For the third Sunday in Lent, the readings are Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9. Here’s my sermon from March 24, 2019. I found this 2013 reflection from David Lose helpful as a starting point for this sermon.
Finish these sentences: The early bird gets the ______. The grass is always greener on the other ____. A penny saved is a penny _____. Time is ________.
I didn’t know if you’d get that one or if it’s just a Wisconsin thing. One of the first ATM networks was in Wisconsin, and it was called “Take Your Money Everywhere” – TYME. Their slogan was “TYME is Money.” So in Wisconsin, instead of saying you’re going to the ATM, some people still say they’re going to the TYME machine.
Time is money. And what do you do with money? You spend it. You buy stuff with it.
Why?
So you’ll be happy before you die.
And then what? You’ll be dead.
Time is not money, because there are always ways of getting more money. You can’t get more time in life. One day you’ll run out of time, and you’ll die.
Happy Lent.
The question of today’s readings is what are you doing with the time you have? How are you spending your life?
Isaiah asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Your time is the most valuable thing you possess. What are you doing with it?
The season of Lent calls us to check our priorities, to check which road we’re traveling down. Lent leads us to the one thing that matters most: The cross of Jesus Christ, where we see God’s love for us. The cross puts all our priorities—our time and our money—into perspective.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus talks about two recent disasters. When disaster strikes—when bad things happen to good people—as humans we want an explanation. We want to know why.
Sometimes, there is an answer, at least partially. From the perspective of faith, we know some tragedies happen because of sin. When there’s a shooting, we can point to the sin of the shooter. Jesus talks about a tower collapsing – if that happened today, perhaps there would be a wrongful death lawsuit. Maybe the contractor cut some corners, didn’t let the mortar set long enough.
We’re seeing this debate in real time right now with Boeing – could the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia have been prevented if they weren’t trying to make more money by saving time in pilot training? Are the crashes a consequence of sin?
Jesus also brings up this group of Galileans who were killed by Pontius Pilate and their blood mingled with their sacrifices. That’s a deliberate religious attack by Pilate, and it’s certainly sinful on his part.
But sin is only a partial explanation. Sin only explains the actions of the perpetrator, and even that only helps when there is a perpetrator. And of course, it’s easy to ignore sins in the systems and environment that lead to disaster. Sin might answer the question of how things happen, but not why they happen. Sin doesn’t explain why the victims suffer.
Sometimes, though, in our quest for an explanation, we wonder if the victims were sinful enough to deserve what happened.
Jesus rejects our tendency to blame the victims. He rejects the idea that those Galileans deserved their terrible death, or that God was punishing those eighteen victims of the tower collapsing, or that the 346 victims of the plane crashes were worse sinners than the rest of us.
Jesus does use the tragedies of the day to make a theological point, but not the point we so often are tempted to make. We want the world to make sense, to reassure ourselves that if we just do our best to be good people, that will protect us from bad things happening to us.
And it’s not like we think we have to be perfect; we just have to be better than the victims of whatever the latest tragedy is, so we can see some reason why they deserved it, or at least why it won’t happen to us. When you’re running away from an angry bear, you don’t have to run faster than the bear; just faster than the person next to you.
Jesus rejects that line of thinking. Instead of allowing us the selfish comfort of thinking we’re safe because we won’t get into that situation, Jesus uses these tragedies to remind us that all life is fragile, including our own.
Jesus tells us to not blame God for tragedies, but to use them to jolt us into repentance, into turning around, turning towards God. Jesus’ message is not so much “Repent or perish” as it is “Repent because you’re going to perish.”
Disasters and tragedies are not an occasion for demanding that others repent; they’re an occasion for us to repent. They’re a signpost reminding us to check which path we’re on, and to stop and turn around if we’re going the wrong way.
As Christians, we’re not to blame God for disasters, but at the same time we aren’t supposed to ignore them either. Disasters give us opportunity for repentance, not only on those occasions when our sin contributes to calamity, but every time we realize we’re going the wrong way and wasting some of the precious time and resources God has trusted to us.
Jesus does not say that if we believe hard enough or repent well enough then we’ll be protected from calamity. Disasters are not punishments from God; they’re just part of life.
Sometimes there is no explanation for suffering other than this world is broken. No explanation other than that we’re still wandering in the wilderness and we’re not to the promised land yet.
Lest we blame God for our own impending doom, Jesus tells this parable about a fig tree and a gardener. God is at work pruning us, spreading fertilizer, giving us everything we need, hoping we’ll grow and produce fruit.
Over and over, God gives us new chances to live well and produce fruit. More chances than we deserve, more than we appreciate, more than we can hope for. When we’re ready to throw in the towel, God says, “Hold on, maybe a little longer.”
God is always with us, inviting us, calling us to repent, to turn away from our evil deeds. “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” We are the ones who keep turning away from God, turning inward away from God and away from our neighbors.
Martin Luther described the human condition of sin as being curved in ourselves. It’s looking for life in ourselves, making ourselves into our own idols, rather than trusting God to be our source of life. God continues to call us to turn away from our selfishness, to turn away from our fear and our hatred, to turn away from wasting our lives.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
It’s the message of Ash Wednesday again: When you remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, when you accept that you’re going to die, you’re set free to live. You don’t have to spend your time worrying about the judgments of others, or about this world’s quest for temporary happiness through idols of wealth and power. You’re set free to live the abundant life God intends.
We don’t know how much time we have; we don’t know what’s going to happen to us in this life; we don’t know how the end will come; but we know our lives are a gift from God. We know God has given us a mission. We know we are the hands and feet of Jesus and we have what we need to make a difference in this world. We know that the Lord is near.
So knowing life is fragile and uncertain, knowing tragedy can happen at any moment, how will you use your time? As Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings said, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
As we continue on our Lenten journey to the cross, I invite you to examine your priorities. Decide how you’re going to use the time given you.
If you looked back at the end of the week at a journal of everything you did, every hour of every day of the week, what would you see? Does the way you use your time reflect your faith? Are you living as if you believe God’s love for you is actually real, or are you spending your time worrying about other people’s opinions, worrying about collecting more stuff? If you’re like me, I suspect there’s some room for improvement.
Please join me in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we hear of disasters all around us, in our own lives, and on the other side of the world. Help us to recognize that life is fragile. Help us to use the time we are given wisely, to do your work, to seek what really matters. Thank you for the promise that you love us and that you are continually working to fertilize and prune us that we may bear good fruit, fruit that lasts. In Jesus’ name.
Amen