Sermon preached on Sunday, Lent 3C, March 3, 2013, at Chapel on the Vine Church, Westerville, OH.
Lectionary texts: Isaiah 55.1-9; Psalm 63.1-8; 1 Corinthians 10.1-13; Luke 13.1-9.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good morning, Chapel on the Vine! It is an honor and pleasure to be here to worship with you this morning and I thank you for making me feel at home. You know, I asked Pastor John if he had any suggestions for me as I prepared this sermon and he gave me some excellent advice. He said you folks appreciate a sermon with a good beginning, a good ending, and the two should be as close together as possible. I will try to honor your preferences. This morning is the third Sunday of Lent and marks the approximate midway point of the forty days of the season of Lent with its focus on self-examination, confession, and repentance. And so this morning I want us to stop and take stock of our progress this Lent. How are we doing with our Lenten disciplines so far? Why should we even care? Specifically, I want us to look briefly at why Lent’s focus on repentance is important and to remind ourselves of the prize on which we must keep our eyes.
In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus is asked some questions to which we can all relate. We ask these kinds of questions all the time. What about the man in Florida who was swallowed by a sinkhole in his bedroom? Was he a worse sinner than the rest of us? Or what about the people who die in natural disasters such as blizzards, hurricanes, or tornadoes? Were they more deserving to die than us? Or what about our friends who are afflicted by life-threatening illnesses or the babies who are born with serious birth defects? Are they somehow more deserving of these awful things than we are?
We notice that Jesus does not answer directly the crowd’s “why do bad things happen to good people” questions. In fact, Jesus’ audience likely wasn’t even asking that kind of question because it was widely assumed by first-century Jews that bad things happened to bad people and good things happened to good people. That’s why, for example, the crowds were astonished at Jesus’ statement that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter God’s kingdom (Luke 18.25). If the rich—who were rich because it was assumed they were good people—couldn’t enter the kingdom, then who could? And much as we are perplexed about why God allows evil to work in his world and have lots of related “why” questions, the Bible is remarkably reticent in providing us answers. The extent to which we can live with the ambiguity and mystery of why God allows evil to operate in his world is a good indicator of the health of our relationship with God. The more we know the character of God, the more ambiguity we tend to allow in our lives because we know that God is trustworthy and good to his promises to rid his good but fallen world of evil, even if we don’t fully understand it all.
But if we read our gospel lesson with these kinds of questions in mind, we miss its point completely because that is not what today’s lesson is about. Jesus in effect is telling his audience and us to stop asking the “why” questions because we are not going to get many satisfactory answers to them and we must be content with that. After all, that’s why it’s called faith. Instead, he tells the crowd and us to stop focusing on things beyond our reach and to pay attention to the things we can control, namely, whether we are going to be real followers of Jesus or just followers in name only. This is where Lent’s focus on repentance comes in because we are prone to follow our own fallen desires rather than Jesus.
Not only that, but as Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson, we Christians are also susceptible to being presumptuous. We have been baptized into God’s family and are nourished by our Lord’s body and blood when we come to his Table. We also believe our sins are covered by the blood of the Lamb shed for us. But none of this gives us the license to act as we want to act. We are not free to go on hating or being unforgiving or acting selfishly or neglecting to do justice or having a haughty or superior attitude toward others who are either not Christians or who are not as mature in the faith as we might be. As Paul reminds us, we are never allowed to take God’s love, grace, and mercy for granted. Neither are we to look at the means of grace like baptism and the eucharist as bits of magic. On the contrary, because they are huge privileges offered to us out of the sheer love and grace of God, they carry corresponding responsibilities.
And of course, Jesus’ warning to his people to repent was based partly on their pride and presumption. It is a mistake for us to see these particular warnings to repent as warnings about going to hell when we die because the context in which Jesus issues them suggests otherwise. Pay attention to the phrase, “just as they did.” Jesus was warning his fellow Jews that unless they gave up their aim of national rebellion against their Roman occupiers—an aim that was based in part on the Messianic expectations that some held—and followed his way of peace instead, i.e, unless they repented, they were doomed to fall by the sword (as the Galileans had fallen to Pilate’s troops) and be crushed by the buildings in Jerusalem (as those who had died when crushed by the tower of Siloam) when the Romans finally responded, as they inevitably would, to put down their rebellion, a prediction that came true sadly in AD 70. Many of Jesus’ contemporaries held these nationalistic views because they presumed that because they were God’s chosen people, God would protect them from being defeated ultimately by the Romans. But as Jesus’ parable reminded them and us, God expects his people to bear fruit by being his salt and light to a broken and hurting world that desperately needs to hear the Good News of Jesus and be healed by it in the power of the Spirit, and God will not give us unlimited chances to do so.
And now we are back to Lent’s focus on self-examination and repentance because even if we are not first-century Jews, we are still Jesus’ people and he still expects us to bear his fruit in the power of the Spirit. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge along with the prophet Jeremiah that our hearts are desperately wicked and beyond cure (Jeremiah 17.9). In other words, left to our own devices, none of us ever has a snowflake’s chance on water of following Jesus faithfully or being his salt and light.
“Ah, Father Kevin!” you say. “We didn’t know you were capable of preaching such feel-good sermons. It’s really too bad we can’t hear you preach more often—NOT!” Bear with me here because it is not my intent to make you feel bad. Instead, I am convinced that unless we see the desperate plight of our human condition we will never be ready to hear the Good News of Jesus.
And the Good News starts with the fact that with Jesus we are never left to our own devices. Jesus helps us repent and reminds us that its purpose is more than just us working on our ability to follow the rules as if following the rules is the most important thing in God’s economy. Please don’t misunderstand. Rules are important but they are a means to a greater end, not an end in themselves. Instead, when in the power of the Spirit we repent by turning away from our disordered thoughts and desires and turn toward being the humans God created and intends for us to be, humans who are filled with and guided by his Spirit so that we are wise stewards of his good creation who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6.8), i.e., who are content to be God’s creatures instead of trying to play God, we are being prepared to develop the needed character to live as citizens in God’s kingdom. It is the kind of character we see illustrated in today’s psalm in which the psalmist’s whole being—body, mind, and spirit—hungers and thirsts for the living God and to be with him forever.
The psalmist’s longings, of course, will be fulfilled ultimately in God’s promised new creation that we get a glimpse of in our OT lesson this morning and which was launched at Jesus’ resurrection. The Lord and his new creation is the prize for which we strive in the power of the Spirit and it is worth our time to look at what Isaiah has to say about it in this passage. The first thing we notice is the urgency of God’s invitation. The language is insistent and the invitation is offered to one and all. This means we don’t have to worry about measuring up in God’s eyes (none of us can) or meeting some impossible standards that would prevent us from coming to God’s feast. No, all are invited because of God’s outrageous love and grace for his sinful and rebellious people and because of God’s everlasting covenant with his Messiah.
As we read these gracious words, we are reminded that Isaiah 55.1-11 is part of a broader narrative between God and his people and comes on the heels of the servant’s sacrifice in Isaiah 53.1-12 and the resulting new covenant between God and his people in Isaiah 54.1-17. Let me read a bit of Isaiah 53 to remind us why God’s invitation is issued to everyone and what it cost God to issue the invitation to us [read Isaiah 53.4-12]. When we read these terrible but gracious words and remember that the servant was Jesus himself, God become human, so that the filthy rags of our sin would not prevent us from coming to the Lord’s great feast in his promised new creation, we cannot help but fall to our knees in profound and humble thanksgiving for God’s tender love and mercy showered upon us. God remains faithful to his promises to redeem his fallen creation and creatures even when we refuse to play our part. In other words, God’s promises are not based on our worthiness. Here is real motivation for us to repent!
The second thing we notice is the focus on creation. God offers us food and drink to nourish not only our spirits but our bodies as well. In other words, the focus is on the entire person, not just the spiritual dimension. This language recalls the language in Isaiah 25.6-9, which of course is language for the promised new creation that will come about in full at our Lord Jesus’ second coming. When our Lord appears, the dimensions of heaven and earth will be fused into one, our mortal bodies will be raised and transformed into immortal bodies, evil, sin, and death will be vanquished forever, and we will get to live directly in God’s presence. Talk about a feast that is worth being invited to, here it is! And it is made possible only by the love of God manifested in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Yet as Isaiah reminds us, the offer is not going to be extended indefinitely and since none of us knows how long the offer is good, it is imperative for us to repent right now of our sinful and selfish ways and learn to develop the habits of character in the power of the Spirit that will allow us to live and thrive in God’s new world. And this should make sense to us. If there is going to be no evil in the new heavens and earth, then we will not be acting in ways that allow evil to spread or invite it to enter. Of course, God is going to have to accomplish this in and for us because none of us is capable of that kind of thorough transformation. But we are promised that God will do it, even if we cannot conceive how it will be done. As Isaiah reminds us, God’s thoughts and ways transcend our own in unimaginable ways, and we also have historical evidence in Jesus’ bodily resurrection that our mortal bodies will be transformed so that we will no longer be weighed down by our body of sin as we currently are.
The promise of new creation also reminds us what we are saved for. We are not saved so that we can escape this world and go be with Jesus in heaven when we die. No! The promise of new creation reminds us that God intends to be faithful to his promise to redeem his fallen creatures and creation through the people whom he calls, Jesus’ people (cf. Genesis 12.1-3; Romans 8.18-30; Revelation 21.1-7). If creation is important to God, it had better be important to us as followers of Jesus. This means we have work to do right now as Jesus’ light and salt to his world, to offer his healing love to those who need it. God calls us to do this work together as his Church and individually in the context of our daily lives. Among other things, we are called to feed the hungry, work for justice, and offer forgiveness where none is deserved in the name of Jesus. This, of course, requires us to turn from our self-centeredness and toward God so that in the power of the Spirit we are equipped to do the work he calls us to do. And the Church has always recognized that the ordinary means of grace help us to become more like Jesus—prayer, Bible reading and study, and coming to the Lord’s Table regularly. And because God has consistently demonstrated that he works primarily through his people, our fellowship and worship are also important in this business of repentance. Together we hold each other accountable.
And as we have seen, as we engage in these means of grace and the disciplines of Lent with their emphasis on fasting and self-denial, we discover we are also developing the needed character to live forever in God’s new creation when it comes in full. None of this is easy and it is impossible without the help of the Spirit. But nothing worthwhile in life ever is easy and so we keep our eyes on the prize because we’ve got an unbelievable party awaiting us. In the interim, as Paul reminded the Corinthians, that doesn’t mean we are to sit back and take it easy. Rather, we are to work tirelessly for the Lord because we know that our labors are not in vain (1 Corinthians 15.58). And when we think about these things, we will surely be reminded in the power of the Spirit that we have Good News, now and for all eternity.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.