting a new bed in a different part of the garden, but my husband (who would have to prepare the new bed) argued for giving the asparagus a reprieve. He fertilized it heavily, and we kept after the weeds and the asparagus beetles, and sure enough, the asparagus repented. A year later the bed started to produce nice fat asparagus spears.
Good things happen to not-so-good people. If we’ve lived this long, we’ve probably gotten many reprieves in our lives. God has given us many chances to bear fruit for the kingdom of God. And this Lent is another one. That’s what Lent is about. Now is the acceptable time to change our hearts and minds and to start living in trust, hope, and love.
Eventually, whatever doesn’t produce will be written off. But meanwhile, we can take advantage of the reprieve that God has given us and do something beautiful for God.