Living with Purpose: March 23

 Year C, Lent 3                                 Luke 13:1-9                                                                                                          One of my least favorite things about living near the coast of Virginia was the 3 month period when we were on alert for hurricanes.  Fortunately, in the 18 years that I lived there, we never had a devastating storm.  We had some bad ones, but none that caused severe damage or loss of life.  I was living in Norfolk, which is right next to Virginia Beach.  Virginia Beach was the home of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University, both founded by Pat Robertson.  The joke was that we didn’t have to worry about hurricanes because either Pat Robertson would pray the storm away, or it just wouldn’t affect us because of the moral leadership of Pat Robertson. 

We just got a small piece of the storm.

Robertson often linked disasters to the morality of the people in the places these  disasters affected. When an earthquake killed hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti, he said it was because they made a pact with the devil. When a hurricane threatened coastal Virginia, Robertson claimed that he prayed it away and God would never want to damage his Christian campus and ministry.  Instead, the hurricane hit North and South Carolina, killing 17 people there.

            Robertson is not the only Christian leader to make these kinds of connections.  However, before his death just a few years ago, he was one of the few who had his own television network and university to amplify his views.  There is a part of many of us that connects bad things that happen to what we have or have not done. Whether we admit it or not, we often connect good things with good people and bad things with bad people.  It drives us crazy when bad things happen to really good people. How many times have you said or heard someone say, “They didn’t deserve that.”  Consider the stories of people who give credit to God when they missed their flight on a plane that crashed. The implication is that God wanted that individual to live while letting the others die.  If you look at our Gospel reading today, you will hear Jesus addressing this question of why things happen to certain people and not others.  Unfortunately, he didn’t provide a very clear answer.

            It starts off clear. The people in his midst (probably a mix of disciples and onlookers) mentioned 2 recent incidents, one which was the deaths of a group of people at the hands of Pilate.   We know of Pilate as he was involved in Jesus’ death, but he was well known as being brutal with the Jewish people, quick to subdue any potential insurrection with violence.  When the people mentioned this incident, Jesus guessed that they were bringing this up because they wanted an explanation. Perhaps it was coming from a place of fear.  Were they next? Perhaps just curiosity. Have you ever noticed when something horrible happens, we are all desperate to find an explanation, partly to prevent other bad things happening, but also because we are wondering—how can we avoid this terrible thing from happening to us?  What can we tell ourselves to make us feel better?

            Jesus answered their non-question with a question: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you…” This answer probably made them feel a mix of relief and fear. If they thought they were more sinful then most, it was relief.  If they felt they were actually good people, they probably didn’t like this answer, because this meant they could do nothing to avoid horrible things happening to them.  So far, I like this answer by Jesus.  If I concluded that everything bad that has happened to me was connected to my sins and God’s anger about my sins—I would have a difficult time worshipping that kind of God and it would be a miserable way to live. 

Then Jesus goes on… and here is where things get murky.  “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”  This is a good example of why we can’t read the Bible literally. Obviously, not everyone who refused to repent was going to be killed by Pilate.  Pilate just didn’t have that kind of time.  However, it appears that he was saying that there will be consequences when we don’t repent.  That sounds a little scary. We have to be really careful not to make this into some kind of formula. Like, if you don’t repent, bad things happen.  It’s not that simple. We have all seen people who have gotten through life without there being any obvious consequences for their bad behavior.  But just because we don’t see the consequences doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

I believe what Jesus is doing here is shifting the perspective of the crowd.  They wanted this conversation to be about the sins of other people. It’s so much easier to judge other people then look at ourselves.  I think we all know that when we sin, there are consequences, sometimes to other people, sometimes to our planet, but most often to ourselves. When Jesus says, “unless you repent” it looks like a judgment or an ultimatum.  Yet what if we perceive repentance as an opportunity for us to examine our lives and ask for forgiveness?  So many people move through life carrying guilt and shame.  This is Jesus saying, you don’t have to carry that forever. You can repent and wipe the slate clean.  It’s not easy, but you can do it, with God’s help. 

A lot of people think that if we emphasize the God of love and compassion, then we can’t possibly talk about a God who judges or holds us accountable.  If you have a child or remember being a child, you know that life without consequences doesn’t help the child.  When a parent says no to their child or reprimands them, that doesn’t mean they don’t love their child. We are God’s children and God loves us so very much, but God wants us to be better, do better.

That is what the parable at the end of our Gospel is about as well. A fig tree is planted in a garden and after the appropriate amount of time, the owner of the fig tree sees that it’s not bearing fruit and decides to cut it down.  The gardener says, let’s give it some help (manure) and some more time and then we will cut it down if it doesn’t bear fruit.  There are consequences, but there is also grace.  When we find that our sin are building up and stop us from being the people that God want us to be, we can ask God for help and God is going to give us the help and the time we need.  But that doesn’t mean that God has no expectations on us or our behavior. 

There is urgency in this text because as we all know, life is far too fragile.  It’s so easy to put our relationship with God on the back burner because there are always more pressing demands on our time and energy.  What Jesus is doing here is encouraging a faith that is action oriented, a faith that bears fruit.   The fig tree had a purpose, to grow figs. Each one of us has a purpose as well.  It’s probably not always as clear as it is with a fruit tree, but we all have a purpose, one that contributes not just to our own life, but this world that we live in.

 If you are thinking, I don’t know what my purpose is. Loving God, loving your neighbor, sharing the love of God— that is a good place to start.  Having a purpose doesn’t mean we have a life plan that is all figured out. It means that we live with intention and hope. One thing I love about our faith is that Jesus tells us no matter who we are, what we do, how far along we are in our journey of faith, we have a reason for being.  We might not know our plan, but there is a plan. The closer we are to God, the closer we are to our purpose.

Politics and Church: March 16 2025

 Year C, Lent 2                              Luke 13:31-35                                                              

                 When I interviewed for my first ministry job almost 20 years ago, the rector asked me if I could avoid talking about politics from the pulpit.  This was a time when the Episcopal Church was really wrestling with the reality of gay marriage and ordained LGBTQ+ people. It was obvious to me that he wasn’t asking if I was going to preach about politics, he was asking if I was going to talk about controversial things that would upset people.  At the time, I probably had 10 sermons under my belt and I found it relatively easy to agree that I would not preach anything controversial.

Ever since then, I have been struggling with what that means…what it means when people talk about politics in the church.  The word political can mean a lot of things. It can mean something very general, like anything related to the government.  It can mean “the art of science of government.” For many people in means talking about our political leaders. Often when people use that word when talking about sermons, what they really mean is, “Are you going to say something that will upset me?”

For almost every interview for any church job, I have gotten some version of the question about how I handle politics in my preaching.  My answer goes something like this: “I preach the Biblical text. I am open to where the text and the Holy Spirit take me. Some people will perceive that as too political and some people will perceive it as not political enough.”

          The debate over politics from the pulpit is connected to the debate as to whether Jesus was political or not.  To me, that is who we should always return to when having these conversations. Unfortunately, we probably can’t agree on the answer to that question either. I bet we can all agree that Jesus shares whatever allegiance we associate with.  Are any of you voting with a political party you think Jesus would oppose? I didn’t think so.  I am pretty sure that no matter what congregation I asked that question to, no matter what their political affiliation would be, they would all be convinced they were voting with Jesus.

          Was Jesus political? It comes down to how you define politics.  If you are asking whether Jesus was critical of government officials or the actions of the government, the answer would be yes, he was political. We see that in our text today.  Herod was a leader appointed by the Roman government.  He was not popular with the Jewish people.

When the Pharisees told Jesus that he needed to leave the area because Herod was trying to kill him, Jesus said, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.”  Calling someone a fox was not a compliment.  In the Hebrew scriptures, foxes were described as destructive.  This was a critical statement of a political leader.  However, he didn’t say, “And here is a letter where I map about my recommendations about how to lead the government with more compassion.”  He wasn’t afraid to speak the truth, but he also didn’t seem overly concerned with Herod or what he was doing.  He basically said, I have more important things to do. I am casting out demons and curing people and no one will stop me from doing that.

          One of the things that we have to consider when we debate how political Jesus was or wasn’t is the kind of government they had in Israel at the time.  It was not a democracy.  They were being occupied by a foreign power, the Romans.  They couldn’t organize and get better people in leadership. No grass roots campaign was going to change the government. Their only option was a violent revolt which would have cost countless lives and have been unsuccessful.  We know this is true because 30 years after Jesus died and ten years before the Gospel of Luke was written, the Jews tried to overthrow the Romans and failed.  It was catastrophic for the Jewish people. The temple was destroyed, countless lives were lost and the Roman occupation became even more oppressive. 

Many people like to emphasize that Jesus was a revolutionary and that he was killed by the Roman government because they feared him. He was revolutionary when it came to many things, but there is no evidence that he supported overthrowing the Romans. The Romans were afraid of him because they didn’t understand him. They thought that anyone with the following and power he seemed to have would inevitably seek military power.  That was not who Jesus was.  He wasn’t a fierce animal. He wasn’t even a fox. He described himself as a mother hen longing to gather the children of God under his wings so he could protect them.  That is the kind of leader Jesus was.

The other thing we have to consider about this question is what was going on when the Gospel of Luke was written, because it was written about 40 years after Jesus died.  The Christian church was brand new.  At this point, it wasn’t being persecuted by the Romans and many people wanted to keep it that way.  It’s possible that Jesus was much more outspoken then what we read in the Gospels.  However, the author of Luke might have been trying to keep peace with the Romans and therefore didn’t focus on the negative things Jesus might have said. 

We have no way of knowing because the Gospels only contain a fraction of what Jesus said.  We could spend time hypothesizing on what a man like Jesus might have said about an oppressive Roman regime, or we could focus on what is recorded in the New Testament.

One thing that we can say for sure is that Jesus didn’t fear those in leadership.  He knew that he would die and he knew when it would happen. He wasn’t going to be threatened by people like Herod, even though Herod had killed his cousin for speaking against him.  (If you want a political preacher, look at John the Baptist.)

After Jesus left the desert where he was tempted by the devil, his very first public act was to go to the temple and read this verse from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” He then added: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, I am that person who will make these things happen.  He said a few more things alluding to the fact that gentiles would also be recipients of the good news and as a result the people listening tried to run him off a cliff.  That was this kind of thing that made Jesus revolutionary. It was his preaching and actions that showed God’s love and grace was for everyone, that everyone was worthy of God’s love.  That was one of the things that made people really angry.  Could we interpret this politically? I think we could and sometimes, we should.

If you are thinking, wait a minute, she didn’t actually answer the question, then you are kind of right.  What I am hoping is that we can all see the various sides of the argument, not so we can win the argument, but so we can understand one another. Because that is what we are missing in our political discourse today, understanding those who are different.  I am not even sure we are trying to understand. 

If Jesus was here now and was involved in politics, he would absolutely be talking to people who disagreed with him, he would even be loving them. The other thing he would be doing--he would be doing God’s work without any regard for what the current administration is doing.  The work might change a little depending on who is in charge---it might change a lot, but God’s work on earth can and will continue as long as we can endure.  And God’s people can endure. We have to endure.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he says, “But our citizenship is in heaven.”  That doesn’t mean that we stop worrying about what is happening on earth.  However, it does mean that we belong to something far greater than the United States of America.  We belong to the Kingdom of God, the one that we work to bring to earth and the one that awaits us in the next life.  Again, that doesn’t mean we stop working for justice on earth. It just means we have more reasons to hope, more reasons to endure and more reasons to love God and our neighbor.

Is it a Test or Temptation: March 9 2025

 Year C, Lent 1                                          Luke 4:1-13                                                         

            My son was in a Christian school for a few years and he would come home and tell me about the Bible stories that he really loved.  The school often used a show called Suberbook to reinforce the Bible teachings.   One day he came home and told me that his new favorite Bible story was Job.  This surprised me because Job is 42 chapters of suffering and people arguing about why God is allowing the suffering. 

Fortunately we were able to find the show on a streaming service and I realized why he liked it so much.  The Book of Job (the real one and the TV version) begins with a conversation between God and the Accuser. Many Bibles translate the Hebrew word to satan or the devil. The interesting thing about the cartoon is that they actually used the most accurate translation which is the Accuser. However, they took some artistic license when it came to the description of the Accuser. In the Bible, there is no physical description of the Accuser.  Since this is a children’s show, you can imagine how the Accuser is depicted---he’s a large winged creature with horns and fire coming out of his head and he can fly.  It definitely adds some drama to the story. 

This same winged creature returns in many different stories and the next place I saw it (we began to watch many of the shows) was the story we heard today, the story of Jesus in desert.  For many years we have spoken of the temptation in the desert and even the text that we read today used the word temptation.  However, many scholars today are saying that the better word is test.  Jesus wasn’t being tempted as much as he was being tested. The difference is subtle, but it’s important.

            Right before Jesus was led into the desert, he was baptized by John.  A voice came out of heaven and said, “You are my son, the beloved…”  Right after that, there is a little digression and the chapter ends with the genealogy of Jesus. The genealogy starts with Joseph and includes, King David, Abraham and ends with Adam…the first human.   What was the point of this digression?  Well there are several reasons for it, but the one that I find most relevant for today is that it showed that Jesus was not only the son of God, he was the son of man. He was both human and divine.

            A lot of people look at this story of Jesus in the wilderness and conclude that it provides some sort of model for how we are to avoid temptations, perhaps by quoting scripture as Jesus did. While it’s true that Jesus is meant to be an example for Christians, I am not sure that is the best takeaway from this story.  Consider the first test.  The devil asked that Jesus command rocks to become bread.   Here is a good example of why temptation is not the right word. If the devil was tempting Jesus, he would have handed him a loaf of warm bread and encouraged him to eat it.  But that’s not what the devil did, he asked him to perform a magic trick in order to satiate his hunger. Jesus refused and told the devil that life is more than your temporal needs. It also teaches us that Jesus would never perform a miracle just to prove a point or satisfy his own needs.

            The next test was an offer to give Jesus power and glory over all the kingdoms of the earth if only he worship the devil.  This one is a real head scratcher because Jesus is God and already has more power than anyone else, so this seems like a easy test.  Of course he wouldn’t worship anyone other than God. The 3^rd test is a little more complicated.  It takes place on the pinnacle of the temple, which is an important place in the Gospel of Luke.  The temple is the center of religious life, it’s where God is most present. The devil asks Jesus to throw himself down from the temple because the angels will save him.  Being the Son of God, means that God will protect him.  Not even a stubbed toe. 

This one is the most obvious test (as opposed to temptation). Jesus is being asked to prove that he in invulnerable. Nothing can hurt him because God won’t allow it.  As the reader (even though I know the end of the story) this is the test that I most desperately want to chime in on.  Jesus could prove his power, in front of not only the symbol of all evil, but every person near the temple.  This would have guaranteed that people would have gotten on board with his divinity. This would have been the most effective marketing campaign to prove Jesus was the son of God. Once again, he refused to take the easy way out. 

These tests weren’t really tests of Jesus’ power.  They were tests of his identity.  What kind of Messiah would he be? Would he win people over with displays of power and might from on high? Would he make deals with the devil? Would he take the easy way out? No. Again and again, he said no. Not only was he the Son of God, he was the Son of Man and he would prove that over and over again.  In doing so, he identified himself with humanity.  Humans don’t have infinite power.  We can’t create bread when we are hungry. When we fall, we get hurt.  He accepted the very same vulnerability that we all share.  He proved what kind of Messiah he would be.

The last line of our Gospel text is a little anticlimactic. It says, “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.”  Now, if I got to choose how this ended, it would have ended something like this: “Jesus passed all the tests and the devil left him never to return again. Evil was conquered.” Alas, no one has asked me for my edits on the Bible because I have a few.  What Luke is telling us is that the test wasn’t over for Jesus, or for his disciples. He continued to be tested for the rest of his earthly life.  He was continually tested on what kind of Messiah he would be.  He always chose the path of the messiah who identified with the vulnerable and the weak. He chose humanity every time.

As Christians, we are continually tested as well. The test we face daily is how we will live our identity as followers of Jesus Christ. Do we take the path of least resistance and easy answers? Do we align ourselves with the powerful and mighty or with the vulnerable and scared?

Because here’s the thing, evil hasn’t given up.  Evil is all too present and when it goes unchallenged, it grows and we confuse it with success or might…sometimes even faith.  That’s why it helps to affirm our identity as followers of Christ every day.  You don’t have to say it out loud, but make sure you hold on to that affirmation as tightly as possible. That’s where we find courage. That is where we find power. That is where we find mercy and grace.