3 rd Sunday of Lent Sermon

Transcription

1 3 rd Sunday of Lent Sermon Isaiah 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. 2 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. 3 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. 4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 5 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. 6 Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7 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. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 9 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. 2 He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 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? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." 6 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. 7 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?' 8 He replied, "Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.' " Perishing as they did would be to perish under a cloud of accusation. Perishing just as they did would be to perish under the suspicion that those who perish horribly, brutally, actually deserve it. This way of thinking is what the people were to repent of. This way of thinking that those who suffer, even die ingloriously, in fact deserve it is the thing of which those some who were present were to repent. To repent is to change your thinking, to enlarge your thinking. To repent is to change your mind, to think again and this time bigger. Repentance is, in Greek, metanoia that is, -noia, which is knowledge, and meta-, which is that which is beyond or before. Metanoia, then, repentance is to approach the sort of knowing that is grand in its vision and understanding, to approach the sort of knowing that is as God s full knowing. For God s ways are not our ways of cause and effect, of just 1

2 desserts; and God s thoughts are not our thoughts, that you get what you deserve so you must deserve what you got. We likely hear repentance as a guilty-making exercise and there is something to that. To fully see, to fully know and understand, to bring wisdom to your assessing: this is also to see where you have indeed been guilty, where I have not done what I ought to have done or where I ve done what I ought not to have. To repent is to admit something painful, even shameful, about yourself, to admit it, to let it in. But it s also to recognize the why of it, the circumstances that gave rise to it, the larger context in which the wrong-doing took form and place. Repentance recognizes and lets in both what you did but also what you were up against in doing it, and this can then lead to recognition as to what to do about it all, how to make things right where you ve made them wrong, how to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. But that s not all repentance is. It s more broadly and fundamentally a change of mind for the more grand and insightful. It s a move toward wisdom and away from blame. Because, what do you think, that those whom Pilate had killed and while they were at worship, while they were making sacrifice at the altar actually deserved to meet that fate, were actually worse than the other Galileans? Because if that s what you think, then, when you meet with some terrible fate, you should expect that those who survive you will have similar thoughts about you: that you deserved it unless, of course, you change your mind of such simplistic thinking. Really, you should expect to perish just as they perished, under the shadow of accusation unless you repent of such thinking. It starts with you. It starts here. Because, what do you think, that those who died in the stupid accident of a tower falling on them actually deserved to have a tower fall on them? That this was part of God s plan because everything happens for a reason? Then you should expect that, when some stupid accident befalls you, causing you to suffer, causing you some terrible loss, those in your life will secretly know, and will speak of it in hushed tones or in hollered tones, that you probably did something to deserve it unless, of course, you repent of this sort of just desserts thinking because such changes of mind and understanding have to start with you. Yeah, otherwise, you should expect to 2

3 perish just as those under the fallen tower perished, under some similarly heavy suspicion that a tower crushing them is what they deserved, is really God s justice, is a Galilean version of karma. Really, stop thinking this way or expect that this way will be thought about you. Because, what do you think, that six-year-old twins who perish in a house-fire along with their father in their mobile home along Onota Lake deserved to die, didn t deserve to get out which they were trying to, found as they were by a window? What do you think, that this was fiery justice, that those six-year-olds had done something wrong and this was God s way of making it right? No. Of course you don t think that. No one does and we might have the gospel of Jesus Christ to thank for that. As to how we behave? A highlight of my workweek has fast become a weekly group at Gould Farm that Lisanne convenes, a R.E.A.C.H. group that is part of the recovery work at the farm. These groups can be about anything, a six-week course on whatever the convener choses as long as it contributes to peoples recovery a walking group, a painting group, a poetry group, a spirituality group, several offered at a time for any member of the community to choose one from. This one is a spirituality group, this week we considered the practice of compassion, and we listened to Karen Armstrong make a case for it, which she has spent the last decade doing on her Compassion Project, an interreligious, inter-faith, inter-personal global initiative making the case for compassion as a transformative emotion, frame of mind, and practice. Ms. Armstrong has a story about the genesis of this conviction. When she was a graduate student at Oxford, she enjoyed her sharp mind and an even sharper tongue. It was the way of academics, the way intellectual rigor engages. It s also a way of protecting yourself. When she was studying an ancient Islamic text, though, she came across a footnote somewhere that spoke of the science of compassion, and bringing this science to this sort of study. She let the phrase sit with her for a while the science of compassion because it seemed so strange. After all, compassion isn t a science, or at least not as we typically think of what science is. But the Latin word for science, sciencia, is knowledge, so what this footnote was getting at is the necessity of a modern, Western scholar of ancient religious texts to take on the knowledge that 3

4 compassion lends, which is the knowledge of what would have given rise to that ancient text in the first place. It would not suffice for a modern scholar to read, say, The Cloud of Unknowing, a 13- century Christian mystical text, from the set of assumptions and understandings of 21 st century Oxford. This would be to grossly misunderstand the book, to consign it to infantile nonsense. The cool-minded way of modern scholarship has little relevant place in the ecstatic writing of a medieval mystic. So, the scholar has to take on the mind of the writer as best can be done, to feel for what the writer was doing, to empathize with what experience the writer was trying to convey. This is the science, the knowledge, of compassion. And if scholars of history in its various forms can t or don t practice this science, then what they ll come to think they know about what they ve been studying won t be knowledge but puffed-up, arrogant foolishness. As for Ms. Armstrong, when she was more able to do this, her scholarship became truer, but more crucially her way in the world suddenly became more urgent. Her sharp tongue, amusing as it was to deploy, suddenly wouldn t do, not usually anyway. Suddenly, she would be about something else. She quit strict academia and become something more applied in the world. Ms. Armstrong claims that compassion is feeling for someone else or feeling with someone else what Paul urged in his letter to the Romans that the church should do, rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep, which seems about right to me (in case Paul and Karen Armstrong haven t convinced you). Compassion means suffering with-. Com- is the prefix that indicates together or jointly, and passion comes to us from the Latin passio, which is suffering as in Christ s passion meaning the trial and crucifixion of Christ, the suffering of Christ; or as in your passion as that thing in your life for which you re willing to suffer, for which you re willing to forgo things that are in conflict with that even if they d otherwise bring you pleasure or belonging, or as in your passion as that which you wouldn t choose, you haven t chosen, but the thing that you suffer no matter how much you might will it otherwise. Com-passion, then, is the willingness and practice of suffering with someone else, of joining in some other s suffering as might ease it, eliminate it, or rejoice in it when it pays off. And this makes it even more challenging than plain old passion because the last thing in the world many of us would do is admit our own suffering, that is, to let it in to our 4

5 consciousness, to our acknowledged experience. The last thing in the world many of us would do is admit that this whole thing is rather difficult and has us quite often feeling defeated. And if we re not about to admit our own suffering, why on earth would we allow anyone else s in? Of course, there s some dispute that suffering is so essentially a human thing at all. There are whole philosophies that cast suffering as something you can opt out of, can practice your way free of. Suffering, it s thought in these, is about attachment, attachment to certain outcomes, attachment to some permanence though the world is all about impermanence. And I ll admit I always hear that sagacity as unhelpful, if not untrue, because I m not looking to become detached from that to which I am attached. I m not looking to take a cooler head to things that I d otherwise approach with hot embrace, even if at the risk of getting burned. The other day, on my walk, one of the dogs went missing for some time, which is unlike her. We Goodmans have suffered this before, our Lucy, with her wanderlust, going missing, never to come home. But Brigitta isn t like that, and while I retraced my steps up October Mountain to the reservoir, I checked in with myself. Can I do this again? Can I lose another dog? And emotion would rise in me, and I d talk myself out of it. It s just a dog. I can do this. If I lose another dog, I ll be okay. I ll get back to my day. I ll get back to my life. There s nothing I can do. If she s gone, she s gone. But this felt to be steering me in a direction I didn t want go in, to a place where I didn t want to live. I wanted to feel the possible loss of this, the increasingly apparent heartbreak of this or rather I knew I would feel the loss of this unless I talked myself into something otherwise. And this I didn t want. I didn t want to be cool amidst such a situation as this might turn out to be. I didn t want to attain a detachment from Brigitta, to whom I m actually quite attached. It s not that I wanted to suffer this, it s that I didn t want not to suffer this if the truth was I would suffer this terribly. I found her, after about a half hour of searching. Having turned a corner in the road to see her seeming confused as to whether to go up the mountain or down, as to whether the other dogs and I would still be heading up on our walk or would already have reached up and would now be going back down, I was overjoyed at seeing her, as she was me. She broke into a sprint and I kneeled down to embrace her. 5

6 She ran past me, of course. She s a terrier, after all. It s not like she s a retriever. (Suck ups.) But then she circled back, and ran around me again, almost playing a game before we headed toward home. Ecstatic, hot with relief, though also soaked from the wet snow falling, would I want it any other way? I don t mean to throw shade on those other philosophies, which I hardly know anything about and could therefore be getting wrong. But I do mean to throw shade on how that detachment might be won. We can talk ourselves out of caring. We can attack our own suffering until it s something else altogether. Resignation? Cynicism? Resentment? Rage? Something that points outward instead of in? Likewise, we can attack other people s suffering, which is what we often do like those Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices: I wonder what they did? It must have been bad. Or like those Muslims who were at worship in Christchurch? They shouldn t have been there in the first place, should have gone back to where they came from before it was too late. Or like that one who was supposed to be the Messiah of God but who ended up crucified like so many other criminal losers? Clearly he did something to deserve it, no need to spend too much time on wondering what because that s how the world works, right? Everyone gets what they deserve, which means we have some control over what fortune befalls us, because we can just not do the thing that gets you crucified (or crushed); we can just stay where we belong and keep our heads down. At least then we ll make it out alive, make it out free of all suffering. As for whatever happens to everyone else, well, that s everyone else s problem. This. This is what we need to repent of. This is what we need to stretch our minds and imaginations out beyond otherwise this is what will eventually come to us to suffer, not just ordinary (if intense) pain, and common (if heartbreaking) loss, but then also the isolating suspicion that we re getting what we deserve, and that everyone should stay away from us each in case more pieces of that tower are yet to fall, in case the lightening strike of suffering might strike this same place again. We ve turned the corner in the narrative path of the gospel. We ve turned the corner from following Jesus amidst his itinerant ministry to following him on a (if wandering) path to Jerusalem. Here, of course, he would meet his passion, but we re a bit of time away from that. 6

7 We re yet amidst his teaching about his passion, as if Jesus meant to give the people time for this puzzle to sink in that the Savior of the world would suffer amidst the world, would be punished for crimes that would amount to simply not living according to the dictates of terror and intimidation in the world, that he would suffer in such a way that he didn t deserve. The people, then, should begin their practice of this new thinking. They should begin their practice of compassion that would have them know otherwise. And it would take time, making them like the fig tree that wasn t yet bearing fruit, and would then always gets one more year for it to finally bear fruit or else it would be cut down. Next year, then. Next year, says the gardener knowing (I like to think) that the would always be a next year for the tree to get another chance. We ve entered into the new normal of Lent. Holy Week is yet a few weeks away, but we re in different terrain than we were when it was Epiphany, when the question before us was who Jesus is and why he s come to us. Now, the question is about the cross how can it be as God s grace to us? How can this ancient form of torture of an individual, terror to a whole group, and capital punishment for a government that exercised power ferociously, also be a revelation of God s will? How can the cross be the ultimate sign of God s intent in the world, way in the world a taking on of its pain and shame that such things might ultimately come to nothing in face of life that will not quit and love that favors the other over the self? Well, that s how. And it s by a willingness to practice compassion that its victory will won in the world as in the reign of God. There are those who ran from the cross, and there are those who stayed. As we travel the liturgical path to Easter, we might wonder which we d be. As we move through today this very day we will doubtless meet Christ crucified in some form and we ll be given the chance to know. As for tomorrow, what good fruit of compassion we fall short of giving today, there are yet buds on the branch that the gardener tends for next time. Thanks be to God. 7