3rd Sunday in Lent-Year C

The Third Sunday in Lent Year C March 24, 2019 Why do bad things happen to us and to those we love? This is a question that people of faith have been wrestling with as far back as our recorded scripture. There are things that we tell ourselves while in the midst of suffering that may help us cope with understanding this deep theological problem about the nature of God and suffering. One of these is to say, “Well, God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” I say to that, “We shall see.” Our gospel reading for today is a confusing mash up of two seemingly incompatible teachings. First, we have Jesus’ response to some who he is teaching and then we have Jesus’ further teaching in a parable about a fig tree that won’t produce. At first glance, it is hard to see how these two parts are connected. So, let’s back up and look at the whole passage. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Now, our lectionary is jumping around all over Luke at this point, and we are no longer following Jesus’ teachings on the road to Jerusalem in chronological order. This means that we haven’t heard what has happened just prior to this exchange for today. The previous chapter, chapter 12 of Luke’s gospel, is full of parables about “money, foolishness, and always being prepared.”i “[Jesus] concludes this chapter by suggesting that those listening are not just missing the point of the stories, but missing the boat altogether.”ii This may very well precipitate the exchange for today, when some of Jesus’s listeners refer to a recent event in which some Gailieans who were sacrificing in the temple were slain by Pilate’s direct order, and they ask Jesus, in essence “Why do bad things happen to people? Is their suffering their fault?” They are asking if suffering is a direct result of a person’s sinfulness. Jesus’s response is both good news and bad news: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you;” [So that sounds like good news, right? But wait.] He continues: “…but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” [Definitely bad news.] And he continues, “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? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." So, the good news is that tragedy is not a punishment for sin. But the bad news is that sometimes tragedy is a result of sin—sometimes our sin, sometimes the sins of others. Therefore, we all need to repent because all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. All of us have, at one point or another, “followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.” But I also want you to notice what Jesus does not say to them. Jesus does not say to them, “God does not give you more than you can handle.” In fact, nowhere in the New Testament or Old Testament does scripture say that “God does not give you more than you can handle.” And I’m going to digress just a bit because I love you too much to let you keep saying that because it is really bad theology, and it is not true to our understanding of God. Here is the problem with that statement. It states that it is God who is giving you whatever calamity or misfortune in your life that you are having to handle right now—whether it is illness or death of a loved one or another catastrophic event or just lots of bad things happening to you all at once. And that is not in keeping with who Jesus reveals God to be. God isn’t there doling out misfortunes to us with a scale weighing how much is just enough for us to handle and how much is going to put us over the edge. Now Jesus is clear in our gospel reading for today that the misfortune or junk that we often have to handle in our lives sometimes is the result of our own sinfulness or even the result of the sinfulness of others. (As those of us who are reading and discussing Just Mercy for Lent have seen, this even includes whole systems of sinfulness such as the oppression of poor people, the denial of justice, and systemic racism.) Jesus shows us that God is present with us—even in the worst of our sinfulness, in the worst of our misfortunes and tragedies—all the stuff that we have to bear. And Jesus shows us that God does not abandon us to that mess. Which leads us to the second part of the gospel reading for today, when Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree which is not producing, a land-owner who threatens to cut it down, and a gardener who pleads for more time so he can help the fig tree grow into its fullness and bear fruit. In our conversation about this gospel this week, our Wednesday group spoke a great deal about plants and how to help them bear fruit or bloom. Sometimes, the plants can’t flourish when left to their own devices. They need to be re-potted to have more space to grow; they need to have the soil around them dug up, turned over, to let in air and water. Sometimes they need some fertilizer. While we are more complicated than plants, we can relate to this that sometimes when something bad happens to us, that becomes the impetus for us to tend to our souls, to repent and return to the Lord. I have a number of plants in my office. One of these, I have managed to keep alive for a number of years, but the others, you all have given me since I arrived here. I’ve tried to warn these well intentioned souls that I’m not very good at keeping plants alive, but so far, I’ve done ok for the most part. Except for this one plant. (If you are plant lover, you may want to cover your ears, because this next part might disturb you.) The plant was doing very well for a while. I remembered to water it. I noticed that it had produced a couple of off-shoots and was thriving. And then one day it wasn’t. Its leaves started dying, and it was looking poorly. I would notice it occasionally and think to myself that I probably needed to re-pot it to give it more space, but then I would forget about it again. The other day, I realized that I hadn’t watered the plant in a long time, and it was looking really bad, so I took it to the sink, and I was horrified! As I started to water it, the whole big, main part of the plant (what was actually the original plant) just broke off in my hand. Now, it seems like that would be really bad for a plant, but there is a part of my plant-ignorant soul that can’t help but wonder if maybe this seeming disaster couldn’t be a good, helpful thing because it will give the new growth more space to grow and thrive. What does all this have to do with Jesus’s parable of the fig tree, you may wonder? I think it all gets to the heart of the question of where is God in our suffering? Another preacher points out that it is a mistake to hear Jesus’s parable and read that God is the harsh land-owner. All portrayals of God in Luke’s gospel suggest that it is more likely that God is the gardener, lovingly tending and willing to work to help the tree thrive and bear fruit.iii Our collect for this week reminds us that we know that “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves” and as a result, we ask God to “keep us.” Keep us, like a plant in need of tending. This past Wednesday night, our whole health study group was given the assignment to practice non-judgment this week. Here is a portion of that teaching: “When we begin practicing paying attention to the activity of our own mind, it is common to discover and to be surprised by the fact that we are constantly generating judgments about our experience. These judgments tend to dominate our minds, making it difficult for us ever to find any peace within ourselves…” One thing we can do “is to be aware of the automatic judgments so that we can see through our own prejudices and fears and liberate ourselves from their tyranny.” Your invitation for this week is to pay attention to the judgements that your mind generates about yourself and about others people and situations. When you encounter something that disturbs you, pay attention to those dead or languishing plants this unearths in your soul. (As I have become more aware and attentive in the last few days of times when I am making a judgement about myself or someone else, I have imagined the top of that plant coming off in my hand.) So, pay attention to those dead and languishing plants this practice unearths in your soul, and then offer those to God’s care and keeping as a part of the discipline of Lenten repentance. i. David Lose’s blog post When Bad Things Happen. Feb 27, 2013: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2461 ii. ibid iii. Ibid