Debbie
Cato
Isaiah
55:1-9 & Luke 13:1-9
The
Way of the Cross –Week 3
Peace
Presbyterian Church
March
8, 2015
“The
Fruit of Repentance”
There
is a lot of pain and suffering in the world. Some people say that we
are living in dark times. Turn on the TV news or pick up a newspaper
on any given day in any given week and you will find a report on some
horrific tragedy somewhere in the world.
On
February 13th
of last year, the Washington Post reported that in the first six
weeks of 2014
alone,
there were 13 school
shootings including
one eight-day period in which there were four shootings. 2014
included a school shooting right here in Oregon.1
March
8th
– a year ago today, Malaysian flight 370 disappeared. It just
disappeared. 227 individuals from multiple countries and 12 crew
members were lost.2
The families still do not have answers. Then in July – another
Malaysian jet went down and everyone on board that jet died.
There
was the kidnapping of nearly 300 Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram.
300 girls.3
Fighting and upheaval in Ukraine
and Syria and so many other places around the world. Tremendous
natural disasters all over the world – including here in the United
States.
Left
unreported by news crews, are the larger but somehow less visible and
dramatic tragedies; like 30,000 children who died this past Wednesday
of hunger, roughly the same number who died somewhere on our planet
on Tuesday and Thursday and every other day too, every day of the
year. In every one of those deaths, families and loved ones grieved…
in every single one. And at some level, every one of those grieving
people probably asked the same question: “Why?”
It doesn’t seem fair. What had any of those people – any of
those children
done to deserve such tragic deaths?
In
Jesus’ day, there was no question about fairness. The assumption
was that disease, suffering, and death bore a direct correlation with
human sinfulness: the greater the sin, the more likely the
misfortune. And to some degree, whether we want to admit it or not,
we still think this way.
Think
back to 2010. On January 12th, a catastrophic earthquake struck the
country of Haiti. An
estimated three million people were affected by the quake. The
Haitian government reported that over 200,000 people died, another
300,000 people injured, and an estimated 1,000,000 people were
homeless. Thousands
and thousands of children are now orphans as a result of the quake.
It
was estimated that some 250,000 homes and 30,000 commercial buildings
collapsed
or were severely damaged.4
The
very next day, January 13th,
famous televangelist Pat Robertson – a Christian mind you, said on
public TV that “the deadly Haitian earthquake is God’s vengeance
for a pact Haitians swore to the devil.” He went on to say that
“Haiti has
to
endure hardships due to God’s vengeance.”5
It takes my breath away that anyone would say this.
But,
we really aren’t that different! Just as in Jesus day, too often
we presume that bad things happen to bad people and good people only
receive blessing upon blessing. Tragic accidents, massacres and any
other suffering must have a cause that lies in the people who suffer
the event. They must have drawn it to themselves! It must be their
fault. You get what you deserve. Suffering must mean that you are
bad; otherwise, God would rescue you. By blaming the victims, we are
able to disassociate ourselves – separate ourselves from those that
are suffering by claiming that we are less sinful than they. When we
can blame others,
we feel safe from similar troubles somehow. We find comfort in being
able to logically explain such tragedies by pointing the finger at
others. We separate ourselves from those that suffer. It’s the
“us/them” mentality.
And
when calamity strikes us, as it surely does, we wonder what we did
wrong. We hunt for some cause in hopes that we can change what we
are doing and stop what-ever has gone (or is going) wrong. We
scrutinize our behavior, our relationships, our diets, our beliefs.
What we crave, above all, is control over the chaos in our lives.
Some logical explanation.
Jesus
exposes the error of this kind of thinking while at the same time
driving home the point that life is uncertain, death is unpredictable
and judgment is inevitable. It’s
as if Jesus is saying, “You can’t go around making statements
about deeply mysterious tragedies of life, as if you somehow know how
these things work!” There are things that only God understands.
He
says, stop trying to figure out why things happen and just focus on
God. Rather than putting effort and energy into explaining and
rationalizing why things happen – put your effort and energy into
bearing fruit for God’s kingdom. The reason bad things happen
isn’t important. “You are all sinners,” Jesus says. “Repent
or you will all perish!”
To
drive his point home, Jesus tells the parable about the fig tree.
It’s a parable about a landowner who expects his fig tree to bear
fruit. The sequence is logical and simple – plant a fig tree,
expect fruit and if after three seasons the tree bears no fruit, get
rid of it. Land is precious, and an unfruitful tree cannot be
allowed to use resources that could nourish a fruitful one.
But
the gardener intercedes on behalf of the tree and pleads for a
one-year clemency against the logical decision of the landowner.
Give it another chance! “Maybe there is a mystery at work here
that you and I don’t understand,” he says. “Let me feed and
mulch and fertilize the tree and if there is still no fruit next
year, go ahead and chop it down. But I’m willing to shovel manure
for a year to give it a
chance to bear fruit. Please, give it one more chance.
This
parable is a reminder of the need for “everyone” to repent. Not
just “those”…. (Terrible, worst-of-a-kind, good-for-nothing,
you-name-them, fill-in-the
blank, anyone-but-us), “sinners”. The fact is that we are all
sinners. We are all in need of repentance. We are all deserving of
punishment. But, as amazing as it is, we are all protected from the
wrath of God – at least until judgment day – purely by his mercy.
Jesus
firmly rejects the possibility that we are holier than the victims of
troubles and tragedies. He reminds us that we are all equally human,
equally in need of repentance, and will equally stand before the
judgment of God. Repentance is necessary for every single one of us.
It is the obligation of every person to live in penitence and trust
before God, without linking our loyalty to God to life’s sorrows or
joys. All are to repent or perish.
God
is the judge of our behavior and yet God offers to each one of us the
opportunity for repentance. Attending to our relationship to God is
a matter of most urgent business – the most urgent business we
have. God is patient and merciful with a fig tree that has yet to
bear fruit, but we cannot take God’s patience for granted. While
God is long-suffering, God is still the judge of all. We must avoid
self-assurance or self-righteousness in our dealings with God. For
the standard of judgment God uses is not the standard we use.
Jesus
did more than shovel manure for us. He died on the cross for our
sins. It was God’s mercy, demonstrated on the cross that gave us
another chance. God expects that the forgiveness we receive – over
and over again, will result in changed behaviors. Repentance
involves more than a radical renunciation of sin in hope of
forgiveness. It is a complete rejection of our former way of life.
The
message of Jesus’ teaching and the parable of the fig tree that
follows are relatively simple: “I tell you; but unless you repent”
is a call to change. At
the very root, repentance means a conversion of the heart and mind.
It doesn’t mean
being filled and tormented by guilt. Instead, it means being ready to
admit our responsibility
for our actions and our need for forgiveness, and have a firm desire
to change our life: to turn away from ourselves in prayer and in
love. Repentance means,
above all, a constant, patient, growing in love. It means our
willingness to open
ourselves to the work of the Spirit in us and to embrace fully the
gift of our salvation.6
It means to bear fruit for God’s kingdom.
The
parable of the fruitless fig tree is symbolic. God’s expectations
are that His people will be fruitful and productive. Fruitful through right
living; fruitful through our loving and forgiving of others;
fruitful living in our witness; fruitful living through our acts;
fruitful living in how we spend our time and our resources. Fruitful
living is using the gifts God has given us to be his light in our
lives, in our community, and in the world. We
all have to be willing to bear kingdom fruit otherwise the end –
and its implied judgment, will overtake us unaware – as it did the
Galileans and the people upon whom the tower fell.
Disaster
can happen to anyone of us at anytime. Few of us know when our life
here on earth will end. However and whenever our own life ends, it
is the end of our opportunity to bear fruit for God’s kingdom and
the time when our finished life is laid open before the Judge’s
eyes. He will divide those whose minds were centered on the things
of this life from all whose treasure was in heaven. This future
coming is both certain and final. From the judgment of that day
there will be no appeal. Unspoken but implied in this parable is the
urgent appeal to heed the lessons of the Gospel. There lies ahead –
for every single person – a final encounter with Jesus the judge.
We must come to seek God in penitence and emptiness and God will then
come to meet us in salvation and blessing.
Terrible
things happen, and you are not always to blame. We don’t have that
much power over the universe! But don’t let that stop you from
doing what you are doing. That torn place your fear has opened up
inside of you is a holy place. Look around while you are there. Pay
attention to what you feel. It may hurt you to
stay there and it may hurt you to see, but it is not the kind of hurt
that leads to death.
It is the kind of hurt that leads to life. We can trust God’s
presence with us even though the ground is moving and collapsing
around us, even when we feel so overwhelmed it seems as though we are
drowning. God’s loving presence leads
us through the darkest days and nights, “even when there are no
answers.”
What
would you do if you had only one year left to live, only a short time
in which to make up for wrongs done and opportunities missed? How
important that year would be! Who would you apologize to? What
relationships would you heal? How would you express your love or
spend your time or spend your money? The lesson of the fig tree is a
challenge to live each day as a gift from God; each day as if it’s
your last and each day as if you are about to be judged for the final
time.
Live
each day in such a way that you will have no fear of giving an
account for how you have used God’s gifts. Each day, ask yourself,
“How is God calling me to live right now? What fruit am I bearing
for God’s kingdom?” You have but a short time to prepare for the
judgment by heeding the teachings of Jesus. If you do not use the
time that remains to be fruitful, you may be cut down like the fig
tree. Will
we heed these lessons or not? This is the question. This is the
judgment.
Let
us pray: Gracious
and Loving God, Your forgiveness is unshakable. Thank you for never
seeking to find fault in us, yet always going before us and getting
our attention with your gracious way. Thank you for forgiving us
when we humble ourselves before you and turn our attention to your
good purposes. God, you are good all the time. Help us to use our
repentance and your forgiveness to produce good fruit in our lives,
in our church, and in your kingdom. In your Son’s holy name we
pray. Amen.
1http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/13/at-least-44-school-shootings-since-newtown-new-analysis/
2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370
3http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/world/with-schoolgirls-still-missing-fragile-us-nigeria-ties-falter.html?_r=0
4Wikipedia.
5
700 Club, January 13, 2010 at 10:55 a.m.
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