Third Sunday in Lent

March 6-7, 2010

“Repentance”

Luke 13:1-9

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our heavenly Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Disaster comes in many ways; this we know if we pay any attention to the evening news or the morning paper. Some disasters are man-made; others are natural. We have seen such things twice in recent memory, with massive earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Our own country has been hit by terribly destructive hurricanes and tornadoes just in the past few years. These things are an all-too common occurrence, along with others. Tsunamis rearrange shorelines, dams give way, bridges collapse, death tolls rise in politically unstable countries, and in the man-made category, terrorism is an ever-present threat against human safety, whether its radical Islamic violence against others, or the random fanatic flying his plane into an office building because of his hatred toward the government. These events remind us of our mortality, and can make us wonder what will happen next.

And how do we deal with all this? Some people literally hide in their houses and refuse to go out into the world. Others move to places where natural disasters are less likely to happen, although that’s no guarantee that they won’t. Most of us probably do what we can to make things as safe as possible, and then live our lives at a risk level that we can tolerate. It’s impossible to be completely safe from natural disaster; live almost anywhere in the country, and you’ll be somewhat at risk for something, whether earthquake, tornado, flood, or hurricane. It is a delusion to think we can safe-guard ourselves against anything and everything.

Many times, disasters lead to denial. That terrible thing happened to those people in a far-off place, but it would never happen to us. We search for reasons to believe that these disasters cannot happen to us, that we are excluded from all danger for some reason. The people who came to inform Jesus about the tragedy in the temple seemed to be thinking that way. As St. Luke tells us, “There were some present at that very time who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” These people wanted some word, some reassurance, from Jesus that would explain this tragedy away somehow. They wanted assurance that such a horrible atrocity would never happen to them; that there must be a reason it happened to those particular Galileans.

And in truth, it is hard for us in our 21^st century, western mindset to understand anything about this event. We know from sources outside the Bible that Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, actually lived on the shores of the Mediterranean, and generally only came to Jerusalem during times of potential instability, such as Passover or other Jewish holy days. It appears that he really didn’t care much for Jerusalem, viewing it as a sort of second-class outpost; certainly not a place where he could gain prestige within the empire. We also know that all sacrifices took place on the altar of the temple in Jerusalem. Jewish men were permitted to come near the altar only during special times; for the rest of the year, that space was restricted to just the priests. It was always absolutely forbidden to Gentiles. This means that Pilate specifically ordered his soldiers to defile the holy space of the temple during a holy time of the year and kill some innocent pilgrims from Galilee while they were preparing their sacrifices at the altar. It’s likely they were even preparing their lambs in order to celebrate the Passover. What Pilate did was horribly evil and profane; it just doesn’t get much worse than this.

The thinking of the day in connection with this tragedy was that those Galileans must have sinned in some terrible way, and this was a special judgment from God against them. After all, surely God would never allow such a thing to befall pious, faithful pilgrims to the holy city, people who were simply following God’s own instructions in the Law. There had to be a reason that God allowed the Gentile Romans to commit such atrocious crimes in His holy temple. But then, isn’t that still the mindset of people today? We want to believe that tragedies afflict others because they are reckless, ignorant, or blatantly disobedient to God. We want to believe that we are somehow superior to those who experience disasters. In this way, we deceive ourselves into thinking it can never happen to us.

And Jesus, in His mercy, wanted to bring comfort to the people in our Gospel lesson, but before He could do that, He had to hit them with a dose of reality. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” These incidents of suffering and tragedy are not signs of God’s judgment against individuals, or specific locations, but of His wrath against sin everywhere. The Galileans murdered in the temple were not morally inferior to other Galileans; those who died when the tower fell on them were not worse people than anyone else. As much as we may like to think of categories of sin, all human beings are equally sinful before God. Tragic accidents can strike anyone, anywhere, and none, including God’s own people, are exempt from that.

The stark reality, morbid as it sounds, is that we all have an appointment with death, and none of us knows when it is. We are all on a road that leads us, sooner or later, to the judgment seat of God. And so, Jesus calls for us to prepare for this meeting in repentance. All who arrive at that judgment seat with unrepentant hearts will be lost forever, and there is no greater tragedy than that.

In the first step of repentance, the Holy Spirit teaches us that we are sinful and unclean, that we have sinned against God in thought, word, and deed, that we deserve nothing but punishment for those sins, both here in time and in eternity. Repentance begins by expressing a sincere sorrow for our sins. But it is not enough to merely be sorry. Repentance goes beyond sorrow to faith in Jesus Christ.

Christ wants to represent us before the throne of God. He has already walked the road to death and taken the punishment for our sins on Himself. By His resurrection, He has created a pathway through death into eternal life. He offers us the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation that He won for us on the cross, and He offers us the life everlasting gained for us when He rose from the dead. Jesus calls us to repent and believe in Him, with the warning, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

In fact, this teaching of repentance is so important, He followed up on what He had said about those two disasters with a story about repentance in the parable of the fig tree. In the parable, those who bear the fruit of repentance are those who have faith and will be spared destruction in the end. And God is merciful and patient, not wanting any to be lost, but granting more time for repentance and faith.

So that makes three times Jesus gives a call to repentance in a relatively short Gospel lesson today. Repetition means something is important, and clearly, repentance is the important theme of this text. In fact, it is a continuous theme throughout all of the Scriptures of both the Old Testament and the New. The prophet Ezekiel spoke of the wicked turning away from their sin in our first lesson; turning from wickedness to the way of life.

And so, in a world of uncertainty, disaster, and seemingly random tragedy, our great comfort is that the Holy Spirit works in us to give us salvation and peace with God. He gives us faith, and produces a life of repentance that is one of the fruits of faith. Through His Word and Sacraments, God comes to us in grace and mercy to provide the way of salvation and righteousness for those who repent and turn to Him. For it is through repentance that we hear once again the ultimate words of grace; that your sins, all of them, are forgiven in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.