The Choices We Make 3-23-25
The Choices We Make
Is 55:1-9; Luke 13:1-9
Is 55:1-9
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
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.’”
Prayer – God of grace, we are about halfway through the season of Lent. The church has given us the opportunity to be honest with you and with ourselves. But we haven’t been able to be completely honest or totally self-revealing. And some of the choices and shortcomings that we confess, we know we’ll be back at it as soon as we leave church. It’s hard for us to tell the truth about all the ways we have disappointed you, harder still to live up to our good intentions to live for you. From what we know of you and your love, you continue to forgive us, call us, save us from ourselves and the choices we make. Thanks for giving us more grace than we may deserve - amen.
Set in the context of the question about those unfortunate Galileans and Jerusalemites, the parable of the fig tree becomes a kind of response to the question, What does God do with our questionable choices? The questioners presuppose a God who mainly punishes for sin, that is the OT God so many of us are familiar with and perhaps even afraid of. The parable speaks of a God with amazing forbearance whose nature is to give us grace for those choices. Rather than bog down in disputes over sin and its punishments, let us take our cue from the parable and speak of human choices and its divine forgiveness.
Those poor Galileans. What did they do that led Pontius Pilate to murder them? Was even Pilate used by God to teach the Galileans a lesson? Is this sort of state-sponsored violence ever meaningful and justified? Perhaps you may see a parallel with the way our current government is treating people who look difference, vote different and love different. How God is being invoked in order to withhold love, kindness, neighborliness.
When bad things happen to good people or to bad folks, it is only natural for us to ask “Why?” Our question can be seen as an affirmation that there is a reasonableness to the universe, and that misfortune is related to some reasonable explanation. Does not scripture itself speak of rewards and punishments? Job suffered many losses to his family, his property, and his physical well-being. His pain became the occasion for a series of interactions with his friends, each of whom tried to figure out what Job had done to deserve this string of terrible luck.
In John’s gospel, when they met a blind man, Jesus’ disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?”. Surely there has got to be some reason, some rational response that can be mounted against seemingly random misfortune. In ancient Palestine there was strong belief that misfortune was the result of human choices, sin if you will.
In response to the disciples’ question in this week’s gospel, Jesus says that the Galileans who died were no worse sinners than anyone else. Then Jesus adds another incident of misfortune: the fall of the tower in Jerusalem that killed eighteen persons. Again, Jesus states that these unfortunates were no worse than anyone else. Just your average group of sinners and saints who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jesus, in his interaction about the cruelty of Pilate and the falling of the tower, raises the possibility that some of our misfortunes may be related to more than just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know this is a hopelessly outmoded way of putting it, but can some of our pain be the result of our choices? Scripture frequently speaks of choices that leads to divine punishment. Still, Jesus, in his response to his disciples, doesn’t seem to believe that, at least in these two cases, human choice is the cause for the tragedy.
Twice, in this week’s gospel, Jesus reiterates, “No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” But the main thing I note is that Jesus doesn’t allow his disciples to draw him into a discussion of theodicy (justification of the ways of God to humanity) or to a well-thought-out theology of human suffering. Instead, Jesus moves from two contemporary stories about human tragedy to expand the conversation into consideration of another greater tragedy that could occur, unless things change. Jesus moves from the conversation about two tragedies to talk of divine judgment.
It is significant that this interaction about tragedy is followed by the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree which is a parable of judgment that ends with a merciful word. A landowner and the hired caretaker discuss what to do with an unproductive fig tree. The owner decides that the fig tree is worthless. Fig trees bear fruit at least once a year, more often in that part of the world. Three years, no figs, the tree is taking up space that could be better used by more productive trees. Cut it down.
The caretaker pleads for forbearance. Give the seemingly worthless tree yet another year. In order to cultivate the tree, the caretaker says that he will loosen the soil around it and add manure If the dung doesn’t do the trick and make a more productive tree, then cut it down. The unproductive tree is being given the gift of time, grace if you will, time to become more fruitful.
There is judgment and accountability, but there is also, because God is merciful, the gift of time and grace. Our actions do have consequences. We might like to sit around and have extended discussions about the justice of God, the goodness of creation, and the fairness of God. But Jesus won’t let us do that. He turns our questions back upon us. He tells us a story that urges us to take matters in hand now, holding out the promise that God graciously gives us more time to be fruitful.
I suspect there are some commonalities between our passage from Luke this week and our current context. I don’t know if you are like me, but I have been asking Jesus a lot lately about some of the multiple tragedies witnessed each day – people sent away, jobs lost, people ostracized because of the color of their skin, their beliefs, how they voted or who they love. In today’s gospel, they ask Jesus about a couple of tragic contemporary events. Cruel Pilate has put some Jews to the sword while they were at worship. Then there’s also been a deadly disaster when a tower fell and killed some unfortunate people.
What did those poor victims do to deserve this? Behind the crowd’s question is the implied question, “Jesus, you are God’s spokesperson. You are the Son of God. Why on earth did you set up a world where bad things like this happen to good people like them?” A timeless question no doubt, a question each of us who are human have wondered and asked before.
We’re in the season of Lent, the season of confession and truth-telling. And let’s tell the truth: in our own lives, in the life of this congregation, we haven’t been as fruitful as we could have been, perhaps should have been because of the choices we have made individually and collectively. And what does the master do to us in our unfruitfulness? God gives us time, grace. There’s still time for us to be better disciples and a better, more faithful, more fruitful congregation – all because of God’s love and grace and mercy.
By not pulling the plug on the failed human experiment a few decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus (when we think Luke was written) we are given more time to come to terms with Jesus and to allow Him to come to terms with us. Jesus commanded his followers, us, to go into all the world, teaching and baptizing all nations, to be shining lights in the world, demonstrating to the world what God can do when ordinary people choose to follow Jesus, showing everybody, everywhere the truth about God. We’ve needed more than two thousand years to be faithful followers and are still not there yet. Thanks be to God, there’s still time.
What if God had pulled the plug two thousand years ago like many Christians in Luke’s day thought God would? No Mother Teresa, no Martin Luther King Jr., no Saint Francis of Assisi, no Bono, no you or me. You may not be the finest disciple there ever was, but, there’s still time. God isn’t done with you yet.
In the meanwhile, God not only takes time out of our hands, but God also makes time for us. Patiently working with fractured, disobedient humanity down through the ages, God has shown amazing forbearance, tolerance, and unflappable perseverance. As soon as we were given the Ten Commandments, we broke them. Prophets came and went and we failed to heed their words. We were offered God’s own Son; we crucified Jesus.
Yet even when we nailed the Son of God to a cross, this long-suffering, patient God looks down upon us wasting our time, and says, “I love you still. In the meanwhile, there’s yet time for you to learn to love the God who so eternally loves you.”
God makes promises to God’s people throughout scripture. Promises like “I’ll be your God and you’ll be my people,” or “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” God is faithful to God’s promises. And yet, here’s my question: Why does God take so long to make good on God’s promises? Because at the end of the day, God trusts that we can and will make different choices, choices of faithfully following the path of Jesus. God trusts that God’s grace will get us to that place, and will continue to give us time to make those faithful choices, every day and every way.
Sometimes God’s mercy comes in the form of forgiveness, as when Jesus looked down from the cross and prayed, “Father, forgive them.” Sometimes God’s mercy comes in the form of gifts, as when a child is born to a couple, or we are given some great opportunity. Yet sometimes, God’s greatest mercy is time, time to learn from our past, to profit from our mistakes, time to start over and to make faithful choices. That may be the greatest gift of Lent, time and grace – thanks be to God – amen.