"Repentance and Gardening" - Sermon for Lent 3
Sermon:
Text:
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ who works to transform our lives.
“No, I tell
you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Repent. That’s
the main word of this text and yet we don’t really know what it means. Repent
usually gets thought of as feel sorry and guilty about something I did and
saying that I won’t do it again. The Greek word here is metanoia, and it means
total change of heart, soul and mind, gut even. There’s no real moralistic or
regret associated with it. It’s all about being transformed and changed, rather
than feeling guilty about something. The Common English Translation probably
puts it a little closer to the real meaning Jesus is trying to get across.
“About this
same time Jesus was told that Pilate had given orders for some people from
Galilee to be killed while they were offering sacrifices. 2 Jesus replied:
Do you think that these people were worse sinners than
everyone else in Galilee just because of what happened to them? 3 Not
at all! But you can be sure that if you don’t turn back to God, every one of
you will also be killed.4 What about those eighteen
people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Do you think they were
worse than everyone else in Jerusalem? 5 Not at
all! But you can be sure that if you don’t turn back to God, every one of you
will also die.”
Repenting is
not feeling sorry or guilty, but turning back to God, and being transformed in
doing so.
This comes up because he has been asked about this
story of a group of Galileans who are killed by Pilate as they are offering
sacrifices in the Temple, and the people with Jesus want to know, this horrible
thing happened to them because they had been horrible sinners correct? They
were killed, so they must have been bad, sinful people, right Jesus?
And Jesus
tells them, not at all! You need to change your way of thinking about this,
turn back to God, or you’ll die yourself. It’s a variation of the seeing the
speck in someone else's eye, while missing the log in your own. Stop worrying
about whether those people were killed because of their sinfulness, don’t
worry about their sinfulness and concentrate more on turning back to God, and
changing your mind, body, gut, and heart. That's what that repent there really
means.
Then Jesus
tells this little parable about a fig tree.
“A man had a
fig tree growing in his vineyard. One day he went out to pick some figs, but he
didn’t find any. 7 So he said to the gardener, “For
three years I have come looking for figs on this tree, and I haven’t found any
yet. Chop it down! Why should it take up space?”
8 The gardener answered, “Master, leave it for another
year. I’ll dig around it and put some manure on it to make it grow.9 Maybe
it will have figs on it next year. If it doesn’t, you can have it cut down.”
Commonly
in understanding this parable, God is the man who has the fig tree, which is all of us
sinful people, and God comes and sees the fig tree having no fruit, we’ve
fallen short of the glory God to quote Romans 3:23, we are not producing fruit
like we should, we’ve sinned, but then Jesus the gardener comes and says, no,
give them more time, I’ll intercede on their behalf. I’ll water and fertilize
them and take care of them. And hopefully then fruit will grow.
Looking at
it this way, while very good and helpful, Christ did indeed intercede for us
and takes on our sinfulness, doesn’t allow us to see Jesus’ full meaning. We
can find so much more in this, and it helps it really connect this parable with
the teaching that Jesus was giving right before, repenting, turning back to
God, and changing our heart and minds, being transformed.
The
gardener, Jesus, doesn’t just intercede for us, but goes to work for us. Jesus
digs around and fertilizes the tree. Jesus gets into the nasty stuff of our
lives. Jesus takes care of the tree in that dirty, sinful, fruitless state, and
he takes care of us.
He tells us,
shows us how to transform ourselves, how to change our mind, body, and soul,
how to turn back to God. By focusing not on ourselves, but on others.
The main
message of this passage is stop looking in on yourself for your own purpose,
stop concentrating only on yourself, on how you think you’re better than others,
but turn to God, and in doing so, turn to help others. We are always seeking
meaning, but we do so too often by looking in on ourselves instead of like our
Psalm says, looking to God, seeking God. My soul thirsts for you, my flesh
faints for you … my whole being clings to you, your right hand holds me fast.
Be like
Christ and care for others, help them grow, help them bear fruit in the world.
In Lent we
spend time looking into ourselves, but it should not be to try to find purpose
within ourselves, but instead to see that so often we do turn from God to find
meaning elsewhere. How we label others as sinful because of what happened to
them, how we don’t care for the other likes Christ shows us.
Lent is not
the time to try to find meaning within ourselves or labeling others as sinful,
but it’s the time to realize that our meaning is found in the one who cares for
us, who gives us nourishment, who gives us himself, who saves us from the death
that we so fear.
Lent is the time to see that because of what Christ
has done for us, we need to be transformed through his actions to also care for
the least and help others to see their true value and meaning is found through
him and his actions on the cross.
Lent is the time to go out to help our neighbors, show
them the love of Christ, to help them grow fruit.
Lent is the time to journey with Christ, and to be
transformed by doing so, and to bear fruit ourselves.
Let us pray,
God of repentance, turn us back to you, transform us,
change us. Help us to bear good fruit. All this we ask in the name of your Son,
Jesus, who cares for us, nourishes us, and gives us meaning.
Amen.
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