then you can cut it down

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT (26^th February) 1989

 

Yackatoon Cross

READINGS

Isaiah 55:1-9

Psalm 63:1-8

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Luke 13:1-9

 

It may bear fruit next year; if not then you can cut it down.

In the early church converts to Christianity spent up to three years undergoing a process of preparation for admission to the church, preparation for admission to the sacrament of baptism that marks the beginning of the Christian journey.

It was in that same era of Christian history that the period in the church year that we know as Lent came to take its present shape. Lent came to be the period not only for the preparation of all the faithful for the celebration of Easter, but also the crisis, the last desperate sprint in the preparation of candidates for baptism.

In that time this third Sunday in Lent came to be the particular time for reflection on God’s call to his people to repentance. It was the time to remember the disobedience of God’s people of Israel in the desert and in their subsequent pilgrimage. But it was also traditionally a time to remember God’s forgiveness, his seemingly inexhaustible ability to love his wayward children. It was time to remember and to reflect on the compassion of Yahweh, as we have done this morning.

Yahweh is tenderness and pity; 

slow to anger and rich in faithful love. 

                                       (Ps. 103:8)

 

It was a time also to remember the errors of the early church. What better way to remember them then to turn again to Paul’s repeated entreaties to the Corinthian church, repeated calls not to distort or abuse the gospel he himself had taught them. And at the end of three years of preparation and soul searching, the candidates knew only too well their weaknesses, their potential for failure.

I watched last week one episode of the ABC series on women in the army. I was left with a deep sense not only of the brutality of the army, but of the tragedy of failure within such an unforgiving system, the tragedy faced by those who were simply unable to keep up, that the demands of the system placed on them.

Thankfully God is more forgiving than the army. For we all will fail. We will fail simply because we are a part of a human race that has failed, part of a world that fails. We will sin. We will ourselves commit acts of sin, and we will continue to participate in the tragic sins of a fallen world.

But we will also, as we are soon to do in this liturgy, turn again to God to seek and receive his forgiveness.

How many times? Seventy times seven.

We must forgive our neighbour an infinite number of times, precisely because we have likewise been forgiven an infinite number of times.

It must also be remembered that an essential part of Christian belief is that there will come a time when there will be no further opportunities for repentance.

He will come in glory to judge the living and the dead 
and his Kingdom will have no end.

There must come a time when our death or the end of history as we know it brings us face to face with our failures, a time when excuses no longer prevail. There must be in our faith that the God who is all loving and all knowing is also the God who will ultimately judge his people by their lives, by their readiness to proclaim a gospel of love by their deeds and their words.

The responsibility for us as Christians is great. We must find ways in which to alleviate the human suffering that is the visible result of a sinful world. We must find God’s strength to rise above our own tendency or vortex towards sin. We must find ways effectively to proclaim the Christ event, the good news of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, proclaim it to the world. By this we shall be judged.

It is with this question in mind that at this point in our journey through Lent we must turn and seek once more the forgiveness of God for our sins, as individuals, and for our sins as part of a tragic and fallen world. For the tree that is left standing one more year will, if it does not bear fruit, eventually run out of reprieves, and be cut down.

For that reason, when we say our confession together in a few moments, let us remember that we are not recalling before God our own sins only, but in the first person plural, remembering the sins of the whole world, and as a royal priesthood offering them to God for forgiveness.

Let us therefore at this time in Lent be most critically tuned to our failings and to the failings of this world, and seek that God may breathe forgiveness into us.