Temptation's 'Bout to Get Me

A white supremacist kills 50 and wounds 50 others in an armed attack on worshippers in two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques; recalling the 1963 bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama killing four young girls and wounding nearly two dozen others.

Historic flooding in the American Midwest region leaves at least 3 dead along with countless dead and stranded livestock leaves many farmers facing the end of their livelihood. One intentional tragedy, one natural disaster.

In Luke 13: 1-9 Jesus is asked about an incident in which Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea with headquarters in Jerusalem, had slaughtered a number of Galilean pilgrims and their animals as they had come to the Jerusalem Temple to offer the appointed sacrifices. And he talks about 18 Judeans who were killed as the Tower of Siloam had collapsed on them as they went about their day in Israel’s seat of religious and political power. One was a state-sponsored terror attack meant to control the captive population Israel under Roman occupation. One would seem to be an accident – although an inquest might reveal corners were cut on the government contracts to build and maintain the tower, a part of the city’s fortification.

In the incident involving Pilate, those around Jesus knew he was on his way to Jerusalem and were perhaps warning him to change his direction and his mind. Jesus seems to suspect they might harbor the all-too-human tendency to question who might be at fault when he replies, "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."

Whatever anyone else thought, Jesus is on a single-minded mission: calling people to repent. Not a word we hear much these days. We spend millions in investigations just to get people to confess, “Yes, I did it and I’m sorry.”  In Holy Baptism the question is put to us all, “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?” From the day he emerged from his forty-day wilderness sojourn, Jesus has been calling anyone and everyone who will listen to repent, “for the kingdom of God is at hand.”

His answer suggests he is not concerned with who is to blame, or why bad things happen to good and innocent people. After all, he reads the scriptures. He knows the sun shines on the good and the bad, just as the rain falls on the good and the bad. To their warnings about Pilate he issues his own warning: repentance cannot be delayed, for death may come at any time. Repentance needs to be an ongoing attitude toward one’s life, rather than an occasional act.

That is, we all fail daily, even hourly, to love God and love our neighbor – which Jesus extends to love our enemies as well. Surely people who traveled with him on what was a dangerous road to Jerusalem, and a dangerous city in so many ways – surely people struggled, after hearing of Pilate’s act of terror on faithful pilgrims in Jerusalem to worship their God as their ancestors had done for centuries in that very place – surely they must have struggled to understand just what it might mean to love Pilate alongside God and neighbor. Surely, we struggle as well to extend love to the mass murderer in Christchurch. Surely, we struggle to understand just what it would mean for us to love the hundreds of farmers who have worked their land for generations and now stand to lose everything. Or, to understand how four men in Birmingham could have such malice of heart to murder four innocent girls worshipping in a church on a Sunday.

Jesus seems to say there is no time to “understand” all of this. It is time for repentance. To turn our lives around. To turn our collective lives around. To reorient our lives to love God and love neighbor, even to the point of loving our enemies. He knows repentance is not a one-time, once-in-awhile affair taken care of on Ash Wednesday, Yom Kippur, in a confessional booth, or in a general confession on Sunday morning. Repentance must be a way of life – the way of life for us all if we are to be citizens of God’s gracious reign over all. As the Shaker hymn has it, we all need to “turn, turn till we come down right.”

The Hebrew word is “shuve,” to turn. The idea being we find ourselves distracted – as individuals and as a community and a nation. We are distracted by political ideologies. We are distracted by the “issue of the day.” We are distracted by all the shiny objects we see on the internet and want shipped to our door – tomorrow. Forgetting, perhaps, that the only one of the Ten Commandments delivered twice is, “Thou shalt not covet….and if you did not hear me, thou shalt not covet.” We are distracted by thinking we are good and innocent people, and then we find ourselves saying things about others behind their backs. We turn away from God’s way.

Every day we all end up walking astray from the path God in Christ sets for us; or the Buddha sets for us; or Lao T’zu sets for us. Or, Confucius sets for us; or Mohamed sets for us; or Lord Krishna sets for us. Or, Socrates sets for us. Or, the Hebrew Prophets set for us.

To sin means to miss the mark – stray from the path. It means to forget who we are and whose we are. Jesus says we all do it. We even see him forget, such as his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman who wants him to heal her daughter and instead he calls her and her people “dogs.” Wow, does he ever forget, just like us!

To turn, to repent, must be a way of life. Every day. Not just once a year, or once a week, or even just once a day. We must turn, turn till we come down right! And even then, just keep turning. Because health and well being may be ended in the twinkling of an eye. Because we rarely know when the end is near. It means resisting all sorts of temptations that face us all day long. Temptation’s ‘bout to get me, temptation’s ‘bout to get me, temptation’s ‘bout to get me, and all my strength will come tumblin’ down.

Jesus ends with a parable about a fig tree; a man who orders it to be cut down since it has produced no figs; and a gardener who says give it some love and give it another chance, another year. If no figs then, “You cut it down!”  Therein lies the tension: God’s grace says I’ll give you another chance. But will we take that chance today to turn, turn till we get it right? Will we repent today? This minute? Right now?

There is a world of those who suffer every day like those in Jerusalem did. They need us, God needs us, Jesus needs us, the world needs us to repent. We can produce figs every day. If only we will take all our second-chances to repent now. Today. And every day.