Texts: Isaiah 551-9
I Corinthians 10:1-13 (series C. 3rd. Sunday in Lent)
Ps. 63:1-8
Luke 13:1-9
Her name is Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church's morals, kept sticking her nose in to other people's business. Several members did not approve of her extra curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence. She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member of the congregation, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town's only drinking bar one afternoon. She emphatically told George (and several others) that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing.
George, was a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn't explain, defend, or deny... he said nothing. Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred's house...walked home...and left it there all night!!! You gotta love George!
It seems from today's gospel reading that people haven't changed all that much over the two thousand years since the death and resurrection of Jesus. People, then, as now, avidly discussed the latest news of death and destruction and tried to understand its significance.
We do not know precisely what tragedy some people told Jesus about on the day that our reading originally took place, all we know for sure is that several Galileans were killed in or near the temple by Pilate's soldiers as they prepared to offer their sacrifices to God. Nor do we have a record of the tragedy involving the collapse of the tower in Siloam that killed eighteen people.
All we know for sure is that then, as now, tragedy struck and people died and still other people talked about it, and tried to make sense of it. Whenever bad things happen, whenever senseless things happen, the human instinct is to try to make sense of it.
We all want to make sense of the senseless, we want to know why certain things occur, and that is often a good thing. Generally speaking wanting to know why is not a bad thing, but sometimes the urge to figure out why leads us astray, it leads us into assigning blame and guilt to people that do not deserve it, or who at least do not deserve it any more or less than do we...
It was over the news that Robert Mensah is dead: Robert Mensah was the best goalkeeper in African that Ghana has ever had and was killed outside a bar in 1972. He was young, handsome, talented, and carefree. He was out with his friends for a quiet evening. Minding his own business when he got assaulted. People, talking about the incident, were heard to say things like: "Well, if he hadn't gone to the bar he wouldn't have been killed." and "People who drink deserve everything that happens to them."
Some people, in their quest to understand, reveal that they have all the compassion and sensitivity of a dead man. The implication was that Robert Mensah somehow deserved what had happened to him - just as in today's reading, the implication is made by the people talking about the Galileans killed by Pilate that they somehow they deserved to die. Why else would Jesus have replied "Because those Galileans were killed in that way, do you think it proves that they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? And what about the eighteen people killed when the tower fell on them? Do you suppose this proves that they were worse than all the other people living in Jerusalem?
No indeed, and I tell you that if you do not turn from your sins, you will all die as they did" Jesus said. There is a way to make sense of the senseless, but that way my friends is not to blame the victims by suggesting that somehow God brought about their death, or whatever other mishap has occurred to them as some kind of punishment.
By that standard no one should be alive today, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Jesus suggests that we make sense of the senseless, not by condemning the victims of tragedy for their complicity in their own deaths - but by considering our own mortality, and our own sinfulness, and working to produce fruit befitting our salvation before we are called to account for our lives before his eternal throne.
The message of Jesus, like the prophets before him, is that all of us deserve to experience the wrath of God, but that God does not seek our deaths, nor does he delight in our suffering, rather he calls us to live by his gracious law, and by the power of his Spirit and the wisdom of his living word, so that we might be able to stand before him at the end as one whose work in this life has been well and truly done.
As the parable of the unfruitful fig tree in verses 6-10 of today's reading tells us -- God expects us to be fruitful for him, He expects us to produce that which is pleasing to him, lest we be cut down and perish like those we think have somehow deserved their deaths.
That same parable, my friends, tells us that God is in the business of giving us second, third, fourth chances, or whatever it takes chances to get it straight, and do that which is pleasing to him, but when all is said and done, there is a time of reckoning, accountability that we must all face, the day will come when the unfruitful fig tree or unrepented will face the music. That same parable also tells us that God actively labours over us to make us fruitful before making his final judgement.
We are not only given time to get things straight, we are also given the care and attention that a good gardener gives to his plants - the raking and the fertilizer and the nourishment that anything requires if it is to be fruitful.
I cannot tell you why some people die at certain times and others do not. I cannot make sense of the senseless in this situation. But I can and do tell you what Jesus had to say about our making judgements about those who have died, and judgements about God's intention in allowing those deaths to occur as they did.
But I can tell you that all of us are in need of the gracious forgiveness of God, that all of us deserve to die as much as anyone else deserves to die,
And I can tell you with certainty that it is not God's purpose or intention that this should happen to us - but rather, through the labour of his Son - Jesus - God works to make us all that we should be in this life, and that God gives us every chance we need. God gives us time to repent on one hand and what we need to become productive for him on the other.
Jesus calls us to make sense of the senseless by giving us meaning in our lives before we are called home to God. Few Sundays ago I posed two questions to you, people of St. Ansgar: What legacy will you leave behind when your days on earth is over? And what legacy will you take along with you when leave this world?
The apostle Paul gives us some idea of this legacy: He writes the fruit of the Spirit is: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and if I may add compassion, (Galatians 5:22).
This is the legacy I am speaking about that people will remember you and I as men and women of God whose life made an impact or made a difference in our world. The second legacy has to do with what we take along with us when we die and it is either faith in God, or unbelief, and everything we leave behind.
There is a story told about little Johnny. Johnny was going home one day past his grandfather's house with a couple of his friends. As they passed the house they saw the old man out on his sun porch in his rocking chair with a big black book on his lap reading rather intently. "What's your grandfather doing", asked one of Johnny's friends. "Oh - grandpa - he's cramming for the finals", Johnny replied.
Our Lord and Saviour is patient with us my friends. He cultivates us and tends to us, even when we ignore him, even when we fail to trust him, even when we produce nothing for him. But not forever can we put off the day when we are called home for the finals - home to account for what we have done and what we have not done.
The question is not whether or not other people's death makes sense, whether or not they have deserved their deaths at the time and in the manner that death came to them, but whether or not our lives make sense, whether or not we are fruitful for God and we are ready to meet our maker when we draw our last breath.
What is your legacy?
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
March 11, 2007