Repentance, Not Judgment

[Here, you'll find the live stream video of today's 11:00 AM worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, and the text of today's message.]



Luke 13:1-9

On a social media site, a Christian recently publicly refused to pray for the Ukrainian people. He said that the Russian invasion of their country proved they were under God’s judgment.

This man seems to have a faulty theology of glory, rather than the Bible’s theology of the cross. The theology of glory declares that if you’re a believer in the God revealed in Jesus Christ, nothing bad will happen to you. That, of course, is untrue. Throughout history, believers in the God first revealed to ancient Israel and now revealed to all the world in Jesus, have suffered calamities, tragedy, and death, both natural and manmade. Jesus Himself, God the Son, suffered brutality and death on a cross and told all of us who follow Him that we will, at the least, suffer the indignity of death ourselves, will suffer like the rest of humanity, must daily die to our old selves so that our new selves can rise, and may even be persecuted for our faith before we are finally raised to live eternally with God.

Scripture says that there are times when God chastens and condemns His people and brings calamity, even death, to them for their sin. Ancient Israel became so rebellious toward God in the wilderness that He sent poisonous serpents to bite them. Many died. It was only when God ordered Moses to melt down bronze, fashion it into the form of a serpent, put it on a pole and raise it, and make the people look at it in repentance to acknowledge their sin and place their faith in God alone, that the suffering survivors recovered.

In the New Testament book of Acts, a husband and wife, Ananias and Sapphira, under no obligation to give the proceeds from the sale of their home to the Church, told everyone that’s what they had done. They wanted bragging rights. But when it became known that they’d actually held back some of the money they claimed they had given, God took their lives. It’s a chilling incident.

Judgment can come from God in this life. But we need to be careful in saying that when people get into trouble, they must be under God’s judgment. In fact, if we even think it, I suspect it’s best to repent for playing God. Only God will judge people’s worthiness for eternal salvation. We can and we must, as God’s people, share both His Law and His Gospel with others. But judging people’s eternal destiny is God’s job, not ours.

As our Gospel lesson for today, Luke 13:1-9, begins, some men tell Jesus about a recent event in Jerusalem: A group of Galileans had just been slaughtered in the temple by soldiers sent by Pilate, the Roman governor. This likely took place during the Passover, because that was the only time that laypeople, rather than priests, were allowed to participate in the sacrifices offered in the temple courts.

Jesus asks the men, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:2-3)

And then, citing another recent event, Jesus asks the crowd what they think of “those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:4-5)

Just before the people in the crowd remind Jesus of Pilate’s murder of the Galileans, Jesus has been talking about how important it is for us to accurately interpret the times in which we live. You see, at the moment Jesus was born at Bethlehem, the fallen creation in which you and I live entered the “end times.” When we rightly understand that this, we know that the life of this universe, not to mention our own individual lives, could have ended and still could end at any second. That means that the standard operating procedures of our inborn sinful human natures will not do. Judging others as worthy of God’s condemnation and ourselves as being innocents with a right to God’s blessings, good fortune, and ease will not do.

Jesus says that when we see others die violently or suddenly, we dare not conclude that God punished them or that they were worse sinners than we are.

God’s Word tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) The whole human race is composed of sinners. That includes you and me. There is no escaping that word all. Since you and I are all sinners and since no sin is worse or better than any other sin, Jesus says we dare not conclude that the person who dies from cancer or COVID, or the mother and child killed by a Russian bomb, or the young Russian conscript forced to be involved in “special military operations,” or the depraved despot who is unleashing war on Ukraine even as we speak, is worse than we are. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Instead, Jesus says, when we see the tragedies, travesties, and deaths of our fallen world, our first thought should be not to judge others’ salvation, but to repent. Unless we repent, Jesus says, we will perish. To perish, in the Greek language in which Luke wrote his gospel, means not just to die, but to be utterly atomized, but still to exist, crushed by the eternal suffering and torment that comes to those who put their faith in their own goodness and righteousness rather than in the goodness and righteousness of God.

To repent for our sin is not just being sorry for our sin, it’s also to  “trust in the one who brings [us] forgiveness and release [from the death sentence we deserve for our sin.]”

It’s right for us to fear God and not just respect Him or hold Him in awe, because God has every right to hold us accountable and judge us for our sin.

But in Jesus Christ, we know that, as we turn to Him and turn away from our sin, we can trust in God not to judge us according to our sin, but solely and completely according to the righteousness He gives to all who believe in Jesus.

Jesus, the Son of God, is the Lord and King sent by God the Father, “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free…” (Luke 4:18) Jesus covers the repentant in grace, forgiveness, and life with God! It’s the same grace, forgiveness, and life with God He commissions us to share with all the other sinners of the world.

At the end of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells a parable.

A man, clearly representing God the Father, owned a vineyard. As was common in the first century in that part of the world, the vineyard owner planted a fig tree among the grape arbors. But, after three years, the fig tree hadn’t produced any fruit. The owner of the vineyard is angry with the unproductive tree. So, he tells the vinedresser to cut it down. But the vinedresser, representing God the Son, Jesus, begs the owner of the vineyard, “Sir, leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.” (Luke 13:8-9)

In the parable, Jesus, the One Who offered His life on the cross to save us all from sin and death, asks the Father for more time for “fertilizer,” His life-giving Gospel Word, to be poured onto the human race. Christ begs that the Father will give His Church time to spread His good news, sharing His call to repentant faith.

To the first-century churches of Asia Minor, anxious for Jesus to return and usher in His eternal kingdom in its fullness, the apostle Peter said, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

Repentance and saving faith in Jesus are gifts God gives through His crucified and risen Son. May God help us spend our days not in judging others, but living in this repentant faith and in sharing the good news of Jesus, by which He saves the perishing and gives the repentant eternal life with God. Amen

When Bad Things Happen

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during worship on Sunday, March 24, 2019.]

Luke 13:1-9

Why do bad things happen to people? 

We ask this question, in many different ways. The main reason we ask it, it seems, is because we want the world to make sense. 

Often though, it just doesn’t. 

Marriages end. 

Spouses and children die. 

Tragedies occur. 

And we wonder why.

This question seems to be on the minds of people who approach Jesus in today’s gospel lesson, Luke 13:1-9. Let’s look at it together. 

Verse 1: “Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.”  

Apparently, pious, believing people from Galilee, the region where Jesus grew up, had been offering sacrifices to God at the temple when Pilate set Roman soldiers on them, murdering them and, showing added disrespect to the Jews, polluting their sacrifices by mingling the blood of the worshipers with them. 

We have no record outside of the New Testament of this particular incident. But we do have independent records of Pilate doing equally awful things. Pilate was a well-documented thug.

The unspoken question of Jesus’ interlocutors here, of course, is, “Why?” 

Now, it’s possible as you read their words to Jesus to think that they wondered how an omnipotent and loving God could allow worshipers to be killed in the Lord’s house. But, it’s apparent from Jesus’ reply to them that He reads their question differently. He sees that they already had their own explanation for what happened to the murdered Galileans and were there just to get Jesus to agree with them. 

He doesn’t

Verse 2: “Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’”

The unspoken assumption of the people who approach Jesus is that, somehow, the Galileans murdered in the temple deserved to die. And mentioning what must have been another bit of recent news, Jesus says that eighteen people who had been killed by the collapse of a tower built into Jerusalem’s city walls didn't deserve their tragic deaths either.

As we read this passage, we may be horrified by the suggestion that the victims of these tragedies and the family members who mourned for them deserved these horrors. 

But don’t we hear people say similar things in the face of tragedy that befalls people today? 

Don't we, sometimes, looking for a rational explanation of irrational events, say such things ourselves?

When Alabama was hit with flooding recently, some claimed that it was God’s punishment for voting for Trump in 2016.

Back when much of California was ablaze with fires, some people on Twitter claimed it was  God’s punishment for filthy movies that came from California.

Ideas like these appeal to human ego because they say that if we’re doing the right things in life, nothing bad will touch us and that if bad things like these happen to other people, it must mean that they’re not good people like us, not right with God like us.

But, as disciples of Jesus, we know that we are, every single one of us, and that, at best, Christians can only claim to be sinners saved from sin and death not by how good we are, because we could never be good enough to be counted righteous, but only because of what God has done for us through the crucified and risen Jesus and through the faith in Jesus that has been set in us, not through our effort, but by the Holy Spirit. 

In Jesus, true God and true man, we have a Savior Who endured poverty, pain, and death even though He was sinless and deserved none of the bad that happened to Him. Do we want to say that Jesus deserved the horrors that befell Him? 

I hope not! On the cross, Jesus got what we deserved and what we deserve! 

As God’s Word teaches, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).” God doesn’t give human beings the punishment we all deserve, but eternal punishment comes to those who choose to follow sin rather than Christ.

Bad things happen in this world simply because we live in a fallen, imperfect creation that is haywire with sin and death. 

Jesus says that God the Father “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).” God isn’t out to get anyone. 

And Jesus tells those who follow Him, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (John 16:33).”  God loves us and He makes all baptized believers in Jesus part of His new and eternal creation, but as long as we live in this old creation, every one of us is subject to its difficulty, pain, and death. 

Thugs will order soldiers to kill worshipers. 

Towers will fall on people standing in the wrong place. 

Wildfires will rage in wooded areas. 

Floods will come to coastlands and river valleys. 

There may be things we can (and should) do to prevent some tragedies, but the possibility of tragedy is baked into the cake of a creation groaning under the weight of sin and death.

And so, the first question we need to ask in the face of the tragedies that befall others or could befall us at any moment in our lives isn’t why. It’s what am I going to do about it? What will we do once we come to terms with the reality of our mortality and susceptibility to tragedy? 

Jesus has already told us how we should respond to that question twice in our lesson. He says, “unless you repent, you too will all perish” and, again, “unless you repent, you too will all perish.” 

In other words, don’t make judgments about others that make you feel superior; focus instead on daily seeking the forgiveness and new life that God offers us through Jesus. 

Daily repent: turn each day away from sin and turn each day to Jesus. 

We might take as our model the man in Jesus’ parable who prays, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner (Luke 18:13)!” God will renew us in His charitable, forgiving love, when we offer up prayers like that. 

In Psalm 51 in which David confesses his sins to God, he also confesses his faith in God’s receptivity to the repentant: “...a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise (Psalm 51:17).”

In our gospel lesson, Jesus underscores His call for us to daily repent, to turn to Him and live with God as part of His renewed people, in a parable. Verse 6: ““A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”

Here, Jesus tells the story of a fig tree that deserves to die. A fig tree that doesn’t produce fruit is only taking up space, just as a disciple who knows Jesus, but never repents or seeks to follow Jesus is taking up space. 

So, the owner of the fig tree orders that it be cut down. 

But the caretaker asks that the owner let him spend a year trenching around the fig tree to ensure that it gets plenty of water and putting lots of fertilizer on it, just as God showers us with grace so that we can know Jesus, grow in Jesus, and show Jesus to others. So that we can bear the fruit of a life filled with Jesus. 

God’s intention for us when He claims us in Holy Baptism, feeds us on His Word, gives us Holy Communion, and places us in the fellowship of the Church is clear: As long as we live in this earth, whether a long time or a short time, God means to fill us with and means for us to share with others, the life that only comes to those who trust Jesus Christ! 

Our lives are meant to be displays on which God daily writes the message for all the world to see: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).”

A moment ago, I said that the first question we need to ask in the face of life’s tragedies is not why, but what am I going to do about it? Am I going to turn to Christ and live? 

I think that in the parable, Jesus suggests a second question, the answer to which, when I remember it, sustains me and encourages me with hope in an often hopeless world. It’s this: Why me? Not “why me” as in why is bad stuff happening to me, but “why me” as in why am I still around? Why is God still pouring His grace on me?

When I suffered a heart attack nine years ago, it was the "widow maker": a 100% blockage of the left anterior descending artery that often leads to sudden death in its victims. More than two weeks after the cardiac event, a cardiologist was able to push a stent through the blockage.* Later, during my overnight stay at the hospital, the night duty nurse entered my room. She'd looked at my chart. "You're lucky to be alive," she told me. "God must have plans for you."

I'm convinced that God has plans for you too! That's why you're still drawing breath on this planet.
I can’t explain why tragedies befall some people and not others. I don’t know. 

But I do know this: God keeps us around until further notice because He wants us to let the world know about the new and everlasting life all people can have through faith in Jesus Christ. 

The apostle Peter writes to we Christians in one of his New Testament letters (this translation is from The Message): “...you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference [Christ] made for you (1 Peter 2:9-10, The Message).”

The victims of tragedy in this world don’t need misinformed “Christians” piling on, telling them that their pain is punishment from God. Our call is to share Jesus. Our call is to live for Jesus, Who lived, died, and rose for us and for those who don't yet know Him. 

May God help us to do just that. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

*Why this happened two weeks after the heart attack is another story too long to go into here. But the fact that I survived after losing 40% of my heart function and still having 100% blockage in a critical artery is something which both I and my cardiologist regarded as miraculous. And that's not a term I throw around lightly.

The God Who Loves to Set Captives Free!

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Luke 13:10-17

The God we know in Jesus Christ loves to set captives free. God loves to free people from the prisons that the devil, the world, and our sinful selves can impose upon us.

In His hometown synagogue back when He began His public ministry, Jesus read words from the Old Testament prophet’s book of Isaiah: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me… to proclaim liberty to the captives…” Then, the Bible tells us, Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

On this Sabbath day today, Jesus wants you to know that whatever sins or temptations bedevil you, whatever regrets you carry on your shoulders, whatever doubts you may harbor about God’s goodness or God’s Word, whatever feuds may mar your personal relationships, whatever failures you may rue, you can be set free.

Don’t let Satan rob you of the joy, and the peace, and the hope that Jesus Christ wants to give to you, even in the midst of life’s difficulties, pains, and challenges. Let Jesus set you free! You simply need to come to Him when He calls, as we’ll see in today’s Gospel lesson.

It tells us about something that happened in another synagogue in an unnamed town during Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross, where He underscores His desire to set captives free, as well as His authority to do just that.

I’d like to ask you to once more this morning pull out the Celebrate insert and turn to today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 13:10-17 and this time, if you have a pencil or pen handy, pull that out as well. (Don’t worry; you’re not going to have to write any essays!)

Read the first verse along with me silently. “Now he [that is, Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.” Elsewhere in Luke’s gospel, we’re told that it was Jesus’ custom to always go to worship on the Sabbath day. The Bible also tells us that all of Jesus’ early followers and the apostle Paul were in the habit of honoring the Sabbath by worshiping God every week.

This habit may seem contradictory to us. We know that the Ten Commandments commanded God’s people, the Jews, to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” But, good Lutherans that we are, we also know that (a) we human beings, having been born in sin, are incapable of keeping God’s commands perfectly and (b) keeping the law cannot save us from sin, death, and pointless lives anyway. Only Christ’s cross and empty tomb and our repentant faith in Christ can accomplish that.

So, why did Jesus and the first Christians make such a big deal of keeping the Sabbath? Because the Sabbath is a gift from God, an oasis on our weekly calendars where we can be met by the living God in His Word and in the strengthening fellowship of those who, just like us, are people of God’s Word. It can play this role as much in our lives today as it did in the lives of the ancient Jews. The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us:

...a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God's rest also cease from their labors as God did from His. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through...disobedience...[as was true of God's people in their wilderness journey between Egypt and the promised land]

(It's interesting to me that the text says "make every effort to enter that rest." Sometimes, it requires a lot of hard work and effort to set aside time to rest, especially in these busy days.)

Further on in Hebrews, we're reminded of the part that Sabbath rest plays in the lives of believers, beyond just giving them time to recharge their batteries:

...let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day [of Christ's return to the world] approaching.

On the Sabbath, God cleans the clutter from our lives so that we can hear the clear, unambiguous message of the Bible together. This is what Martin Luther talked about in his explanation of the Third Commandment, to remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy:

We are to fear and love God so that we do not neglect His Word and the preaching of it, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it.

Remember that Jesus came not to abolish God's law--including the commandment to keep the Sabbath, but to fulfill it. Though we will never keep the Sabbath with the same perfection and holy intentions that Jesus did, weekly worship was part of Jesus’ way of life and because the Sabbath is God’s gift to us, He wants it to be part of our lives, too.

The Gospel lesson continues: “And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.”

You might want to circle the word “eighteen,” then draw an arrow over to the margin and jot this down there: Luke 13:4. In Luke 13:4, Jesus mentions “eighteen who were killed.” You might want to look that verse up in your Bible when you go home today. You see, there are no accidents in Scripture and so, when you see “eighteen” appearing in two passages just a few lines apart, you know that they share an important theme.

Luke 13:4 is part of the section of Luke’s gospel that comes right before our lesson for today. In it, Jesus encounters a group of people who are jabbering about the latest news headlines in the very same way you and I do that sort of thing today. Among the headlines that group was discussing was the then-recent tragic death of eighteen people killed when a tower crashed at a place called Siloam.

Jesus picks up on the tenor of the crowds' comments and asks them if any of them think that those who died were worse offenders of God’s will than they were.

This is a pointed question that relates to what happens in today’s Gospel lesson. People can be quick to attribute the hardships of others to their sins. You’ve heard people say things like that. But Jesus dismisses such notions. We do bring some bad things onto ourselves, of course. We also all can probably name times when we have eluded bad consequences for our bad choices. But usually, when we have bad things happen in our lives, it isn’t because we’ve violated God’s will; it’s because we live in a fallen and imperfect world where bad things happen. It’s the risk that all the living endure. That's because this is isn’t heaven.

Now, back in our Gospel lesson, notice that “a spirit” crippled the woman. “Medically,” one prominent New Testament scholar writes, “the illness has been diagnosed as spondylitis ankylopoietica (a fusion of spinal bones) or as skoliasis hysterica…, a hysterical rather than an organic paralysis.” Whatever the diagnosis, Jesus will soon make clear that this woman who came for Sabbath worship in spite of the bitterness toward God she could have felt because of her crippling condition, is being afflicted through no fault of her own. Her condition is caused by Satan, the prince of all the spirits--demons--in rebellion against God.

Keep that in mind as you read along silently with the next part of our Gospel lesson. “When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.“

If you will, please underline the words “set free.” Behind those two words in our translation is a single verb in the original Greek of the New Testament: luo. It can mean not only set free, but also unloosed, untied, or unshackled. As a sign of His power to set all people free from the more lasting scourges of sin, death, and futility, Jesus set this woman free from her crippling condition.

Read on with me, please. “But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’”

The synagogue leader seems more concerned that his tidy little worship service has been disrupted, than He is amazed that God’s mercy and love has come to the place or that a woman once doubled over in agony was standing straight and praising God!

One of the biggest problems in the contemporary Church is caused by theologians,  bishops, pastors, and laypeople who think that no matter what God’s Word tells us about God’s will, grace, and power, they know better. Instead of “standing under” the Bible, which is what the word “understand” means, they presume to stand over the Scripture, claiming to understand things that God, Who inspired the words of the Bible, didn’t know. The synagogue leader had this same kind of presumptuousness. Fortunately, Jesus corrected this misled leader right away.

Take a look at what happens next: “But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?’”

The use of the term, “the Lord” is no accident. The word in the original Greek of the New Testament is kurios. It’s the usual Greek rendering of the Name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush: Yahweh, I AM. In Jesus, Yahweh, God, was speaking to this presumptuous synagogue leader, setting him straight, along with any in the synagogue who might agree with him.

Underline the word "untie" in verse 15. In the Greek, it's luo again. “How dare you, you hypocrites!” Jesus is saying. “You would do a little work by setting an ox or donkey free to get water on a Sabbath day, treating animals better than human beings! But, you want to keep me from freeing this woman, who has been bound by Satan all these years!"

A denominational leader once told the true story of a brilliant pastor who, by use of a formula he had created, was able to project at what times of year his suburban congregation would grow numerically.* This went on for years. The young pastor later confessed that he felt no real need to pray. He had church growth all figured out. One Sunday, two elderly members of the congregation asked if he would mind if they used the church basement one afternoon a week to pray for the congregation. The pastor couldn’t see the harm, told them it would be OK, and thought no more about it.

Some months later, the congregation had a phenomenal growth spurt--including incredible spiritual growth--that the pastor’s calculations couldn’t explain. It actually bothered him! A thought crossed his mind. “No, it couldn’t be!” he told himself. But he decided to check the church basement on the day of the week that those two women had set aside for regular prayer for the congregation. To his absolute shock, he saw that there were now sixty people praying with those two women. (I would love for something like that to happen at Saint Matthew, by the way!)

It’s hypocrisy for us to say that we believe in the God of the Bible and then expect Him to stay within the orderly parameters we try to impose on Him. As our second lesson for today reminds us, our God is a consuming fire. God's power is beyond our control, no matter how wise, upstanding, or clever we may think we are!

Just as an aside, there’s a phrase I’d like you to put in brackets in verse 16. It’s “daughter of Abraham.” This is the only place in all of Scripture where that phrase is used, though there are many places that speak of the “son of Abraham.” Jesus and the early Christians may have been surrounded by a male-dominated culture. But they were no part of it. Men and women, both created in the image of God, are equal in the sight of God. No wonder that Paul writes in Galatians that in Christ, “there is no longer Jew or Greek…slave or free…male and female…If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

Our lesson ends with Jesus’ opponents put to shame and the crowd rejoicing at the wonderful things Jesus was doing.

Whatever it is that may be afflicting you or people you care about today, turn to Christ, expect Him to do the unexpected, expect Him to set you free to live for Him, in this life, whatever it may bring, and in the life to come.

This morning, may God set you free in all the ways you need God’s freeing action…and may you praise God for it. Amen!

*I heard Paul Cedar, then president of the Evangelical Free Church, tell this story at a Billy Graham School of Evangelism at Wheaton College back in 1993.

Making This Moment Count

[This was shared this morning during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Luke 13:1-9
Priest and novelist Andrew Greeley tells one of those stories that isn’t true but tells the truth. It’s about a couple who win a two week trip to Ireland. They were excited, but it was spring and they had until June 1 of the following year to claim their prize. They couldn’t go that summer, they decided, because it would interfere with their usual trip to the lake. September was out because the kids would be going back to school. They didn’t want to be away from home over the holidays; they decided to forgo the trip until after the first of the year. They learned though, that the weather wasn’t good in Ireland during January and February. So, they finally decided to go in May. Then the husband had a gall bladder attack and needed surgery. The doctors said he would be able to travel…by the middle of June.

Life is unpredictable. Many things can interrupt our agendas. Sometimes, tragically, death itself interferes. All of which leads to a very serious question: What would we do if we knew for certain when our lives were coming to an end?

My guess is that most of us would have some thoughts about how we would live differently from the way we live right now.

This question is suggested by today’s Gospel lesson. In the first part of it, Jesus talks about two terrible incidents that the crowd surrounding Him was talking about. If they’d had cable news back then, these are two events they might have been discussing. One was a massacre of Galileans ordered by the Roman governor, Pilate. (They were massacred while they worshiped!) The other incident is one Jesus Himself brings up: The collapse of a tower at the famous pool at Siloam. There, eighteen people died. (Siloam was a place to which people went, believing that the pool's water had healing properties.)

Many people, when they confront such inexplicable tragedies so need to make sense of them or feel such a need to feel morally superior, that they accept explanations which really defame God. They convince themselves and others that God is punishing people for their sins. Jesus will have none of such explanations for life’s tragedies. Nor should we.

Back in the 1980s, a new disease of which none of us had heard before began killing, at first, only gay men. AIDS took thousands of lives immediately and consigned thousands more to certain death. One Sunday, I told the people of my former parish that, contrary to what some were telling us, I did not believe that God was punishing gay men for their homosexuality. If God killed people because of their sins, we all would be dying horrible, premature deaths. The Bible teaches that none of us is sinless and that God sent Christ to die and rise so that sinners like us who repent and trust in Him will live with God forever, no matter how long our lives on earth may be.

After the service at which I'd preached this, a woman approached me. “Pastor,” she asked, “do you mean to say you don’t think that God is punishing these men?” “No, I don’t,” I said. Her reaction surprised me: “I’m relieved to hear you say that. I was beginning to think that maybe I’d misunderstood God all these years. These preachers who say that God was punishing these men seemed so certain of themselves. But the God they talked about didn’t sound like the God I know in Jesus.” She was right.

But how do we explain tragedy? When Jesus cites the two tragedies in our Gospel lesson--one perpetrated by a tyrant, the other an accident, He doesn’t try to explain them.

And He specifically rejects any attempt to paint the victims of the tragedies as being worse sinners than anyone else.

As Jesus puts it elsewhere, in this imperfect world, the sun shines and the clouds rain on the evil and the good. More important than trying to figure out why bad things happen to good and bad people, is learning to let God love us every day and to strive to follow God faithfully each moment of our lives!

Jesus says that unless we repent, we all will die. The death He’s talking about is the death of eternal separation from God, eternal separation from human fellowship, an eternity of regret that we chose to go it alone, rather than relying on Christ for life.

To repent, as we’ve said before, is to repudiate sin and to walk toward Christ. No one can do that perfectly. But God isn’t looking for perfection in us. As the Old Testament tells us, God remembers that we’re dust.

I remember when our two kids were learning to walk. Whenever they showed an interest in walking toward us, we held out our arms and praised them for every imperfect step they took, even when they fell on their seats. We wouldn’t have thought of criticizing them or punishing them because they didn’t do it precisely correctly.

The person living repentantly is taking baby steps toward Christ and even though we may sometimes fall or fail, as long as we keep walking toward our Savior, the cheers coming from God’s throne are so loud that if we were privileged to hear them, we’d have to cover our ears!

If I knew the date of my death, I hope that I would be walking repentantly, moving toward Jesus.

But, there’s a second thing I hope that I would be doing if I knew exactly how long I had to live. Jesus talks about that in the second part of our lesson, in a parable--or a story--He tells that same crowd: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’"

The owners of vineyards in Jesus’ home country didn’t waste precious water on young trees. Nor did they have patience for trees that occupied space and didn’t bear fruit. They simply couldn’t afford any sentimental attachments to a barren tree. So, according to the practices of the time and the scarcity of acreage and water, the landowner in Jesus' parable was right to order that the fruitless tree be cut down. But then, the unexpected happens: The gardener begs the landowner to give the tree one more year. It’s a gift of life. If the tree doesn’t take advantage of that gift, the tree will be cut down.

You and I are that tree in the vineyard. Every day, God allows us to occupy space, to live. He’s sent His Son to give all who trust in Him new life and sent His Spirit to help us grow strong in faith, in love, in courage. God also gives us spiritual gifts by which we can play our part in His Church and His mission in the world.

But often we take all of God's gifts and then live lives that look just like that of the spiritually disconnected person who lives next door. Christ died and rose for you and me to do more than just exist. Even here, in this imperfect world, He’s pumping the life, love, and power of eternity into us. But, I suspect that you wouldn’t know it by looking at the lives of many Christians.

No matter how much time I have left on this earth, I hope not only that to live repentantly, but to also be bearing fruit, displaying evidence that I really have been saved from sin and death by Jesus, that I relish being God’s child.

I’ve told you the story before of an important conversation that Jimmy Carter had with his sister, the evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton. It happened after Carter lost his first bid at becoming governor of Georgia to a notorious racist, Lester Maddox. In addition to feeling badly about losing an election, Carter also couldn't understand how God could have let someone like Maddox win their election race.

His sister told Carter that his being governor of Georgia wasn’t as important to God as whether Carter was walking with God. By that time in his life, Jimmy Carter had already spent decades teaching Sunday School and going on mission trips in which he went door-to-door leading people to faith in Jesus Christ.

Talking cold turkey with her brother, Stapleton wondered who Jimmy Carter had done all of that for. Then she asked him, “Jimmy, if it were a crime to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

That question changed Jimmy Carter’s life. What his sister was really asking him was, “Are you leading a repentant life, a life in which you’re walking toward Christ? Are you bearing the fruits of that repentance? Can people see Jesus working in your life even though you’re imperfect like the rest of the human race?”

Those are good questions for all of us to be asking about ourselves, I think.

I hate to tell you that in fact, there are many days when I hang my head in shame over the answers which honesty compels me to give to those questions as I look at my own life. But thank God, we follow a gracious God Who gives repentant people more second chances than we deserve, opportunities to so open ourselves to Him and His love that we walk confidently in that love and let the whole world see what a great, open-hearted God we follow!

Today, this week, I invite you to offer two simple prayers: Ask Jesus to help you walk toward Him. And, ask Jesus to let the investment He’s made in you--the investment of His life on a cross--show in something you say, you do, or you think this week.

Don’t put it off. Pray those two things: Ask God to help you walk toward Christ and to let Christ live in you.

Whether you and I have one day, one year, or fifty years left to live, we can’t go wrong if we keep asking God to answer those two prayers each and every day.