Eat, Drink, Breathe
Lent 3C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live” says the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 55:3). “Unless you repent you will perish,’ Jesus said (Luke 13:1-5). These words invite us to relationship and to wholeness. Yet often our hearts and minds spin these words into an implied judgement and use them to sow fear.
If God is good, why do bad things happen to good people? Which of us has not felt the pain of isolation, humiliation, failure, tragedy, or illness and wondered why? We seem almost hardwired to search for answers. As pastor, it’s one of the most persistent questions I deal with—that you struggle with. Of course, it doesn’t help that fear of God’s wrath has so often been cynically manipulated by religious leaders to fill pews and offering plates.
We are not alone in this fear. For two thousand years, questions of theodicy have plagued Christianity, and for two thousand years, we Christians have failed to find answers that satisfy us. Everything in us longs to make sense of the senseless. This question also haunted our Jewish ancestors in faith. In our gospel Jesus addresses an audience wondering aloud about whether the victims of a recent tragedy might have done something to deserve their fate. Was God punishing them for their misdeeds?
The stories are ripped from ancient headlines. Pontius Pilate ordered Galilean pilgrims to be killed in the courtyard of the Temple. It was a shocking defilement of both those poor Jews and the Temple itself. Pilate gets sympathetic treatment in our gospel. Yet hated Pilate was so brutal that the emperor Tiberius removed him from office and recalled him to Rome. He put Pilate on trial for a genocidal attack on a Samaritan village.
The tragic tower collapse, Jesus mentioned, which killed 18 people, might have been related to Pilate’s great public works project at the time — the construction of a new aqueduct. Pilate stole from Jerusalem’s treasury to build it and had (mostly likely) used slave labor to make it happen. The people in Jerusalem rioted. Historians suggest the tower collapse was an act of sabotage—either by Pilate himself (to keep the workers in line) or angry citizens attempting to stop the entire thing (in which case, it would have involved political suicide). (Diana Butler Bass, “Graveyard or Vineyard,” Sunday Musings, 3/19/22)
The little child we always carry in us supposes the answer that explains every tragic event must be personal. Did victims deserve their fate? Did I cause my misfortune because I was bad? The answer of course is no. No one who dies tragically, or who suffers an illness, or is the victim of an accident is more or less of an offender than anyone else.
Jesus reframed the question. Poet and healer Pádraig Ó Tuama, wrote a beautiful book of narrative theology which helps free our heart and mind from the well-worn groove leading to recrimination and shame. The title echoes our mission statement. It’s called, In the Shelter: Finding Welcome in the Here and Now. Ó Tuama describes the Buddhist concept of “mu,” or un-asking. When we ask a question that’s too small, or confining the answer is this word mu, which means, “Un-ask the question, because there’s a better question to be asked.” A wiser question, a deeper question, a truer question. A question that expands possibility, and resists fear. “Stop. Take a beat. Catch your breath. Stop your mind, your prayers of endless words, and listen. ‘Mu.’ (Debi Thomas, “What Are You Asking?” Journey with Jesus, 3/13/22)
Jesus helps us interrogate our suffering with better questions. There’s a deep hunger and thirst in all of us, says the Psalmist (63:1) for this week, a palpable longing for human nourishment that no amount of power or money, or success can satisfy. We return to Jesus’ warning: “Unless you repent, you will perish.” The word is metanoia. It means doing a 180. It is a turning around. It is a transformation of heart and mind through participation in the body of Christ.
Mu. To reframe the people’s doubts with better questions, Jesus tells a story contrasting the murderous reign of Pilate with a garden containing a certain unfruitful fig tree. The owner orders the gardener to cut it down. But instead of taking an ax to it, the gardener begs, “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” (Luke 13:8-9).
Let anyone with ears listen. The landowner threatening your life with an ax isn’t fate, and it certainly isn’t an angry God. The landowner is all earthly tyrants. The landowner is Pilate. The landowner is Herod. The landowner is Caesar. The landowner is anyone in authority destroying people and trees, anyone who undermines the rule of law, anyone who seeks to profit at the expense of God’s creation. (Butler Bass). It is the bitter legacy of such tyrants to make us less safe; less wealthy, less fair, less free, less truthful, less innovative, less happy, less just, less creative, less resilient, less healthy. less knowledgeable, less competent, less efficient, and less great.
Mu. Ask a better question. “In what ways am I like the absentee landowner, standing apart from where life and death actually happen? How am I refusing to get my hands dirty? Where in my life — or in the lives of others — have I prematurely called it quits, saying, “There’s no life here worth cultivating. Cut it down.” (Thomas)
Or ask yourself, in what ways am I like the gardener? Where in my life am I willing to accept Jesus’s invitation to go elbow-deep into the muck and manure? Am I brave enough to sacrifice time, effort, love, and hope into this tree — this relationship, this cause, this tragedy, this injustice — with no guarantee of a fruitful outcome? (Thomas)
Or ask yourself, in what ways am I like the fig tree? Un-enlivened? Un-nourished? Unable or unwilling to nourish others? Ignored or dismissed? What kinds of tending would it take to bring me back to life? Am I willing to receive such intimate, consequential care? Will I consent to change? Have I forgotten that the same patient God who gives me another year to thrive will also someday call me to account?” (Thomas)
Mu. Repent –turn around. See what I have shown you. See, I have prepared a new mind, a new heart, and new way to live with each other. It is the way of abundance to enjoy the fruit of the garden. This isn’t a moralistic judgment. It’s a tragic statement of fact. Yes, this bad news is actually good news. It’s good news because the warning comes with Isaiah’s invitation: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.”
