Readings
Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
We now find ourselves smack dab in the middle of Lent. The language of our worship and images from scripture call us to repentance. I don’t know about you, but that word, “repentance,” is a loaded word for me. For much of my life it was a word bound up in judgment, bound up in the displeasure of God. It was a word that called me to the fear of hell and damnation, or at the very least the enduring suffering of purgatory. I saw repentance as being as much about what happened in the next life as in this one. It was summed up best in a funny cartoon I once saw. The cartoon had Yosemite Sam standing with his six-shooters drawn and the caption read “Heaven or hell, turn or burn.”
In today’s Gospel Jesus is questioned about two situations that had occurred recently. First the slaughter of Galilean pilgrims to Jerusalem by Pilate and second the tragic deaths of 18 people who had a tower fall on them. Now the common understanding at the time of Jesus was that when these sorts of things happened it was a sign that either the person who was suffering was being punished for their sins or for the sins of their ancestors. Jesus however refuses to accept that understanding. In both cases he rejects that their suffering was because of their sins, but he does issue the warning, “unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
It would be easy for us to presume that Jesus is telling us the very message that I grew up with. That unless we recognize our sinful nature then God will punish us as well. It would be easy to presume that the message is that the only way to avoid such suffering is to work hard and somehow not sin any longer. It would be easy to layer on to this story the image of Yosemite Sam and his warning “heaven or hell, turn or burn.”
But I don’t think that is what is going on in this passage. As I said earlier, Jesus openly rejects the idea that those poor unfortunate souls were punished for their sins. His call to repentance is something else.
In my reading of the Gospels I have come to believe that Jesus was convinced of a handful of things. One of them was that all that was important was right now, this moment. He wasn’t particularly concerned with the past or the future, but instead with the now. Secondly, Jesus was absolutely convinced that we are loved by God and there is nothing we can do to change that.
That’s where the second half of today’s Gospel passage comes in. If we believe that all Jesus is concerned about is our sinfulness, then the parable he tells about the fig tree makes no sense. In that story Jesus talks about the gardener interceding for the tree even though it hasn’t born any fruit. The image we have is one of nurture and concern even in the midst of a broken and barren reality. The image we are given is of a God who is about creating chances for our wellbeing, not judgments and condemnation for our faults.
So if that is the case, then what are we to make of Jesus’ call to repentance? What is it that he is getting at? To start, let’s look at the word. The word for repentance in the Greek text is “metanoia,” which literally means “to change your mind.” It means to change your world view, your perspective, your viewpoint, your understanding of yourself, and your understanding of the world you live in. It was popularly understood to mean “to turn around,” to do a 180, to look and move in a whole new direction. Repentance may involve remorse for one’s sins, but that is only a tiny sliver of what the word implies.
And as for sin, that’s another loaded word. Many of us were taught that sin was our willful disobedience of God’s will. Many, if not most of us were taught that sin was about doing “bad things.” But again, if we look at the Greek word for sin we get a different image. The Greek word for sin is “hamartia,” and it means “to miss the mark.” It is an archery term. In ancient Greek it was the word used to describe when an archer missed their target. Sin wasn’t about being naughty or disobedient as much as it was about the human proclivity to mess up, to get things wrong, to cause hurt, pain, or destruction. Yes, you can intentionally miss the mark. That would count as willful sin, but most of the sin in our lives is not the product of us being willfully wicked. For most of us, the sins we deal with come in the midst of us trying to live our lives as best we can. They occur despite our best efforts. They occur because of the barren and broken parts of ourselves. And when they do occur because of our will, it is most often the case because we are trying too hard to exercise undue control over the world in which we live. We overreach and try to manipulate reality to suit our desires or purposes.
Jesus’ call to repentance is a call to embrace a different world view than the one popular in his day as well as ours. This scripture calls us to embrace a world in which we are adored by the Divine, it calls us to live in the now, and it calls us to recognize that we are fundamentally good in the eyes of God. This is even true when we are at the bottom of the barrel, when we are at our most broken and wounded state. This is even true when we have missed the mark in profound ways and have injured others and ourselves.
One of the reasons we have a season of Lent is to come to grips with our proclivity for missing the mark. It is a season where we get real about who and what we are. But another reason for this penitential season is to become all the more aware that the gardener is always at work tending us at our root. It is a season for us to become aware not only of our inherent sinfulness, but also that we are inherently the beloved of God.
When we repent in this way we may not avoid the violence and tragedies of this world, but we will live and die differently than most of the world. Living with a fearless sense of self that embraces our limitations and weaknesses frees us from trying to be perfect. We become free to be gracious with ourselves and others in a way that the temptation to control does not allow. We become not simply actors in this world bumping into one another for ill or for good. Instead, we unleash the potential for us to become agents of grace and reconciliation.
And so I invite you to join me in repentance. I invite you into a fearless self-examination and a willing embrace of how and where we miss the mark. I invite you also to the truth of our existence, that while we are limited and finite, and we all carry wounds and brokenness within us, we are also the beloved of God. I invite you to embrace that you are, in the eyes of God, both loved and lovely. I invite you to be that love for a broken and hurting world.