March 3 — Third Sunday in Lent

Listen to this sermon HERE.

Grace to you and peace this Lenten Season.

My friend’s father was a pastor in the Lutheran church for many years, and he always had a saying:  “It’s still early.”

(It’s like dear Carol Holler at 11:30am: “It’s still early.” But he was more in the context of congregational life...)

When his congregation would become anxious that no one was coming and that their church was slowly dying, he’d always calm them down by saying, “Oh, just wait; be patient and faithful:  it’s still early.”

When it didn’t seem there was any hope, in the midst of people’s individual lives, somehow he would bring comfort to them with the remembrance of God’s timing, which Isaiah reminds us, today, is not our timing or our ways:  “It’s still early,” Mark would say to his people.

And even as this beloved pastor lay on his death bed (my first year of seminary), body filled with a cancer that was unstoppable, he still said it, even as everyone was fearing and grieving the inevitable: “It’s still early.”

“It’s still early” is not a dreamy, unmoored statement, wishing listlessly for a miracle — it’s a solid confession of faith, even with evidence to the contrary; a statement of trust in our patient God’s work; a statement of hope — and I repeat these three words today, as we read our Gospel text:  “This tree bears no fruit — we need to cut it down.”  “No,” said the gracious and patient gardener, “give it another year — we’ll add some fertilizer, let it breath, give it some love, give it another year”...almost as if to say, “it’s still early.”    

The grace of extended deadlines.  I’ve been thinking much about grace this Lent.  Not really a traditional Lenten concept on the surface — grace — but I believe it’s been there all along: as we give up things, let go of things, turn back to God and to our neighbor(...go to church on Wednesday).  Grace has been there all along.

I’m afraid we only hear the threat in Jesus story about the tree that doesn’t bear fruit.  Because, yes, Jesus is looking for us to bear fruit.  And here the final sentence: “Give it another year, and if it doesn’t bear fruit, then cut it down.”  I’m afraid we only hear the threat:  We’re going to die.

But that’s really nothing we didn’t know already.  

And when we don’t bear fruit — that is, the works of the spirit (kindness, justice advocacy, generosity, risk-taking on behalf of Christ Jesus) — when we fail to bear these fruits, there is a little part of us that dies anyway, isn’t there?  My dad, likes to say, when it comes to stewardship, not giving is like a sort of spiritual constipation.  God’s people get all backed up when they keep their things and their money tightly held — like any of it was ever ours in the first place.  Rather, Dad tries to gracefully encourage, let’s be a vessel through which God’s blessing might flow, financial and otherwise.   There’s a little death happening anyway, a stoppage, a blockage — when we fail to bear and share fruit.

And did you catch that first part of the Gospel?  Jesus rebuking those who wanted to say that the victims of Pilate’s torturous  oppression somehow deserved what they got.  Or, Jesus gives another example: the random falling of a tower, killing 18, some were assuming it was because they had done something to deserve it?  Is that so far off base?  (AIDS.  Tsunami.)

“No,” Jesus says.  Some things just happen.  But then he adds something:  But unless you repent, the same thing will happen to you.  

Once again that can sound like a terrible threat.  But I’m wondering, if Jesus didn’t mean, that a certain death happens to anyone who doesn’t turn back to God, which is what repent literally means — do a 180˚ back to God.  

When we don’t repent, yes, a certain death happens, that can be as crushing and as tortuous as the images in our Gospel text today.  When we don’t repent, entrusting ourselves to God (like the prodigal son at that moment in the pig pen), we have to live in the shadow of not knowing grace and forgiveness.  We have to carry the burden of anger and hatred.  We have to shoulder all the resentments for the wrongs that have been done to us in the past.  When we don’t repent, we don’t return to God, thereby letting it all go, all the anger, and pent-up grievances, and frustrations with those who have wronged us in our eyes.  And in clutching on, in being stubborn and going it alone, in our need for vengeance, in our being lost in our fears, angers, and our things — we get backed up — and a certain death occurs.  A weight almost as heavy as the fallen towers of Siloam presses down on our lives, and we cannot move.

I’m aware that almost everyone in this congregation is hurting right now — for one reason or another.  We need to be gentle to each other here at Shepherd of the Valley.  Know that the person sitting next to you is probably feeling some weight pressing down on them, whether it’s anger or sadness or fear or distrust of God, everyone is hurting.  Why?  Because God is punishing us?  No, Jesus says.  Some things just happen, but let’s not miss this opportunity to turn back to God, to put our pain in God’s hands, letting God’s love and grace, wash over us and through us — clearing us out to be faithful travelers on the road together.  Be gentle, and be present to one another, friends in Christ.  Bear one another’s burdens, and hear one another’s stories.  It’s not too late.

It’s still early.  God’s not done with us yet.  I think of Grandpa, lying on his deathbed in Colorado as we speak, who said those same words to me the last time we talked, shriveled and frail: “God’s not done with me yet.”

God’s not done with you yet — no matter what your age, or your history, or your burdens and blockages.  Even in death itself, God’s not done with us yet!  

It’s still early.  And God is faithful.  And we are loved.