Life, Death, and Repentance

Is this Sunday's Gospel merely a "Turn or Burn!" message?

This Sunday’s Gospel lesson has me (and probably a few other preachers) a little flustered. Throughout Luke 12, the chapter preceding this week's lesson, Jesus urgently taught his followers to turn to God’s Reign even if it costs them greatly (i.e. their familial relationships). Then right at the beginning of Luke 13, where this Sunday's Gospel picks up, some people tell of a state-sanctioned multiple homicide seemingly to test Jesus. The passage does not lay out a specific question asked of Jesus; however, the crowd might as well have wondered, “Is this sort of awful death a punishment for not turning to God?” We onlookers 2,000 years later still question, “Well, is it?”

In response to people wondering if certain painful deaths are directed by God, Jesus responded with a charge for all of humanity to return to God. Instead of saying, “Sure, God purposed these gruesome deaths,” Jesus pointed out that the people who died were no worse offenders than others. In addition, Jesus said that even those who died in a freak accident at the Tower of Siloam were not any worse (or better) than others in Jerusalem. So, what? Is everything terrible and we’re all going to die? Sometimes and certainly yes. But, that seems horribly beside what Jesus wanted to talk about way back then, and that means it’s a tempting aside for the frustrated modern preacher to ignore also. Jesus wanted to talk not about why someone died, but about the need for the living to repent.

Some say the only universal experiences that we hold in common with is life, death, and taxes, but Jesus speaks of something else that we all share. In this coming Sunday’s bit from the Good News according to Luke, Jesus informed us that all of us will die (and maybe quickly and in some horrible way), so what matters to each of us immediately is our need to return to God. What do we all have in common—the Galilean, the Jerusalemite, the American, the Kiwi, etc.? Life, death, and repentance. We are all called to turn back to God. So, that’s it? Turn or burn? 

You, me, and everyone else gets called in manifold different directions throughout our lives. Yesterday in our staff meeting at All Saints' Church we read Rite I Morning Prayer from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. The service began with a Confession of Sin and one line in particular stood out to me: “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts” (BCP, 41). It’s not that we aren’t called to listen to our hearts, as that is often where we meet the Living Christ. Rather, there are moments when the distractions and desires and even duties of life wear us down and lead us astray such that we wake up one day and don’t recognize the image of God that stares back at us in the mirror, across the dinner table, or from someone else's profile/avatar. We might believe these confusing, heart-breaking moments to be the most terrible ones in our lives—and they aren’t pretty, fun, or easily endured. Still, it’s in these times when we can become aware enough to notice that we aren’t where we thought we were, we aren’t where we want to be, nor are we where we will eventually end up. And, it’s in these moments that we are hit most overwhelmingly with a surprising wave of grace. This grace comes in the form of a deep knowing.  

When at the core of our souls we know that we are lost this sensation of being lost is a grace-filled sign from God. For it is in knowing our lost-ness that we can allow ourselves to be found. We can let the Good Shepherd find His lost sheep, the Good Widow find Her lost coin, and the Good Father find His lost children, as Luke will put it in a couple chapters (Luke 15). The trouble is that quite often we get so distracted by those aforementioned devices and desires that we know not that we are lost or even completely shipwrecked. Jesus though knew all of this about his fellow humans. He knew that those who had friends murdered by Pilate and those who had relatives crushed by a tower were raw and lost and probably shipwrecked too. And like the good and faithful one he was he spoke to the heart of the matter. He sharply pressed onward toward what affected everyone listening, including us.

Jesus moved beyond the important and distracting questions like the following. Why do bad things happen? Why did 50 faithful Muslim people die in Christchurch, New Zealand? Why is my loved one in the hospital, facing this disease, or dying? Why is my marriage falling apart? Why don’t my kids love me? Why do I not feel whole? Why? Why? Why God? Sure, Jesus knew that these and many other questions of meaning and existential wandering affect us all and make us feel like a fruitless fig tree. Thus, Jesus did not get sidetracked trying to answer the why.

Jesus moved beyond a laundry list of ways to be right (or wrong) with God. Worse than existential crises are moments when we believe that we have it all figured out for those who feel lost. We interject that we know why all these things are happening to someone else (or even ourselves). And, we say that because we have believed rightly or gone to church or said a prayer or gotten confirmed or not done some list of things, then we are fine and fireproof. But, Jesus was not interested in a list, which once completed would make us good and fruitful trees by ourselves. 

Instead, Jesus softly turns us away from our endless need to know why or our insatiable desire to earn our way into God’s good graces. He long ago spoke wisdom both hard won and infinitely available. When chaos surrounds us and we feel lost turn to the one who always turns to us and finds us. When we believe we have it figured out know that it is not us who save ourselves, but God who tends to our barren and boastful spirits. This is the way we grow—not on our own, but together with God. All of us have these in common: life, death, and a perpetual need to turn towards God.