sermon on luke 13 - lent week 3

Luke 13: 1-9 [those listening to Jesus told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices and Jesus responded, "Do you think they were worse sinners than all who live in Galilee? No. I tell you that unless you repent, you will likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower of Siloam fell: were they worse sinners than any in Jerusalem? No. But I tell you, unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
Then he tells a story about a fig tree that hasn't borne fruit. A man says, I've looked for figs on this tree every year for three years and it's fruitless. Cut it down. Why is it wasting the soil?
To which the overseer responds, let me dig around the roots and add manure. Give it another year and if it still is fruitless, then cut it down.]

For several chapters now Jesus has been, as it were, in discussion. Answering questions and telling stories. For this incident and the parable attached to it in today's text, I want us to bear in mind something Jesus said earlier, in chapter 11: He said that the Lawyers - think religious, social and political authorities - have the key to the kingdom of God, but they don't go in, and they get in the way of anyone who might try. They know God is abundant in loving kindness and generous with possessions - this information is all over the Psalms and prophets. They know this - but they don't know what to do with it; and when they see others trying to do something with it, they yell at them: "put the Law down - it's very fragile and you'll break it!"
These authorities are the misers of the kindgom.

It's a commonplace to say that every parable is about the kingdom of God. This being so, we must understand this when hearing texts like the one today: Jesus has and is the key to the kingdom of God. He not only has, but shows, and he invites others in. He goes into the kingdom himself and brings us in with him. He is unlike the authorities. He doesn't hoard knowledge - he doesn't hoard anything.

The prophets are full of descriptions of God's abundance. Come eat, come drink - there is no charge, no forms to fill out. In other places Jesus describes a great feast where the difficulty is finding diners to eat it. You would think there were no hungry people in the world from that story - but we know the opposite is the case.

What is this here, where the very thing people want, when it's offered to them - they hold back, they stay away? The God we claim we want to know and love - we stay away from.. All through these chapters including our text fro today, Jesus is saying, "what they won't give you, I'm giving you right here, right now."
Now ---------- Here ----------claims which people struggled with then, and I suppose advertising has made even more difficult for us to believe today. We fear Jesus is too good to be true.

It is possible after all that the authorities are not misers of the kingdom out of meanness - but more out of fear. The world with its pressing immediacy, its real politik, shouts back at the message of the kingdom that it won't work. So these authorities have been muddling through - holding back, standing in the way. This is how things are done. They cannot imagine another way - so they live this way - they live out of habit. They do not enter the kingdom - out of habit. And the people do not complain - out of habit. People are bound by all kinds of things: sin, despair, poverty, hatred, anger, fear, and significantly, habit. So that when people ask Jesus this question here in Luke 13, about Pilate and the Galileans he killed, their question reflects a habit of thought: Bad death must equal bad sin. And it reflects a habit of conversation: let's not talk about ourselves - let's talk about others.

When we enter the kingdom, we'll have to leave our habits behind. Think about how much we do is habit - habits of thought and speech and action - that are never examined or questioned. Well they work - we might say. They work well at keeping us where we are - going the way we are going.

Consider Jesus' response: Bad deaths and good deaths are not a commentary on a person's life. And then he say's "unless you repent, you'll likewise perish." The irony in this statement on the surface is that we are going to perish no matter what. So what can he mean by this? That we'll perish by habit. Over time our patterns of thought and behavior are hardwired to our emotions and ingrained such that we cannot see God's kingdom - even when it is present, right in front of us.

Jesus himself is that kingdom. Even as he is in front of them, speaking with them - the training of habit causes them to see only a  man like themselves.The nature of their question shows that they've taken the habit of imagining God to be a force to be manipulated - a deity whose only concern is keeping score. By habit they've become blind to the testimony of scripture: God's generosity; God's abundance, God's covenant - the bond in creation of God's solidarity with all humanity. Humanity falls, again and again, and God doesn't hesitate to cloth nakedness, to heal broken hearts, to bring from exile, to restore to life.

Isaiah invites those without money to come buy and eat, and questions why we purchase what is not bread. Amos testifies to a world where seed time and harvest overlap. Jonah discovers God wold rather forgive than destroy. Job takes a stand that Karma doesn't exist - and God vindicates him.If this is the kingdom that Jesus' hearers heard about in the synagogue, and they most certainly had, then what does their life testify to? The habit of not seeing, not hearing, the kingdom. When God comes and dwells among us - coming not to judge but to save - what habits have blinded us to his presence and deafened us to his voice?

Karl Barth wrote that we easily err in believing that we act alone while God is far off - merely watching - as if our salvation were to be our own doing; and that we fall into the habit of seeing Christ as one thing among others, and not The the that is above all else.

Is it not that we are in the habit of aiming low, avoiding pain, indulging and starving our appetites and dreams as opportunity demands or affords. We may say we hear - we've known since we were children, yet when the time comes and the Lord is standing before us - and this is our chance! Asking us about ourselves, talking with us about our lives - we change the subject to current events: "How about that Pilate?" "How about that unsafe tower?"

When we see Jesus talking with people - he stays on the subject. With a woman at a well, he goes into the details of her life story. Do we suppose that was comfortable? At the beginning of John's gospel he tells Nathaniel, "I saw you under the fig tree," and it unsettles Nathaniel. Jesus seems very eager to talk to us - you and me - specifically about you to you and me to me. "What about those Galileans?" "Well I'll talk with them later, right right now - about you." Ourselves is the last thing we want to talk about - so much easier to talk about him or her - what a mess their life is! How stupid they are! They believe that! They did that! Look at their children!

Consider this fig tree, for instance. Two trees in the gospels: fig trees and mustard trees. Mustard trees grow from tiny seeds and wind up supporting the ecosystem as a hostel for birds. Their faith is that they simply grow up to be what they are. Fig trees, on the other hand, always seem to be barren. Life's tough for the fruitless fig tree.

This fig tree in the story, listening in on this conversation, has got to be scared. The handwriting is on the wall for brother fig tree - but with a reprieve. In the fig tree's place, if we're honest with ourselves, we are afraid of what Jesus might say to us. How easy if in his grace he receded into a corner and let us get on with our lives. But if in his grace he didn't recede - and he doesn't recede - but looms larger and larger until he takes up the whole center.
If he started digging around our tender roots. What might he find? What might he do? We would rather talk about anything else - but he doesn't change the subject.

Up to this point, for three years, the fig tree's had an easy life. It has grown comfortable - it has its habits. It is happy in its soil. Talking with it about fruit or the lack of fruit is difficult. It has a sister fig tree who does quite well. Fig tree's father cast a long shadow. All told, fig tree's orchard is quite prosperous.

But about you fig tree - let's talk about you. And then silence, a looking at the ground and shifting of the feet. Perhaps a tear. We may want to judge the fig tree, but we can't. Indeed, help, not judgment, is what's offered. What a relief that must be like.

This is the key to the kingdom. The key the authorities won't use or let anyone else us. That the burden of our lives, a burden brought on by loss and disappointment - that makes a grief so great - that we think we've succeeded when we've numbed ourselves to it. And our habits help us achieve that numbness. This is what Jesus talks to us about: not our judgment but our healing. This lack of fruit, for some a cause of shame; grief for the fruitless one. God offers not to change the subject. The healing of time. Time to rediscover creativity and fruitfulness. Time to cast off the habits that we think protect us - habits that really bury us.

Jesus comes to make us new men and women - people freed from an old way of seeing - who are refreshed in imagination. Who see not scarcity but abundance. Unclench the fist of habit and open your hands. What might that mean for us - for our lives and our church. When God comes to heal us, let's not change the subject.