Sermon: "Turn Turn Turn"

Scripture Intro - Luke 13:1-9

In this passage Jesus addresses an assumption about the role God plays in our human suffering that was prevalent in his time, as it is in ours.

The people around him were buzzing about two recent tragic occurrences – one in which a tower collapsed killing 18 people,

and another where a group of Galileans worshiping in the Jerusalem Temple were executed, at the hands of Roman soldiers doing the bidding of their governor, Pilate.

In both cases, the prevailing belief was that the victims had somehow played a part in their own fate, because they had sinned against God and failed to seek repentance.

We have no shortage of religious people in our own time, of all faiths, who believe that God unleashes hurricanes and causes buildings to collapse as punishment for our immoral ways.

Jesus rebukes this belief – asking the people casting judgment around him if they think the ways in which they fall short of God’s expectations are somehow not as egregious as the victims of tragic events.

Jesus reminds the people that they all fall short when it comes to seeking repentance and recognizing the ways in which they turn away from God.

But he doesn’t leave them to stew in this unpleasant reminder.

Instead he tells them a parable.

About a fig tree,

that has failed to produce fruit for three years and is in danger of being cut down for its shortcomings.

Until a gardener steps in to offer it grace.

Luke 13:1-9

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 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.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

March 24, 2019 – Third Sunday in Lent

Luke 13:1-9

“Turn Turn Turn”

The word "repent" in Hebrew means to turn or change direction.

In Greek, as we often see it used in the New Testament, it means to change one’s mind.

Quite literally, it means to think differently.

It’s understandable if hearing the word REPENT makes you cringe.

As it conjures up images of televangelists pounding on pulpits and street preachers carrying signs warning us to, “Repent or perish!”

While those are the words that Jesus uses here in the Gospel of Luke there is so much more to his warning then a call to personal morality that is guaranteed to save us from the eternal fire of God’s punishment.

There’s a much larger change  – or turning – that Jesus is calling for here.

A change in perspective.

A change in perception.

A change in how we see God and ourselves moving in the world.

Not just as individuals but as a connected community –

as part of Creation as a whole.

But this is not a change – a turning – that comes easily for us.

Not just because we have trouble conceiving of change on such a grand scale,

but also because we struggle to see the need for a turning in ourselves –

our own need to think differently.

Partly because the faults of others tend to loom larger in our eyes.

It’s so much easier to see and call out the need for repentance in others than see the need for it in ourselves.

And while we may not believe God is doling out death sentences,

we may still believe that bad behavior deserves divine punishment.

Which is why it can be somewhat gratifying when those who lack a repentant heart suffer some sort of consequence in this life for their transgression.

Whether the transgression is large or small. 

Comedienne, Steve Hofstetter, specializes in telling stories about hard hearted people getting their comeuppance.

He tells the story of a woman he encountered in the airport in Los Angeles when he was hurrying to catch a flight to Japan.

The woman had stopped in the middle of the flow of people walking to their gates and was Face-Timing someone on her cell phone,

completely oblivious to the traffic jam she was causing. 

The woman also had a small dog with her, and because she was on her phone she failed to notice that the dog had taken the opportunity to relieve himself right there in the middle of the airport.

When a man stopped to alert the woman by saying,

“Ma’am, your dog just had an accident,”

she glared at him, and then looked back at the person she was speaking to on her phone and said,

“Some people are so rude.”

When the woman finished her call and started to walk away,

leaving her dog’s mess behind her,

someone else stopped her and said, 

“Ma’am, you can’t just leave that there.”

To which the woman flippantly replied, 

“Oh, they have people to take care of that.”

After the woman sauntered away, Hofstetter took it upon himself to guard the mess until a maintenance worker came along to clean it up.

He said,  “I couldn’t just walk away and let someone roll their suitcase through it. I saw it happen, and like it or not, I was now part of the story.”

That wasn’t the end of the story, however, because when Hofstetter arrived at his gate, the woman was there. She was also flying to Japan.

And as bad as her airport etiquette had been so far, she was in the midst of committing yet another communal faux pas – she was listening to music on her iPad– and wasn’t using headphones, much to the annoyance of those seated around her.

As Hofstetter said, “How inconsiderate can one human being possibly be?

I pictured her car in the airport lot parked diagonally across three spaces.”

The woman was being loud and obnoxious and most people were avoiding her, but Hofstetter chose to sit down right next to her…."to have a little fun,” he said.

After a few minutes he turned to her and said, 

“Are you going to London on business?”

Looking very annoyed at his intrusion, she said, “I’m going to Tokyo.”

To which he replied,

“Oh no, that flight’s moved to gate 53C. This is the flight to London.”

Hofstetter admits that all he wanted to do was give the woman a moment of panic – that sense of dread we all feel when we realize we’re at the wrong gate and need to make a mad dash to the other end of the airport.

He fully expected the woman’s uncertainty would be short lived.

She would get up, check the monitor, and see that the flight information still said "Tokyo," or she would ask the gate agent.

Or she would look around the gate and see everyone except for Hofstetter was Japanese, and perhaps wonder why this redheaded guy from Queens was going to London with all these Japanese people.

But she didn’t do any of that.

She just gathered up her stuff, including her blaring iPad and her dog,

and she left.

Hofstetter was amazed.

He said, “She didn’t even thank me….which I thought was rude.”

There’s one other detail that the woman didn’t catch onto.

At LAX there is no gate 53C.

Hofstetter says he doesn’t know what happened to the woman but she never boarded the plane.

The flight was delayed for about 20 minutes.

He added, “If you don’t fly very often you might think that was the airline waiting for the woman to return to the gate. But airplanes don’t wait for people. It’s not a carpool."

However, safety regulations say they must remove any checked baggage from the plane if the owner fails to make the posted boarding time.

And that process, takes about 20 minutes.

While most people on the flight were upset about the delay,

Hofstetter thought, “If they only know what I had done for them.”

We may feel a secret delight when someone gets their comeuppance like this,

when someone who makes likes life unpleasant for others is met with a little unpleasantness of their own.

The Germans even have a word for it – Schadenfraude.

Schadenfraude is defined as the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another.

Schadenfraude is not exactly what Jesus was calling out when the people around him believed the victims of tragedy must have played a part in their own fate.

It’s not as if the people were delighted that the alleged wrongdoers had been killed, but there was a sense that the unrepentant had gotten what they deserved – along with a sense of relief that good behavior must have saved them from a similar fate.

We may not believe that God causes natural disasters or tragic events or accidents or illnesses as a form of punishment for lack of repentance,

but there is a little game that we often play with ourselves when we hear about the misfortune or tragedy that befalls others.

We listen to their story or read about it in the paper and look for the reason why such a thing could have happened – the reason that makes it unlikely that the same thing could happen to us.

They lived in a big city or a foreign country where life is more unpredictable and dangerous.

They didn’t eat properly or they worked too hard or drank too much – it’s no wonder they got sick, or died before their time.

They put themselves at risk by traveling alone or being in an unsafe area after dark.

They didn’t follow police instructions and reached for their wallet –

how could the officer know they weren’t reaching for a gun?

They practice a religion that’s been used to justify violence and the slaughter of innocents, they should expect that others would mistrust and fear them.

It is a bit chilling that in the aftermath of the mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the lectionary for this Sunday presents us with a gospel text that mentions worshipers being killed while gathered in what was supposed to be a sanctuary – a safe haven – a sacred space –

where prayers of peace and mercy are lifted up to God.

In this instance it was Galileans who had come to the Jerusalem Temple to worship when Pilate’s men burst in and slaughtered them.

We don’t know if there were simmering prejudices against Galileans because they were different in some way from the Jews in Jerusalem,

or if they were targeted because of their connection with Jesus,

but while some pointed the finger of blame at the Galileans themselves,

and others placed the blame on the soldiers who carried out the killing,

and others placed the blame on the one in power, Pilate himself,

Jesus urged them all to stop looking for and naming the ways that others were in need of repentance,

and instead recognize that all of them, collectively, were in need of a change in perception -  a change in their way of thinking.

Jesus was effectively saying,

“Don’t you see that God is calling all of us to do and be something different in this world? That God is in the midst of re-creating this world anew?”

Jesus gave us glimpses of God’s world –

in the healing that he brought to those who’d been broken,

in the forgiveness he offered to those who were thought to be unforgivable,

in the way he reached out to those on the margins and brought them into the center,

in the way he pulled in those in power and those who lacked power,

showing them that they both had much to gain by standing together.

God’s world is built on love and expressed through our ability to build loving relationships with one another.

Anything less than that is not of God’s world.

Perhaps the repentance – the change in thinking that is needed for us as individuals and for us a species –

is a letting go of the belief that we exist in this world as separate beings who are only connected by blood, geography, or circumstance -

and therefore it only matters what happens to us, and those we deem worthy in our own immediate circle, and every one and every thing else is separate, foreign, alien, not of us.

What if we could see that we’re all connected – on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level – to each other and to every part of creation?

Can you imagine how different our world would be if we could see the connecting threads that bind us all together?

The threads that bind us regardless of the clear separations that we’re convinced exist between us?

The threads that bind a Christian worshiping in South Carolina to a Muslim worshiping in New Zealand.

That bind the billionaire CEO to the single mom living on food stamps.

That bind the white supremacist to the Black Lives Matter activist.

That bind the one trying to build a wall to the one trying to tear it down.

That bind all of humanity to nature and the changing climate and every living thing on this earth.

Repent or perish.

This is not a warning that we are destined to die at the hands of God unless we change our ways.

It’s an invitation – to a new life – a new world – a new way of thinking –

that is rooted in love rather than fear.

Like the fig tree that will inevitably bear fruit once it is placed in fertile ground, we too will flourish –

when we release our hold on the fears that divide us

and instead turn our hearts towards the love that connects us.

Love is God’s fertilizer.

If we thought of it that way,

Just imagine the fruit we would bear.

Thanks be to God, and Amen.