SERMON (/MEDITATION?) GIVEN AT St MARY’S, Nth OAMARU
THIRD SUNDAY OF
LENT (March 20th) 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.
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