Lots of Things Can Be Medicine
It is good to be back here with you this morning. For our visitors and newcomers to the community, let me back up and provide a little context. I returned on Sunday night from the adventure of a lifetime, spending 11 days touring sites throughout Israel, a pilgrim’s journey to experience the places Jesus might have walked and to understand the ancient backdrop of the stories of David and Saul, Joshua at Jericho and even Abraham climbing a mountain when commanded to sacrifice his son. I took roughly 1500 photos, journaled the adventure daily, and have a lifetime of experience to unpack.
The Holy Land is sometimes referred to as the fifth gospel – its geography, history, lore, languages, food, landscape and tradition are important context for understanding all of scripture – our new Testament as well as the Hebrew Scriptures and really, much of the Koran. As Methodists, we believe experience is a vital part of how we understand and know God – and so to walk in these spaces was an opportunity to store up experiences that will help me read scripture, pray, serve, witness and hear from the Holy Spirit in new ways.
Many of you have asked about the trip, told me you looked forward to hearing more about it this Sunday. I wish there was one sound-byte that came to the surface and made perfect sense….that could be told in about 10 minutes time. But it is so much more complicated than that. I pray that instead, my experience is now part of my very being. Instead of telling a story, my prayer is that the experience is part of the story I carry with me each day, and into each preaching opportunity. There will be times the stories are more evident. I promise.
Today, I am stepping onto a road with you that you have already traveled for a couple of weeks – this road where, amidst the sometimes discipline-shaped season of lent, we are seeking to understand what it means to be good enough. As I join you on this journey, I had to back up and get my bearings. I had to adopt the lenses that Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie offer in their book, Good Enough. It is through those lenses that we are exploring the lessons of scripture throughout the season.
We live in a society at a time when authors and manufacturers, trainers and teachers are all ready to offer us the perfect solution to make our human lives better or best. And sometimes our faith walk becomes a life of striving…that actually causes us to be too busy or too stressed out to walk the path before us and encounter God with us along the way.
But Bowler and Richie really call us to remember that God created us and God is with us in the midst of our real and imperfect lives. Rather than spending Lent piling on greater and greater expectations that we have to be more and do more, they are inviting us to recognize the places God is at work in us and through us and with us even in the messiness.
With all of that backdrop, let’s look at our text from Luke’s gospel. This text falls amidst a long series of teachings Jesus is offering to a growing crowd of followers, presumably as he travels throughout the region of Galilee.
The scripture we’ve heard begins with Jesus responding to some who have presented him with vexing news about Galileans, perhaps neighbors, who have died at the hands of the oppressor Pilate. And Jesus assures them that these deaths were not because the people were somehow deserving of punishment. He goes on to compare it to a presumed natural disaster – a tower that has fallen, perhaps in an earthquake, killing 18. Those 18 were not guilty or somehow more deserving of death either. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jesus is reminding them that not everything happens for a reason – woof. How many times have we heard THAT idea mis quoted in the midst of tragedy – God needed another angel. Everything happens for a reason. God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. Right here – Jesus is teaching that bad things happen. And not for cause.
BUT…he immediately says, “unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
Huh? Wait a minute.
From here he launches into a short parable. One of the really helpful elements of my travels through the region of Galilee was an understanding of the landscape and the agricultural nature of the economy there. In contrast to the desert of the Judean wilderness further south, Galilee is rather lush, with a little more rainfall and ground sources of clean, fresh water so that crops might grow.
It is in this environment that Jesus tells the story of a landowner who eyeballs a fruitless fig and demands it be cut down. Space in the productive garden is at a premium. There is no room for the unproductive plant – especially figs that tend to sprawl a bit.
The gardener, someone who would probably pride himself on coaxing the best from what he grows, suggests and alternate plan – let me give this fig some more attention. I’ll aerate its roots, ply it with some fresh manure from the sheep pen, and maybe next year we can watch the figs grow.
That is where the conversation ends. We don’t know whether the landowner agrees. We don’t know if the gardener succeeds.
Now we have two abrupt cliffhangers in one reading:
Folks don’t die because they are bad, but you should repent lest something happens to you.
And..
The fig has been unproductive, but maybe it would produce with a little TLC, and by the way, that TLC involves physical labor and fragrant manure, a byproduct of life, something less than tidy. But, we don’t really know what happens to the fig.
Often, we read texts from the revised common lectionary – texts selected by scholars to be read in certain seasons of the year – through the lens of a traditional theme for the season. There is no doubt that the word “repent” is a key reason this text has landed in week three of Lenten readings. Traditionally, Lent has been as season of remembering our less than perfect nature and trying to fix it.
But beyond the season as a lens, it is important to look at the lens that Luke uses throughout his writing.
If we look across Jesus’ teaching for an overarching thematic in Luke’s gospel, we find two important lenses – the first is a preference for the poor – the poor in spirit, the oppressed, the economically challenged, those with illness. The second is an ongoing declaration that radical inclusion is vital to the practices of discipleship.
So I want us to keep those lenses in mind here in addition to the lens of repentance so vital to Lent. AND I think we can hold onto this idea of “good enough” here as well.
What if Jesus is receiving all of the anxiety about doing right and wrong, about being law abiding verses being sinful, about being productive and being unproductive without much distinction. As in…no matter what, you should be repentant.
Where “repentance” is the concept of metanoia – which really means to change one’s way of life, to change one’s mind, or to TURN toward God. Something we are all called to do on an ongoing basis.
Because it is the right thing to do, and because God calls us back, not because it is going to make life perfect, beautiful, productive.
And what if all that crap going on around you is actually vitally enhancing the soil in which you have been set to grow? What if all the imperfect stuff around you is actually the very thing that feeds your growth and helps you be fruitful in seasons to come?
I’m a pretty big fan of both of these ideas, in part because as I look back over my own life, I can see how some of my lowest life moments actually nurtured in me a more robust and faithful heart. I can see how the hard times, the bad choices, the utter chaos caused me to lean into God differently. And over the years, those same moments had help me to be deeply rooted in God’s love so that I could love others well.
I want to end today with a poem from Steve Garnaas-Holmes, entitled "The Abolition of Deserving," writing about this same text this week:
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Because things happen.
God is not an algorithm.
Did the eighteen people crushed by the wall
deserve their death? No.
Does the struggling tree deserve to be cut down? No.
Jesus dispenses with the idea—
the demonic lie—of deserving.
There is no such thing.
God is not bound to the past
and our performance in it;
God is in the present moment.
God is not a cashier,
dispensing what we've earned.
God is life, and the giving of life, and nothing else.
No compromise. No conditions.
There is no “deserving.”
It is the lie of Satan, luring you into the past,
into fear, into bondage. It does not give life.
God's will is not what you deserve,
but what you need.
Regardless of the accidents that befall you,
regardless of evil you do or the evil you suffer,
God's will is to offer what you need to live fruitfully,
which is always mercy.
A tree that is not fruitful needs nourishing.
A person who is not righteous needs healing.
A son who has distanced himself needs family.
People who crucify need forgiveness.
A Beloved who has died needs resurrecting.
Dare to abandon your calculations
and its illusion of control.
From Life there is only the giving of life.
Receive, and you will have fruits to give.
May it be so.
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