lenten oasis

 

SERMON (/MEDITATION?) GIVEN AT St MARY’S, Nth OAMARU

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT (March 20^th) 2022

 

 

READINGS:

 

Isaiah 55:1-9

Psalm 63:1-8

1 Cor 10:1-13

Luke 13: 1-9             

 

As you may imagine, given the epidemiological, political, environmental and economic times we find ourselves in I find myself engaged in all but endless conversations about the future. Perhaps I should hold that thought over until advent, which is supposed to be the future-guessing season of the year, but I am inclined to think that Lent, too asks us to scan the horizon for the signs and directives of God. Lent after all is a time of self-reflection, and self-searching, and self-searching without the aid of God, the aid of the Christ-bearing Spirit of God, is likely to be a reasonably unproductive or certainly underproductive exercise.

So Luke takes us in a series of Jesus moments in which more than one gauntlet is cast at our feet. It’s worth remembering that as our gospel scenes unfold Luke has Jesus on a resolute journey that is a journey towards death. But because we have heard the stories before we have just a hunch that death is not going to be the end of this story, and in times of considerable gloom across the pages of humanity’s journey it’s not such a bad thing to have a spoiler or two here. We are, Paul reminds us, more to be pitied than all people if we have no resurrection in our faith. We’re in Lent but here is a hint of light just beyond the next Full Moon. Which is just as well, because I suspect the same pharmaceutical manufacturers who have done rather well out of Covid antidotes may well be doing well out of antidepressants, too, in this era.

But in our Lenten journey we have come down from the mountain, and we suddenly encounter some of the darker attitude of humanity. About this time, we might read, Jesus learned that Putin had given orders for civilians to be killed in the service of his lust for power and a Russian Empire. And Jesus turns with some passion on those who think – as some Christian fundamentalists do – that the innocent victims deserve their fate. The bystanders ask Jesus if the possibly a thousand or more Ukrainians killed in a theatre bombing deserved their fate. The obscenity of those first questions put to Jesus today is immeasurable, and the answer of Jesus is not without its stark warning: those attitudes lead to death, spiritual if not actual. So incidentally do the attitudes that declare that all Ukrainians are Nazis – a bitter irony if ever there was one as President Zelensky is in fact Jewish – but human intelligence is an early victim of propaganda.

I don’t entirely digress. There is much ugliness in our news sources each day – it was ever thus, because bad news sells, but there is somewhat of an overdose at present. Or perhaps that’s just me? We should all make the wonderful website Daily encourager or Channel One’s Good Sorts compulsory viewing. Maybe that’s why we should not be afraid this Lent to glimpse ahead to the hope that is Easter. Besides, liturgical theologians tell us that Sundays in Lent are not actually in Lent at all, but that’s another story.

Still, Luke doesn’t leave us despairing in any case. The Gardener in our fig tree Jesus-story remonstrates with the Master … hang on, bro … perhaps if I till and manure the fig tree? Please give it a chance? We might recall in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion that the Creator kneels in the dirt of the garden to make the miscreant couple clothes to warm them and cover their new-found nakedness. God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the gardener kneels with us, postpones for us, even breaks objectionable Sabbath interpretations for us so that we can see the glimpse of resurrection light in the midst of the darkness of human turmoil. In the verse just after our official passage, as those of you who have seen the Gospel Conversations will know, and which I included just now, we are reminded that gospel is like a weed, like mustard seed, hard to eradicate despite the shrubs and darkness and heaviness all around us. While at present there is much gloom, the fact is that here in North Oamaru, or deep in the horrors of Ukraine’s Kyiv or Mariupol some are clinging tenaciously to hope, and in Russians streets brave citizens are marching against the obscenity of Putin’s narcissistic war.

There is much that could be said. There is much darkness, as I said, epidemiological, political, environmental and economic, even darkness I suspect for the future of our parish, even our diocese, in the struggle-streets we dwell in. But Luke allows us the spoiler: darkness is not the final word. Although Jesus trudges towards Jerusalem to die we are allowed a reminder that the mustard seed will break through all odds and invite the birds to nestle in its soothing comfort.

Or as the Psalmist and Isaiah put it years before Jesus’ ministry (though in whose footsteps he firmly placed himself), those who thirst will find God, even in the most parched of metaphorical lands.