Under the Shadow of Your Wings Lent 3C
Here’s a case where chapters and verses in the Bible are arbitrary – added to the text to make it easier to study, but not always easy. As it stands, Luke 13:1-9 seems enigmatic at best until one is lucky enough to see it as a continuation of what was happening at the end of chapter 12 where Jesus, exhibiting a good deal of frustration, says, ‘You see a cloud rising in the west you know it’s going to rain, and when the wind shifts from the south you know there’s going to be scorching heat. So, why can’t you see what’s going on at the present time? And why can’t you judge for yourselves how to make things right? Why leave it up to a judge to decide?
Which is to say, do the right thing to begin with and save yourselves a lot of unnecessary trouble. The right answer from anyone who has been paying attention to the young man from Galilee is that it is time to repent. Luke then offers two scenarios to illustrate that the time for repentance is always NOW! You may end up before the judge before you know it. Like that time a group of Jesus’s Galilean neighbors were in Jerusalem to make offerings at the Temple when out of nowhere, Pilate, the local governing Roman authority, slaughtered them right then and there, mingling their blood with that of the sacrifices. Those who were chided for not reading the times ask, “Were they 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."
We easily jump to the wrong conclusion, and much Christian preaching has done just that ignoring the fact that people living in Galilee and in Jerusalem were not all Jews, but a mixture of Gentiles (non-Jews), Jews, and pagans of all sorts. This is not about recalcitrant Jews not accepting Jesus. This is about everyone. All of us, Luke’s readers, included. And it is important not miss that Jesus specifically says those who died were no worse sinners than the rest of us. They just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and their deaths were not some cosmic, karmic, divine retribution or punishment. God my Father does not work that way. Yet, most assuredly we try to make ourselves believe otherwise so as not to look at what Jesus really says – they were no worse sinners that the rest of us. That is the rest of us are sinners, no better or worse than those who died. You never know when your time may come, and you will want to repent before that happens.
One problem is to think that repentance is some sort of one-and-done ritual. That we can say we’re sorry and move on to the next ritualistic box to check. To repent, suggests Frederick Buechner in his little book, Wishful Thinking, is to come to one’s senses. It is not so much something we do, but rather something that happens to us. Buechner goes on to suggest that true repentance does less time looking at the past and saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ than to look to the future and say, ‘Wow!’ [i] The words in the Bible translated repentance mean either a total change of one’s mind, one’s worldview, or, to realize we have been walking in the wrong direction all along and need to turn and chart a new pathway home. Home being, of course, under those big, cozy, Mother Hen wings we have heard about.
Psalm 63, which was the Psalm read at my ordination to the diaconate, reads in part, “For you have been my helper, and under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice.” [ii] Which tells us at least two things: true repentance is an ongoing, life changing experience, and that we need a someone to help us with our ongoing repentance, and that that helper most often is God. The same God who speaks to Moses out of the bush that was burning but not consumed. And we know that repentance need be ongoing because we keep walking back the same old way and pop out from under those wings-of-God, and need someone or something to send us back in the right direction.
Jesus is talking to us. Not to individuals, but to those gathered to listen to him, including those who, like the disciples, have already formed a new community of God’s love in Christ. Communities and society are in constant need of repentance, which Buechner also addresses when speaking of ‘guilt’ as taking responsibility for wrongdoing. “Apart from the wrong we are each responsible for personally, in a sense no wrong is done anywhere which we are not all of us responsible collectively. With or without knowing it, either through what we have done or what we have failed to do, we have all helped create the kind of world mess that makes wrongdoing inevitable.” [iii]
The danger of our guilt, he says, both individually and collectively is not so much that we don’t take it to heart, but that we take it to heart “overmuch” and try to hide it, where it festers in ways that even we don’t recognize. We blame others for the wrong we don’t want to see in ourselves, or in our community. We grow vindictive against those who try to help us see our wrongs as wrong. The resulting inner sense of brokenness often separates us from the very ones who could help us with our repentance and help patch us and the community back together again. We wither, like the fig tree, and become no longer capable of bearing fruit, let alone the good fruit of repentance. Fruit that shows we love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus introduces what may be a hopeful note when he talks about the fig tree that does not bear fruit. The owner of the garden tells the gardener, “For three years I have come looking for fruit, but there is none. Cut it down.” To which the gardener suggests tending to the tree, dress its roots with manure, and give it another year, and if it still bears no fruit, “you can cut it down.” The tree seems to get a reprieve. Perhaps there is still time to repent. Another year? Maybe, maybe not. But note that the gardener does not say he will cut it down. He says, “You can cut it down.” Why didn’t it bear fruit? Had the gardener not been tending it properly the past three years? Did the owner have unrealistic expectations? Did the Tower of Siloam collapse because those who built it skirted getting the proper permits and cut corners? Did Pilate slaughter all those Galileans because of a bad dream? Or, perhaps indigestion from the night before?
There we go. It starts all over again. The cycle of guilt. Looking outside ourselves for the answer. Hoping to blame others. What will it take to make us come to our senses and stop looking back at the past? Is there still time to change our minds? To change direction and actually follow the one who says to one and all, “Follow me”? Can we find ways to turn around and get back under the protective wings of God, that Mother Hen of us all? Are we ready to repent?
“My soul clings to you, your right hand holds me fast,” sings the psalmist. “For you have been my helper, and under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice.” Amen.
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