3 March 2013

“Making the Sign of the Cross … for one more year”
Luke 13:1-9
3 Lent C
3 March 2013


Here at this mid point in our Lenten journey, Making the Sign of the Cross … it’s appropriate for us to step back and take stock of where the Word has taken us so far.
We have Made the Sign of the Cross … in ashes.
When we’re tempted.
And in defiance.
And now, today, we come to perhaps the most difficult of all these Lenten words for us … as we

Make the Sign of the Cross … for one more year.

The Gospel Word is a text in two halves … first comes Jesus’ response to a couple of news items of the time, events which were surely a topic of daily conversation for people of that place and time. Pilate had killed some residents of Galilee as they came to make their sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem. This event is not noted anywhere else, but given the politics of Roman-occupied Judea, with an oppressive force trying to keep oppressed people in line ... well, it shouldn’t surprise us. Despotic governments today do the same, and worse. It was a big deal then, as it would be now... and that’s why it’s brought up to Jesus.
The second news event is not a human-caused disaster, but a “natural” one. People were killed when the Tower of Siloam – not a tall building, as we use that word “tower,” but more likely, some kind of a structure offering shade and shelter at the Pool of Siloam ... they were killed when, for some reason, it collapsed and fell on them. This event also isn’t noted anywhere else, but unlike Pilate’s actions, this sounds like an accident.
Yet ...yet it’s Jesus’ response to the news of the day that is most unnerving.

Unless you repent, you will perish just as they did.

And then ... in the second half of the text ... Jesus launches into a parable, this one, about a fig tree planted in a vineyard, an unfruitful fig tree which after three years should have been producing figs, but isn’t, so the vineyard owner wants to cut it down. The gardener intercedes on behalf of the fig tree, to give it one more year to be productive; but the lesson ends with a word of dire warning,

If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.

So what do we make of this strange two part juxtaposition of apparent cheerlessness, on this Sunday, this midpoint in our annual Lenten journey?
I can report to you what I have seen, and heard, over the years. Perhaps ... for those of you who have been this Way before, you will report the same. For those to whom this text comes fresh and new this year, here is a word of experience.
And my experience has been, given the time and season we’re in, when this text comes, every three years, this time in the season of Lent ... well, preachers preach it and we hear it as a harsh word about repentance. The conventional wisdom behind these words, is that it is a Word about how everyone needs to repent ... to turn around, to confess our sins before God, and to receive forgiveness. Here is a call and cry, we say, for us to stop playing “pin the sin on the sinner,” but instead, to realize that everyone ... everyone ... is in need of repentance ... and no one ... no one ... lives into life the way God calls us.
That’s the bad news. And the good news?
The Good News is that Jesus will give us “one more year” ... "time for amendment of life" as the old Confession and Forgiveness order put it ... Jesus the Gardener intercedes with his landowner Father who, by all right of the law, demands righteousness and justice. Jesus the Gardener gives us the blessed gift of time ... time to come to ourselves, time to repent of our unfruitfulness, our lack of faith ... time to repent and receive forgiveness, to be made over into fruitful, productive people, for Jesus’ sake and the sake of his reign.
As I said, that, in my experience, perhaps, likely, for those of you who have heard them before too, that is the usual way we receive these words.
But this year, here, now, we are exploring what it means to be called into Making the Sign of the Cross ... and the Word for us, through the Cross, is that God’s wisdom, to and for the world, is not the same as human wisdom; often, it’s the exact opposite of what we of the world would say.
The Sign of the Cross is Strength ... through what would be labeled weakness.
The Sign of the Cross is Goodness ... coming through suffering, and self-denial, those which the world says are bad, which we want to avoid at all costs.
And the Sign of the Cross is life ... coming through this symbol, this emblem, of death.
So that’s where we are going to go; in, with, and through this text, this morning.
Now ... and hear this clearly ... this is not to deny the Word this text has for us when we’re prideful, haughty, full of hubris ... making of ourselves that we don’t need God, that we haven’t done anything requiring our repentance; indeed, that we are “masters of our domain” and don’t need to apologize to anyone for our way of living life.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. Far from it. When we are like that ... and all of us are like that at one time or another ... we most certainly need to get knocked down off our self-exalting pedestals, and this Word is just the sledgehammer to do it. That is the work of God’s Law of righteousness and justice, after all; as a mirror, held up to our lives, to show our guilt and convict us.
But there is another Word here ... a Word for us when we are in a season of unfruitfulness ... because we simply don’t believe that we have it in us to be fruitful, in Christ; and so we don’t live lives which are blessings before the Lord for the sake of the world. We say that we’re too old or too young, too sick or too busy, too tired or too broke, too small or too timid in our witness ... that “Lutheran Laryngitis” has us in its grips ... to make anything of ourselves before God.
This is a text about people perishing, and indeed, there are many ways to perish. Some people suffer at the hands of the Pilates of the world, those who mingle their blood with their sacrifices; and some people have towers fall on them. Some people are responsible for their own suffering and death because they ate poorly or ingested harmful chemicals or they didn’t get enough exercise or they drove too fast and reckless ... and some people were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
And then ... then there are those who “never live until they die.” Those who, when they think about their life, their presence on earth, and believe of themselves that they don’t really amount to much. Those who go through the motions of life, putting in their time, every day, the same old dull routine; never questioning, nor examining “the way things are;” those who don’t engage, or connect, or live into the world around them. Those who say, “Well, I’ve done my share,” and then sit back to watch the world go by, day after day after day.
The spectators. Those on the sidelines.
Those who, if they thought about it, live daily into the words of this poem by Toyohiko Kagawa:

I read
In a book
That a man called
Christ
Went about doing good.
It is very disconcerting to me
That I am so easily
Satisfied
With just
Going about.

That, too, is perishing. Living an unfruitful, unfulfilled, unremarkable life.
And so ... from this, too, we are called to repent ... to turn around, to hear the truth about ourselves.
And that truth is ... God loves and cares for you; God made you for remarkable things; who, indeed, are you to claim otherwise?
God made you ... for being touched by the Sign of the Cross. In your own life, in the lives of others, people, the world, God made, and loves ... calling us, one and all, to watch, to see, ourselves, part of something larger than just ourselves, what we might say is our dull or humdrum daily existence. As a friend of mine once said, “In God’s world, if you are bored, you’re simply not paying attention.”
The Sign of the Cross is Christ’s touch to us, Christ’s saying to us, you are not insignificant, you were not put here merely to take up space, you are a beloved Child of God, one who God loves so much that I came and lived and gave, taught and preached and healed, suffered and died and was buried into this world which tries to pull everyone down ... but I beat that pulling down, that perishing, that bottomless pit called death, once and for all, so that you might have life; full, rich, abundant, the way God calls and desires all to have it, fruitful lives of significance; free of fear of what is to come, so that you can live fully engaged in the here and now.
And that brings us here and now fully into another Word ... that God made you for touching others in the Sign of the Cross.
The Sign of the Cross is not individual, “just me and Jesus,” exclusive and even, perhaps, excluding of others. Not at all. The Sign of the Cross is a inclusive, calling, gathering, welcoming, empowering sign ... a sign, the sign, of God's all-encompassing love for us in Jesus.
An all-encompassing love which washes over us, on which we are fed and blessed and filled;
An all-encompassing love which calls us into living in Christ’s joy, and peace, and hope for all the world.
An all-encompassing love which calls, no, impels and propels us; in this life, in this love from The Sign of the Cross, we do not keep all this to ourselves; we are called, and gathered together in this love to be sent ...
Sent to share this love, God’s love, in Christ, into the world where we live, and breathe, every day. God’s garden, God’s vineyard, full of the creation which God so desperately loves and wants and wills to be his place, his people, who bear much fruit, living into each other’s lives because that is the will of the Vineyard Owner and his beloved Gardener.
Friends, there are no spectators in this life of faith.
All are valued, all are loved, all are called into serving, sharing the gifts we each have been given for the sake of God’s good vineyard.
And the only way you’ll know what your gifts are, is to engage in the vineyard. To be willing to get your hands dirty along with the Gardener ... to plunge in, to communicate with others, to ask, to study, to pray, to worship, to discover your gifts for this season of working in God’s good vineyard.
For the Good News for us this day, is that everyone has a place, and a purpose, gifts to share, and fruit to bear, for the sake of this world God loves.
Yes, there are seasons ... seasons of work, and seasons of rest, but all are lived under the Sign of the Cross, calling us, compelling us, to live, one with and for another, one with and for the sake of the other, no one, just themselves, alone, apart;
... whether that’s for our own glory and justification ...

I work hard
I made my own life what it is
Let others do the same

... or in our sad isolation ...

My life has no purpose, no meaning
I have nothing I can share with others, no means to make the world a better place
I am tired, too young, too old, too small, too insignificant to make a difference

To us, to one, to all, this Word of the Sign of the Cross comes, comes to us to give us, and fill us, with life ...
Life where all are called, all are gathered, all are sent, together, one in God’s great vineyard of this life, one in the Sign of the Cross.
Together ... we are fed.
Together ... we are watered.
Together ... we are tended with loving care by our Gardener.
All, to bear much fruit, in serving and sharing into and for the sake of the world God loves, empowered to risk, daring to dream, living to love one another even as Jesus Christ loves us.
So Go And Bear That Good Fruit ... Much Good Fruit ... People of Nativity, people of new birth and new life, Go And Bear That Good Fruit Into the World God Loves.
Amen.