Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] March 20, 2022 “What’s the Urgency?” Luke 13: 1-9 – The Message About that time some people came up and told him about the Galileans Pilate had killed while they were at worship, mixing their blood with the blood of the sacrifices on the altar. Jesus responded, “Do you think those murdered Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die. And those eighteen in Jerusalem the other day, the ones crushed and killed when the Tower of Siloam collapsed and fell on them, do you think they were worse citizens than all other Jerusalemites? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die.” 6-7 Then he told them a story: “A man had an apple tree planted in his front yard. He came to it expecting to find apples, but there weren’t any. He said to his gardener, ‘What’s going on here? For three years now I’ve come to this tree expecting apples and not one apple have I found. Chop it down! Why waste good ground with it any longer?’ 8-9 “The gardener said, ‘Let’s give it another year. I’ll dig around it and fertilize, and maybe it will produce next year; if it doesn’t, then chop it down.’” The gospel passage for today begins with this most bizarre, obscure reference. Bizarre to us, but relevant to Jesus’ audience, an incident fresh in their memories. Some Galileans had travelled to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple. That’s not like jumping in the car to go to church. It’s 80 miles of walking in between. About a four-day journey one way, it’s a sacred pilgrimage. While they were worshiping in the Temple, Pilate had some of them murdered. Which means, as the gory scene describes, their blood ran in streams together with the blood of the sacrifices used in worship. Horrific. Jesus asked, now what had they done wrong. What had they done to deserve this? Nothing. But hold on. A social justice, liberation theology would note: this wasn’t random. This is yet one more example of how cruelly the occupying forces of the Roman Empire treated the people. Supposedly there was some talk of rebellion up in Galilee, but what did that have to do with faithful people who made an 80-mile trek to worship in the Temple. Just more of the daily senseless abuse they suffered under the reigns of both Pilate and Herod. What had the people done wrong? The second example Jesus gave seems more straightforward. Eighteen people died when a tower collapsed on them. What had they done wrong to deserve that? Nothing. But a social justice, liberation theology might ask, why did the tower collapse? When the audience heard that reference, did they know something we don’t? For example, if I mention the Flint water crisis, something terrible immediately comes to mind. Thousands of children poisoned with lead in their drinking water. But it wasn’t an overnight accident that was fixed immediately. And once responsibility was determined, not addressed but denied. What had these kids done wrong? Nothing. But that doesn’t mean someone else did nothing wrong. It’s hardly random that out of all the cities where this could have happened that Flint is a poverty-stricken majority-Black city. Neither the children, nor their parents and families, did anything wrong to deserve this. But it would certainly be wrong if those who were responsible got away without any justice. In Flint or at the Tower in Jerusalem. The stories of the Galileans and the victims of the tower crash both seem like pretty simple straightforward answers to the ageless question: why do bad things happen to good people. As Jesus said elsewhere, it rains both on the just and the unjust. But that’s not ultimately what this passage is about. And, despite all that additional information I shared about that gruesome cruelty against the Galileans, Jesus didn’t use the occasion to rage against Rome, as at least some in the crowd must have wished. Instead, he turned to the crowd and asked, “And what about you?” And regardless of whether the tower collapse was malicious or not, Jesus turned back to them and asked again, “And what about you?” In our passage today read from The Message, you heard Jesus say, “Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die.” While this paraphrase is easier to understand, I don’t agree with the translation of this line. It doesn’t even make sense. Unless you turn to God you will die. We will all die regardless. The Common English Bible is clearer. “Unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.” Sudden and innocent? I don’t think this is entirely clear either. But how about this? Essentially, the liberation Jesus preaches in this story is not liberation from Rome but to embrace the change that brings liberation for ourselves. For these people with no power, he tells them to seek liberation from within. Even so, Jesus makes clear, you better get on it. You never know when a madman like Pilate might order some indiscriminate massacre or some random tower might fall on you. Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? Change your hearts and lives now. Turn to God now. Repent. That’s what the New Revised Standard Version in our pews says. “Repent.” Cue the music and bring in Billie Graham. Repent is one of most loaded words in Christianity. It’s so hard not to hear the word and stop listening, certain that some long pointy finger is waiting for you. Brittany Cooper had heard plenty of that. Her father was a dyed-in-the-wool, ‘baptize with fire’ Baptist preacher. She described the church she grew up in as obsessed with sin and repentance. She didn’t dare approach God in prayer without first dutifully cataloguing a litany of sins she had committed since the last time she prayed. She was constantly made to feel unworthy, unholy, and exhausted by her own inadequacy. She shared that as an adult, “to be a Black woman in America is to be confronted on a daily basis with [the same] catalog of one’s supposed inadequacy and unworthiness.” I didn’t need that from God too, she said. Brittany is now Dr. Cooper, a pastor and professor of hip hop feminism at Rutgers University. She asked, if we could get past the religious baggage that comes along with it, could a queer-affirming, anti-imperial, anti-patriarchal, pro-Black lives gospel preacher dare talk about repentance? Well, let’s get out from under the revival tent and ask, what if repentance just meant we are willing to change our mind? Change our hearts, minds, and ways in whatever direction that is more loving, more merciful, more grace-filled, and more justice-seeking than we were before. What if to grow in the Christian faith meant to continue changing our minds, mending our ways, and going in directions that were more loving, more merciful, more grace-filled, and more justice seeking than we were before. I like that! That kind of repentance feels really good. Liberating, actually. Christianity has so thoroughly indoctrinated people that repentance is about the pursuit of personal salvation. We are to confess our shortcomings until the next time we confess our shortcomings until the next time we confess our shortcomings without ever considering any other or deeper change. What does all that repentance get us if we are stuck in some circle of unholy inadequacy? What if saying “I repent” just meant I’m willing to change. To say, I’ve learned something – about myself, about my community, about the world. When a scientist discovers new information, they move in that direction, not stay stuck on what it used to be. Liberation Christians could do the same thing. As we learn, as our eyes and hearts and minds are opened to new information, shouldn’t we turn and go in the direction of liberation? I think that’s what it means – or could mean – to repent. But there’s more. Jesus continues with the image of the fig-less fig tree or the apple-less apple tree. The owner wants to chop it down. The gardener pleads to allow him to give it a little extra attention and some more manure. Give it another year. And then if it doesn’t produce, cut it down. I like the plea to give it another year. I don’t care for the “or cut it down.” Will there be grace again the following year? Or is this really just communicating the urgency, the immediacy of this need? We can’t read Jesus without recognizing that among all the things that can describe him, he and John the Baptist were apocalyptic prophets. They sincerely believed the end was near, some sort of end or at least some sort of cosmic disruption. Time was of the essence for them. Early Christians were so convinced the end was near that Paul actually wrote to the Corinthians it was better not to get married, “unless you can’t help yourself!” Soon, it’s not going to matter. “The appointed time has grown very short.” Since we are not particularly concerned about the immediate end of the world, does that mean we should just shrug off any sense of immediacy? Like we do with the climate crisis? Where’s the urgency? What’s the point of waiting until later to be more loving, more merciful, more grace-filled, and more justice-seeking than we were before. Justice seeking for our next generation. What is our lack of urgency about? As a white Christian, one of the most impactful things I think Dr. King ever said was written from his jail cell in Birmingham. He was in jail for his participation in a non-violent demonstration. A group of white clergy accused him of being too impatient. But, he said, “For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts to say "wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim;
I can’t help but hear Jesus tell the story about the cruelty of Rome toward its Galilean citizens and compare it to our fellow citizens whose lives don’t seem to matter much more than that. And what has anyone done to deserve their treatment than to be born in our respective day and time? That’s when Jesus turns to the crowd, then as now, to them and to us, and asks, “And what are you going to do about it?” You must turn to God. You must change your heart and lives. You must repent. We might ask, but what’s the hurry? Let me ask you to listen to this and determine whether this was written in the 1960s or the summer of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor: I’m more disappointed with white moderates who prefer the absence of tension to the presence of justice;
When was it said? It was Dr. King, but you weren’t quite sure, right? Dr. King also said, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” If the Bible were ever opened up to add more material, Letter from Birmingham Jail would go right between Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Corinthians. And when I hear Dr. King speak in that way, I now understand the urgency about which Jesus is speaking. Repentance not for the sake of my own soul, but to repent on behalf of this world we share and which God’s loves so much. Repent by changing our hearts, minds, and ways in whatever direction that is more loving, more merciful, more grace-filled, and more justice-seeking than we were before. And keep changing. What good is repentance that gets us stuck in some circle of unholy inadequacy?
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