March 14, 2004
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When horrible things happen, our most human response is to ask how such a thing could happen, and even as we ask, we try to distance ourselves from the victims. Certainly something they did caused what happened to them. I would never do what they did, whatever it was. But it is not about who is at fault, or whose sin is greater. The question is not whether some deserved disaster more than others. No one deserves to be the victim of random violence. The events of the morning of
September 11, 2001 have joined the lists of other days of tragedy and
transformation and are seared into our minds. Last Thursday morning, we woke to
the news of terrible bombings in Spain that killed about two hundred people.
Last Friday night, First Congregational Church held a prayer vigil for
victims of random acts of violence in our community. The service was led by a
pastor, Johannes Christian, who was blinded in an utterly senseless act of
violence. No one deserved it. Whenever life feels random and
unfair, Jesus says that may be the time to comfort those who have been hurt, and
then to examine our own lives and see if there is anything we need to change. Is
there clutter, are their barriers, are we living in a way that moves us away
from God? That is what repentance is. It is the change brought about by regret,
by a desire to do more, or do better, it is the desire to let go of what holds
us back from being fully who we are, so that we can go forward. In the shadow of the cross of Jesus
Christ, we who are followers of his are called to be people of change and
transformation. Change we can do, in fact change is so much with us, we do not
think much about it. We change our clothes daily, sometimes two or three times a
day. We change the linens in our bathrooms and on our beds, the colors of our
walls, the carpets on our floors, and the flowers in our gardens. We change our
minds and our tastes. Our politics may change, our priorities change,
responsibilities change. What gives us pleasure, what disappoints us may change.
Those changes we can control. There are other changes that are out
of our control. We do not control the weather, or the pace of cultural change,
or much of what happens in the world. The church used to change the culture and
influenced the culture, but not very much anymore. There are other changes we do
not control. We get older. Our bodies change shape, and things do not fit or
move as they did years ago. I used to play tennis for exercise and that gave me
great joy. But now my knees have let me know those days are over, and so I walk
for exercise and pleasure, and to test myself. You know that in January 2003 I
walked a half-marathon, 13.1 miles in 3 hours and 45 minutes. I intend to walk
another half marathon on April 3, the day before Palm Sunday. You can judge on
April 4, the speed with which I move down the aisle and up and down the stairs
after the walk. Paul says spiritual change will
happen in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, we will be changed from mortal
into immortal (I Corinthians 15.52). He is not talking
about the change that happens daily. Paul is talking about the transformation of
our bodies and souls. Transformation is change that we internalize. It makes us
different not for a moment, but for a lifetime. Parenthood transforms, the death
of a spouse or a partner transforms. A serious illness, a windfall inheritance,
a serious gain or serious loss, an encounter with the living God changes us
forever. Jesus invites us on this third Sunday
in Lent to let ourselves find transformation through a changed perspective.
There were two horrible incidents in the minds of the people. The first reminds
us that we are changed from people who look at others’ situation to people
transformed to see and repair our own, and so we are given another chance for
repentance. Galileans, people from Jesus’
hometown had been murdered on Pilate’s order when they came to Jerusalem to
make a ritual sacrifice, perhaps during the Passover observance. If that is the
case, the city would have been crowded with Jewish worshipers from miles around
the city. Remember Jerusalem was also an occupied city and Pilate the Governor
representing the ruling Roman emperor would have used the occasion to terrorize
the people and to show them who was really in charge. Such an act was an assault
on their faith and their culture. “The sacrilege of the Temple would
have seemed as terrible as the murders. Imagine someone murdering worshipers in
a church on Sunday morning and mingling human blood with communion wine.
Shocking and doubly shocking!” (www.lectionary.org/luke
13.1-9 p. 2). Trying to grasp the horror, people
begin to speculate. Surely these people must have committed some unspeakable
sin. But then Jesus says, “change your thinking. They are no worse sinners,
they were no more out of right relationship with God than anyone else.” Then
he reminds them of another tragedy. “Remember when eighteen people died that
day when the tower on the wall at the Siloam Gate fell? Those poor souls were no
worse sinners than anyone else either. Look less at their lives and begin to
examine your own”. It’s not about blame, it is about making sure your
relationships are right. Starkly speaking, Jesus seems to be
saying if you do not repent, you are going to die. That message is given in some
church every Sunday morning, and it is not good news. One day each of our lives
will end, but, as we live now, we do not need to be so afraid of getting life
wrong that we are afraid to breathe. He does not want us to be afraid to live.
He wants us to change what is separating us from him so that we can live into
the new era of freedom and love he is bringing into the world. There is a sense
of urgency in his words. Listen as he says, “take the opportunity now to live
as a transformed, changed forever person. Don’t wait, and do not ponder too
long what happened to “them”. Look at your own life and give yourself to
Christ and let him make the permanent difference in your life. Understand that not only are we
called to transformation through repentance, but Christ invites us to another
kind of transformation. We are invited to become people who are not hopeless but
rather people transformed to see with one more chance at redemption. There is a bush in my back yard that
used to be a tree. The problem was that we bought a perfectly healthy tree, but
the man who planted it did not plant it deeply enough and some of its roots were
above ground and because it was not planted in a way to provide good growth, it
began to die. The tree guy said prune it and so we did, cutting off dead
branches until the tree became a bush. Finally the neighbors came over and dug
deeper and covered the roots of the tree. They put a tar like substance on the
end of the cut off almost stump of a tree. Almost immediately, the tree/bush
began to heal and grow, and now it blossoms every spring. Jesus talked about a fig tree that
did not bear fruit. Maybe it had not been planted deeply enough because it had
not produced a fig for over three years. The owner called it a waste of good
soil, and ordered it cut down. But the gardener says, “let’s give it one
more year. I will clear away the debris and I will fertilize it, and water it
and do all that I can to help it do what it is made to do. I have faith that
this is its transforming year. Give it one more season, then if it still does
not produce, we will cut it down. Again, there is a sense of urgency in the
story Jesus tells. Take care of things now, so there will be life for years to
come. Who are we as we contemplate growth
and risk being cut down? I believe we are the tree, think of God as the vineyard
owner and Christ as the gardener. It is Christ who intercedes for us. He gets
between us and God who knows how unproductive we can be in our faith journey.
God knows when we are so stunted that we cannot produce the growth God desires
for us. God knows that we are not doing what we are supposed to do as people of
faith. And there may even be days when we are convinced that out of God’s
frustration with us, we are about to be cut down. “No”, says Jesus, “not
yet”. “Let me get into them and see what
I can do. Let me clear away the debris from all around them, the unhealthy
attitudes, the fear and anger that keep us stuck, the faith that seems listless
and lost, the looking back that makes looking forward too painful, the present
that seems too hard and too hopeless.” When
the debris is cleared from our souls and our psyches then life giving
fertilizers, that which helps us grow faith, trust, hope, and joy can be given
to us and we can begin to bloom and blossom again. There are trees here that
look like bushes. God grant that we can find the way to grow up into the people
and the church God calls us to be. There has already been spiritual
growth in us this year. May God give us strength to keep growing in faith and
energy for the sake of our souls and for the sake of Jesus Christ. We do not
want to be cut down and cut off. Let’s keep growing. Let’s keep growing because
transformation takes place as we find our way to repentance. It happens as we
make good use of one more chance to grow. And it occurs when we are changed from
people who merely observe to people who are transformed to become participants
in the worship of God. The woman Jesus healed came to the
synagogue that Sabbath day was just making her way to the woman’s court where
she could make her offering and then find her place to listen and watch.
Apparently Jesus knows her, at least he knows something about her. He knows that
she has been crippled by what he calls a spirit for eighteen years. We don’t
know what it was. Perhaps it was the spirit of an arthritic spine that has left
her unable to stand up straight. She had to walk with the dust of the streets in
her face all the time. In a time when the life expectancy was closer to 40 years
than it was to 80, she has lived with her condition half a lifetime. Imagine,
“such posture would interfere with both normal social relationships and the
ability to accomplish everyday tasks. It would put a strain on various organs of
the body, affecting her health in other ways. She would spend her life looking
down a the ground rather than up at the sky” (www.lectionary.org/luke13.10-17
p. 2). True transformation takes place when
we quit watching and start acting. Jesus
sees her and touches her and she is transformed from an observer at worship to a
full participant in worship. The woman did not ask to be healed, but when she
received gift, she had to praise God. That is one of the ways we worship God.
She knows what we can know, that when we are touched by Jesus, when the love of
Christ can be felt by us we are transformed. We are changed on the inside in a
way that shows up on the outside. Her praise can be our praise. Her cry of
freedom as she was transformed from one who was unbound and is now able to look
people in the eye, to wipe the dust off her face, to lift her hands, and move
her body in the way she chooses, and do all that she feels able to do, can be
our cry of freedom too. No wonder she praised God. What a good happy ending. We can roll
the credits now. Except that there is something about our freedom that disturbs
people who are themselves bound up in the ways things have been and always ought
to be. But Jesus has come to announce a new era, it is a new day. So he debates
with the leader who comes to say, “it’s the Sabbath. No work is to be done
on the Sabbath. No cooking takes place, no tending to animals except to feed and
water them happens. There are six other days to heal, what is the hurry? What
difference would a day make?” The indignant leader is not a bad
guy. In fact he “holds a responsible position, and is trying to uphold what he
understands to be holy. What he fails to understand is that acts of compassion
are holy work” (lectionary.org/luke13.10-17, p. 3).
Jesus reminds them that even tethered animals are fed and watered on the
Sabbath, so how much more is due the only woman in the Bible called a daughter
of Abraham. By his touch, Jesus puts her back in the family. She is a sister in
faith, a co-inheritor of the promises of God. Surely her healing can be done and
celebrated, even on the Sabbath. She has been unbound, and that is cause for
celebration. Look at her, join her, praise God with her, listen to her sing: “Shackled by
a heavy burden, ‘neath a load of guilt and shame, then the hand of Jesus
touched me, And now I am no longer the same. He touched me, O he touched me, and
O the joy that floods my soul. Something happened and now I know, he touched me
and made me whole”. (William Gaither, 1963). The good news for us is that God
through Jesus Christ offers us one more chance to know his transforming touch.
When we are so deeply changed we can indeed join those who have found repentance
and hope and healing. We can join our restored selves to the now healed and
restored woman and sing our praises to God. We can indeed thank God for the
wonderful, loving touch of Jesus happening in us. We can live as transformed
people. We can remember and we can act and we can be changed forever. Thanks be to God. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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