Third Sunday in Lent: What did I do to deserve this?

3/24/19

Ready for Eucharist in Marcus Garvey Park

It's officially spring now. Ona sunny mild afternoon I make my way to Marcus Garvey Park where the Sunday afternoon Ecclesia Congregation is gathering. Along with volunteers from Riverside Church and the Interfaith Center. There's anew  friend from the Dominican Republic. And old friends. And new. This was my reflection: 

I can't tell you how many times as a Pastor I have had someone, often from a hospital bed, say to me " I just don't know what I have done Pastor, that God would cause me to suffer like this."It's a common question. I think that behind that question is a desire to have everything make sense, even if it means having to be guilty of something you can't figure out. Somehow that idea is easier to live with than the thought that what happens is random.

People come to Jesus with a report of a political atrocity committed by Pilate, mixing the blood of some Galileans with "their sacrifices." And the other "news of the day" includes a non-political disaster of the Siloam tower falling on people. He takes the opportunity to challenge the idea that what happens in this life has anything to do with how much of a sinner you are. He's pretty clear...there's no connection. I used to have a friend that would say, "Time wounds all heels"....if only it were true.

And the reverse of that is equally true. We live in a time when there is a popular idea called the Prosperity Gospel. The idea is if you believe the right thing, God will bless you. Or worse, that if you have material wealth, it must mean that God has blessed you and  you deserve it and if you don't have material wealth, it's your own fault, a sign of your own sinfulness. The whole language of the world being divided into "makers and takers" is just a variant of that idea.

Jesus is very clear about that..."NO, I tell you...."

But he uses this to go another direction, to talk about repentance. We are three weeks deep in the season of Lent, in the midst of our 40 day journey of reflection in preparation for Easter. A time when we are called upon to think about our lives, to think about what might need changing. To think about what we might need to change in order to become the person Jesus has created us to be. To repent, turn around, go a new direction.

SO he tells us a story about a fig tree that is barren. The gardener asks for one  more year to tend it, care for it, fertilize it and see what might happen. 

I guess there's a few ideas here...one is that not all doors are always open. Ultimately we do have to decide. But the truth is, it is never up to us to pass that judgment on another. That privilege is God's alone. 

They say that in any parable, we are ALL the characters...so...we are the man who is fed up with the tree...how often do we feel that way about someone else? Or ourselves?  And certainly we can be the fig tree, in need of another chance, one more opportunity to turn things around. Of course, Jesus is the gardener. But as part of the living  body of the risen Christ, we too are called to participate in creating those opportunities for others, even those who people have given up on. I suspect that at the end of the year, this gardener might say again, "OK, give me  just one more year..."

Maybe one more thought. It takes manure to fertilize. I'm wondering if there might be something in,  well, the crap of our lives that can be used to help us grow to be fruitful, you know, even helpful to others, like I can see what you're going through, I've been there, maybe I can help...like that.

May  be with you in journey to repentance and new life. May we be with one another. In the name of this gardener, this Jesus, Amen.

During prayers, many concerns are lifted up about missing friends. People continue to arrive. On foot. And in wheel chair. Eucharist is shared, one by one. 

And then we share the meal prepared by Riverside. And the circle begins to disperse. As we walk out fo the park, using the portable altar, Father Clyde sees one of the missing friends and immediately goes over to her. And we share our left over sandwiches with  her and her friends.... 



                                                                        ****

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. 2He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4Or 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? 5No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."

6Then 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. 7So 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?' 8He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"

Third Sunday in Lent: What did I do to deserve this?

 2/28/16

Recently our friend Steve Phelps went through a hospitalization for removal of a kidney due to what turned out to be a massive cancerous growth followed by weeks of recovery. During this time, he created a special  Facebook page so that he could share his own reflections and others could participate in that process. Of course much of the communication was in the  form of prayers, prayer for healing from friends,..

In light of today’s scripture, I wanted to share these words from his last entry, two weeks ago:

Many of you know that I have always taught that it is a dangerously uncompassionate and narrow-minded thing to believe that God rewards good people with good things, and bad with bad. Although millions believe it, much of the Hebrew Bible and all of Jesus’ teaching assemble all their wisdom to try to push this childish belief from our primitive minds. (“When I was a child, I thought like a child . . . but now that I am grown, I put away childish things . . . — I Corinthians 13.)

In my own case, one reason that I do not believe my cancer-free body is a reward, or a divine decision, is that such a belief would also oblige me to suppose that every fatal cancer is, or was, also a divine decision or punishment. I think no God would be better than such a god. I infinitely incline toward the simpler thought, expressed in the Times article below, that “bodies are delicate and prone to error.”

The questions asked by Jesus’ followers continue to be asked even to day. It’s the why do bad things happen to good people question. Like if we could figure that out, we’d be ok.

It’s interesting that Jesus includes both a political event and a natural disaster. We have to deal with both too. We want there to be cause and effect.

I remember visiting one of our longtime members in the hospital. She had suffered through successive amputations. As I held her hand, she said to me I wish I knew what I did to deserve this. I could have said Well smoking contributed, but….

You can’t go there. My grandfather quit at age  77 after over sixty years  of smoking. Got a new girlfriend. Lived until 88. All good living does is better the odds.

On the other hand, my fraternity brother who chided us all about the way we lived and counted on a long life died in a car accident that summer.

Back at  the first church I worked at, I was responsible for the collegians class..Two of the students had been a car accident. They said to  me as the car went into the  spin, we prayed and God answered our prayers…but what about those who died that day?  Wrong prayers? Not the right words?

Strange, though, that Jesus adds that last part. If you don’t repent…Like what you used to see on billboards when I was a kid. As close as I can come to understanding, the message is if you do repent, no guarantee, but if you don’t the way is clear.  The wages of sin is death…

For Gustavo Guttierez the definition of sin is :  the breaking of friendship with God or neighbor…if that’s where you stay, you are alone, cut off from others cut off  from God…alone…as good as dead…

To repent…is to turn around …from the Latin repoenitēre, Same root as penitentiary .Where people might become penitent. How far we are from that. Our mass incarceration is about revenge and worse, social control.

Metanoia, is an ancient Greek word (μετάνοια) meaning "changing one's mind"…it’s akind of the opposite of paranoia. To see all and to see clearly.

So that is our task in Lent.

Two Sundays ago, there was an Op Ed in the New York Times. Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me by Kate Bowler. A professor at Duke who researched and wrote about the prosperity gospel, she wrestles with how that theology of the righteous being blessed impacts her understanding of being diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. She writes:

Put simply, the prosperity gospel is the belief that God grants health and wealth to those with the right kind of faith…

Tragedies are simply tests of character.

It is the reason a neighbor knocked on our door to tell my husband that everything happens for a reason.

“I’d love to hear it,” my husband said.

“Pardon?” she said, startled.

“I’d love to hear the reason my wife is dying,” he said, in that sweet and sour way he has.

My neighbor wasn’t trying to sell him a spiritual guarantee. But there was a reason she wanted to fill that silence around why some people die young and others grow old and fussy about their lawns. She wanted some kind of order behind this chaos. Because the opposite of #blessed is leaving a husband and a toddler behind, and people can’t quite let themselves say it: “Wow. That’s awful.” There has to be a reason, because without one we are left as helpless and possibly as unlucky as everyone else.

In other words, is she a worse sinner? Did she smoke? Eat poorly? Bad genes? If the answer is no, then what will keep the wolf from my door?

Kate Bowler continues:

CANCER has kicked down the walls of my life. I cannot be certain I will walk my son to his elementary school someday or subject his love interests to cheerful scrutiny. I struggle to buy books for academic projects I fear I can’t finish for a perfect job I may be unable to keep. I have surrendered my favorite manifestoes about having it all, managing work-life balance and maximizing my potential…Cancer requires that I stumble around in the debris of dreams I thought I was entitled to and plans I didn’t realize I had made.

But cancer has also ushered in new ways of being alive. Even when I am this distant from Canadian family and friends, everything feels as if it is painted in bright colors. In my vulnerability, I am seeing my world without the Instagrammed filter of breezy certainties and perfectible moments. I can’t help noticing the brittleness of the walls that keep most people fed, sheltered and whole. I find myself returning to the same thoughts again and again: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.

Life is hard. But life is beautiful.

I think of  Rubem Alves and his critique of  North American Christianity. In his view, we look too fast for the happy ending. We miss life, in his words, we miss life in all its perplexity. Paradox. But most of all profound beauty. Yes, it is hard. But beautiful.

Experience it all.

GOSPEL 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.”

Third Sunday in Lent: when you sing Rock of Ages in Spanish, the chords are still the same

3/3

Cara there waiting when I arrive. Ready to do whatever is needed. Everything will eb swept clean before anyone else arrives.  Stephen is on his way down. And Glen and Tony arrive shortly thereafter with unleavened matzoh and Kedem concord for communion.  I ask Marc to borrow a guitar because I feel like playing and start to work a few songs out with Stephen. When you sing Rock of Ages in Spanish, (Roca de la eternidad) the chords are still  the same.

There is no particular mention of these incidents anywhere in secular histories. Galilee, was of course, the  home of rebels, outsiders...Yet the fact that there is no mention of tis event is not surprising because it is so typical of Pilate that it is hardly worth mentioning. Keep that in mind when we later read of  Pilate washing his hands in relation to what happens to Jesus. The operating assumption here is that that if something bad happened to you, you deserved it...Same with the other story, where the tower collapses right outside of the  Jerusalem gate...Like those New York City  crane incidents, you know? Wa someone negligent?  Are there liability issues here?

In both instances te answer seems to be,well, stuff happens...

Then what follows, sounds like finger pointing....but if you don’t repent...?  You will perish just as they did.... that seems to reverse what came before...

Let’s look at the word Repent. In Greek the word is metanoia....the exact opposite of paranoia.. It maenas to change one’s mind, shift one’s thoughts, turn away, turn around, go in a new direction...

What are we turning from? Turning to? In a study session at Union, one of my clergy colleagues tells the story of her son wth a learning disability. You can’t tell him to stop doing something without an alternative start. What do we find?

• The issue iis not why, it is will you repent, turn around, begin again...
• We are all going to die, sooner or later
• Life is short, you have to take advantage of it, what are you going to do with it?
• What will you do with what you have left?

These are all questions for us to wrestle with/

And now the arc comes around.  Finally, we have the  fig tree, manure....Like the reference to three years...not a long time for a fig tree. It can take that long..or longer..to grow a fig....but notice that it is the length of Jesus’ ministry...As with all of Jesus’ parables, we have to ask ourselves,  Who are we in this story? Owner, gardner, fig tree?  even the manure? So we began with, ah, stuff, and we finish with manure...full circle...

So we ask ourselves, what is the manure needed to nurture the tree? The manure needed in our lives? Needed in our congregation?  I love this. Nothing earthier than manure. What’s going  on here is that it is that which we need to get rid of in our lives might actually be what we need to nurture and grow int owhat we are supposed to be. Our worst traits can be transformed into gifts. It’s all in what we do with it. 

This is what Lenten reflexions are all about. 

I begin the Communion service by reading the story if the first communion  we read from Mark last Monday in Bible study.  I play guitar and Stephen the piano. As we finish the service, we gather to share what Glen has brought and others added to. Zeljko arrives and people are glad to see him. 

We meet to plan each of our parts for the Monday night meetign coming up with Presbytery. By the time I leave, there’s only an hour and a half before Zeljko’s screening.

• * * *

The sanctuary choir is still rehearsing when we arrive. Marc has lots of set up to do. Things not quite right. Cara and i ar stepping out when a wild eyed man with gray hair and a beard and a cowboy hat approaches. Seen how before.Comes off like  a mixture of a traveling salesman and a seer which is a sign. He wants to talk about pyramids. And owls. And ducklings. And fire. Cara catches the energy and quickly slips away. He’s been sent by God to talk to me...(dude, you’re not the first...) I explain it’s not a good time. Come tomorrow. I’m afraid he just might....

We don’t have the equipment to show the trailer, so it’s on with the movie. I’ll marry the whole village...Zeljko’s docufairytale about a man who wants to take creation all the bachelors in a small town near his hoem city of Nis. it’s a small, very small crowd. Glad Hugo and Arcadia came. RL stops in.  Of course, Rachelle has ccome too...Still need  to do better before  next Friday’s screening...