A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

The questions posed by Jesus in today’s gospel reading appear to be “ripped from the day’s headlines.” Before we take a closer look at that, though, I need to say a few words about Pontius Pilate.

While we don’t have any confirmation from outside the Bible about the particular incident of Pilate mingling the blood of slaughtered Galileans with the blood from their sacrifices, we do have numerous references that confirm Pilate’s barbarism. One example, recorded by Josephus, is about a group of Samaritans who were climbing Mt. Gerizim that he had killed.

To be at the receiving end of imperial power is dehumanizing. It is to be turned from human beings into “pawns” on an international chess board. By all accounts, Pilate took his job seriously. To enforce the Pax Romana in Palestine that sometimes meant he was ruthless. A few slaughtered Galileans here and a few murdered Samaritans were simply factored into the cost of maintaining the empire. Pilate was neither a nice nor a weak man. That’s important to say as we approach Holy Week, when we’ll see Pilate again. He may famously “wash his hands” of it all but here's the point: he could have stopped the execution of Jesus if he wanted to. He was not a passive bystander but a political appointee with a lot of power, but not so much on the moral compass or courage.

The Gospel writers, including Luke, had to be very careful, though, about how they told the story of Jesus’ Passion. By the time they wrote it down they were just beginning to show up on the radar of the Roman authorities as distinct from Judaism. They had to be politically savvy: “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” They knew the authorities were listening in and they could not afford a full-frontal assault on Roman imperial power. Pilate’s role in crucifying Jesus is therefore subtly down-played in the Passion Narrative. So we need to hear it with what feminist scholars call a ”hermeneutic of suspicion.” Make no mistake: it would have been clear to anyone living at that time that crucifixion was a Roman punishment, not a Jewish one and that Jesus was executed primarily because he was perceived as a political threat, more than as a religious threat. As long as religion is a personal private matter of piety the authorities don’t really care what you do.

In this shift away from blaming the Romans, it became easier to blame “the Jews” for killing Jesus. But that just isn’t true. Following Jesus doesn’t put us in conflict with other religions, it puts us in conflict with imperial power. Full stop. All of this is an aside, really, from today’s sermon. But it is, I think, an important aside. The point is that those who come to Jesus in today’s gospel reading already know that Pilate is ruthless, and they aren’t shocked by it. We shouldn’t be, either.

On to today’s sermon. Jesus seizes on the current events of his day to ask the theological question that is raised whenever bad things happen to innocent people. The first incident is this ruthless act ordered by Pilate on behalf of the Roman government. “Do you think that this happened to the victims,” Jesus asks, “because they were worse sinners than others?” The second is a tragic accident, the collapse of a tower over at Siloam that raises the very same question. “Do you think those who died were worse sinners than others?” Jesus says.

Jesus is clear in his response and we need to be as well: no, they were not worse sinners. These events were not some punishment from God. Jesus rejects the notion that tragedies like this are connected to moral behavior. Those people didn’t deserve to die.

But behind such questions is always another question, usually buried under some amount of anxiety and uncertainty. Sometimes we ask such questions because we already know deep down that the answer is “no.” But that can be a terrifying reality to confront. Because at least if the answer is “yes”—if those people were worse sinners, then our world can remain a tidy and ordered place. If bad things only happen to bad people and good things happen to good people, there is some comfort in that. We can keep ourselves safe by being good. Going to church and keeping a holy Lent and giving up chocolate keeps us safe from harm. It would be comforting in a strange way if the world were that predictable, so that I could be good and then I would be protected.

But that isn’t how the world works. And if it might just as easily have been me who was among those Galileans, or in that tower in Siloam, then what? If bad things can happen even to good folks who follow all the rules, what then? If people who never smoked a cigarette their whole lives get lung cancer and die and if people who get all the aerobic exercise they are supposed to and eat a low-fat Mediterranean diet drop dead of a heart attack, we are reminded that life is uncertain, and not always fair.

So Jesus is clear: no…they were not worse sinners. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t important things to ponder after such tragic events. Precisely because the world is not always tidy and predictable, we can take such moments and reflect on them. Moreover, they can become for all of us occasions that invite true repentance.  

Repentance. In Greek, it’s meta-noia. Noia is “mind.”  Everyone here recognizes the root word, the same root found in our English word, paranoia. Paranoia is when you are, literally, “out of your mind.” Meta- is the prefix we know from metamorphosis; it means “to change.” So metanoia means, literally, “to change your mind.” Repentance isn’t a feeling. It’s not about feeling sad or remorseful and certainly it isn’t about feeling frightened or ashamed.

But let’s be real, St. Michael’s: most of us don’t like to have to consider changing our minds about much of anything. Most arguments are more about stating our case than listening. We try to keep things in order, holding onto the “way we were raised” or the “way we were taught” as if that settles the matter. People were taught for centuries that the world was flat, though. People were taught that blacks were inferior, that women must not be ordained, that the first European settlers and the native Americans got along just fine. Truth is, sometimes we were taught wrong. Saying “let’s just agree to disagree” is intellectually lazy.

The story is told from the desert tradition of our faith that once upon a time a visitor came to the monastery looking for the purpose and meaning of life. The Teacher said to the visitor, “If what you seek is Truth there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know,” the visitor said. “To find Truth I must have an overwhelming passion for it.” “No,” the Teacher said. “In order to find Truth, you must have an unremitting readiness to admit that you might be wrong.”

Faith is not a security blanket to keep us snug and warm. Sometimes we are wrong and when we are we need to repent – to change our minds. It is of course easier to just shout louder than it is to listen, and easier still to make our world smaller and smaller until becomes an echo chamber that is filled only with people who tell us what we already are certain is true. The problem with that way of being in the world, however, is that we stop learning and we stop growing. And when that happens, repentance becomes nothing more than a psychological exercise, a kind of spiritual narcissism.

But the Christian journey is about growth in Christ, and there is never growth without change. Jesus invites us to true metanoia during these forty days. He seems to be suggesting in today’s reading that the uncertainties of life can become an opportunity for spiritual growth. It isn’t always about big national tragedies; sometimes it can happen when a person who is very dear to us dies, or when we encounter failure or loss. Anything that helps us to see that we, too, are mortal; that we, too, will one day return to the dust. That we, too, could be wrong…

We prayed two weeks ago in the Great Litany that God might “save us from dying suddenly and unprepared.” The answer to that prayer—whatever our age—is that we are becoming people who live as those “prepared to die.”  The parable of the fig-tree that doesn’t produce figs is a “right-brain” way of making this very same point. A fig tree that doesn’t produce figs isn’t doing what it’s meant to do. (Is it even still a fig tree?) The owner of the vineyard says to the gardener that he may as well cut it down; it’s just wasting soil. The gardener, however, buys the tree another year by digging around it and fertilizing it in the hopes that it will still bear fruit. The tree gets a second chance, another year to see if it might do what it is meant to do.

Jesus invites us to see our lives in this same way. What if, when tragedy strikes, we ponder the implications long enough to ask the question, “what if that was me” who died when that tower fell over in Siloam or what if it was me that the government disappeared in the middle of the night? What if, in the very asking of such questions, we discover the seeds of change, and become willing to dig around the ground of our lives, and to fertilize our souls? Reflecting on the precariousness of the world can become an invitation for real change—for new possibilities—and therefore for authentic spiritual growth. What happens when we hear God giving us a second chance, another year “to bear the fruit that is worthy of repentance?”  

How might your life be changed if you were told you had one year to live?

Mark Roark was, for many years, the director of our version of ECC in Western Massachusetts, Camp Bement. When Mark died from cancer at a much too young age, his wife, Holly, shared something at his funeral that I thought was incredibly wise and that has stayed with me for all of these years. She said that people would say to her, as they came to grips with the fact that Mark’s cancer was terminal, “you must live every day as if it were the last.” And Holly said, “no…that would be crazy…and just plain too intense.” Rather, she said, what they came to value as a family was “normal.” Finding time in each day to make room for God and each other, for friends and neighbors. It was the bedtime stories and dinner together that sustained them. It was in “opening their eyes to see God’s hand at work in the world about them.” It was about discovering (and rediscovering) that each day is a gift, and making time for the things that truly matter, and then letting go of the things that don’t.

What needs to happen for you to tap into the creativity God has given you, the gifts God has given you to use in service to others, that make you more fully alive? If your present life bears no resemblance to the way you answer that question, and you begin to make some real changes in order to get closer—even incremental ones—then this will indeed by a truly holy Lent that leads to the joy of Easter morning.

Those Galileans who were killed by Pilate…those eighteen who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them…were they worse sinners than anyone here today? No, of course not. But may the very asking of such questions be for you and for me and for this faith community an invitation to re-evaluate our priorities; an opportunity to make the necessary changes that allow us to repent and to return to God with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our soul.