Educator, principal and professional counselor, Dr. Kristin Meyer of Waverly, Iowa does an interesting exercise with her graduate students: She asks them three questions. The first: “What would you do if you were given $1,000,000?” The second: “What would you do if you were given 10 years to live?” And the third: “What would you do if you were given 3 hours to live.” She reflects that the answers to the first question were usually about “things”, the answers to the second about “experiences”, and the answers to the third were about “people” (relationships). *
It’s interesting to think about what comes to the surface when given an ultimatum.
Jesus gives an ultimatum in verse 5 of this Lenten Gospel lesson for today: repent or parish. It might be hard to find Good News there, at first glance, but let’s unpack this a little bit, looking at what happens before and the parable that follows.
The people are trying to figure out why some bad things have happened to their people. In one example, some people had been to Pilate’s cruel and unusual, empirical punishments, meant to strike fear and submission into the hearts of the Jews. In the other a tower falls and kills 18. Whether that was because terrible wind or heavy rain...or just bad engineering, those weren’t the people’s concern. In both cases, people are wondering if the victims here were worse sinners than everyone else. If God was punishing them.
Perhaps we can relate to that...even with the advances we’ve made in engineering and predicting weather patterns.
If something bad happens to someone, especially when it’s to someone we don’t know or like very much, it may be tempting to say, “Hmmm, I wonder what they did to deserve that.”
My own, dearly departed grandfather -- it grieves my heart to share this with you -- Grandpa, pastor and mentor for me (pectoral cross, pulpit quote) -- I’ll always remember, we were all together in Nebraska in 2004 when those terrible tsunamis hit the coasts of Indonesia and Malaysia. And I still remember him shaking his head and asking, “I wonder why God is punishing them. They must have done something.” I think he was trying to find a way to explain it...
(Isn’t it complicated when our beloved heroes aren’t perfect?)
Jesus seizes the moment to say NO to the people, to Grandpa. [slowly] No, they don’t deserve punishment any more than the rest of us. Sometimes things just happen. Your mom’s cancer diagnosis, the tragic death of a family pet, the loss of a job, the cross-country transfer away of a beloved family member, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, getting caught in the crossfires. Sometimes things just happen, and to get trapped and bogged down with the “why is God doing this”, Jesus teaches here, is to miss the point.
The point is what we do with what we have left. The point is the ultimatum. What comes to the surface when we think about the time and the resources we have left? Is it about things? Is it about experiences? Or is it about relationships?
Repentance is what Jesus calls us to in the season of Lent.
And repentance is about healing (salvus in Latin)...healing relationships. If you only had a short time left to live on this earth, what repentance and reconciling needs to happen for you to die with a clear heart and a clean conscience, for you to die with a soul that is free and a mind and body that is full of love and deep peace?
It’s interesting to think about what comes to the surface when given an ultimatum.
Don’t get caught up with the “why” questions, Jesus says to us today. Live as if you don’t have much time left.
But we keep falling again and again, for the lures of the world, back into the why, just as the people of old did. “What did they do/I do/we do to deserve this?” And that always leads us to act out of fear:
Our next episode starts with the Pharisees telling Jesus to run!
(Like it’s nothing but predator and prey.)
But Jesus responds -- not with some kind of animal-instinct reaction, but -- with courage, calm, and love to face the fray.
He grieves that the Pharisees and us as well at times [slowly] just. don’t. get it. And he expresses this longing to be a mother hen to us. What a surprising and contrasting image!
Jesus calls Herod a fox, and then Jesus imagines himself as a mother chicken -- not a hunter that shoots the fox, a bear or a big dog that chases the fox back, even a protective wall that keeps the fox out. No, Jesus here imagines himself as a mother hen, gathering her chicks under her wing.
Courage, calm, and love. That is what we find this morning. Jesus doesn’t run from the violence and the pain and the chaos. Jesus stays with us in it. And longs to cover us and to love us, like a chicken wing over her babies.
That may not mean a perfect protection: foxes kill chickens. [pause]
But death doesn’t have the final say, with Christ. This is not how the story ends, ultimately.
So how will we live, given this ultimatum?...Repentant.
A life lived is a life lived in repentance. It’s an ongoing task. To breath is to be in a state of repentance. To inhale grace and exhale peace.
Attentive to relationships and healing. Peaceful and present, even amid the fray. How will we, sisters and brothers in Christ, live? Sheltered...in the gracious and loving arms of God. Repentant and courageous. Covered by Jesus’ wings of mercy. AMEN.
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* Love Beyond Measure: ELCA Schools and Learning Centers 2016-2017 Devotional Guide, 43.
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