The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Luke, the thirteenth chapter:
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Do me a favor, okay, and don’t kill the messenger. All I’m doing is telling you what Jesus says. And what Jesus says is that you are a horrible person. He doesn’t just mean like you’re just not nice; He means that you are a horrific person. If people could see into your heart and your mind, they would run from you screaming. Within you lies the potential to be worse than Hitler, worse than Stalin, and, perhaps, even worse than the devil himself.
Now, if you’re thinking, Pastor must be talking about someone else, I’m not. It’s all about you, for once. And if you’re thinking, How dare Pastor talk to me that way? Well, again, it’s not really me. It’s Jesus. So, sure you can be mad at me, but what does that say about what you think of Jesus?
What you should be thinking is, Dear Lord, he’s right. I’m horrible. I’m horrific. I’m evil. But, it’s probably not. We need to be this honest with ourselves. We need to grieve over our sin, lament over it, dive into the poor, miserable sinner we are. We need to see how far our sin takes us away from a holy God. But, we have a hard time with those kinds of thoughts. It’s hard for us to be so down on ourselves. We live in a time when we have been told, and we have taught others, you have to love yourself, you have to love yourself first before anyone will love you. Everyone gets a trophy! Even if you’re a loser. Self-esteem is essential to life. You’re good enough. You’re smart enough. And goshdarnit, people like you.
And that’s all well and good if you’re a pagan. That’s all you have to live for. If you reject the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the free forgiveness of sins, and you’re going to hell, then the only thing you might as well live for is the approval of men, because you’re certainly not going to get it from God. There are reasons why you know so many nice unbelievers; they work hard at it, they need your approval, they need the world’s approval, because for them it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.
But, that’s just the thing, isn’t it? All the approval in the world doesn’t mean jack in the grand scheme of things. We’re all going to die, we’re all going to face judgment. We’re all damned without any grace. I think the world tries to be good so hard, certainly for the likeability factor, but I also wonder if they’re hedging their bets. Like, Well, if there is a god, I better be good just in case he grades on a curve. Well, there is a God, and He is good, and there is no curve, it’s pass-fail. And everyone has already failed.
Again, that’s the thing: we’re all failures. We’re all evil. There is no hope for us within us. There’s nothing we can do. So, when the world does go to pot around us, man, I’ll tell you, that’s no surprise. In the text for today, we hear this gruesome story about Pilate mixing man’s blood in with the sacrificial blood. Honestly, we don’t know a whole lot about this story from history. My guess is that Pilate instructed it never to be told because the consequences would have embarrassed him (he was always in a lot of hot water with Caesar, and always at risk of exile if he couldn’t get the pesky Jews under control). And I also think it would have been horrific to have been a Jew at that time and talked about this wild blasphemy that occurred. It would have been like talking about Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code in church, in all of its gory, sordid, sexual details. Who wants to do that?
We also hear about this tragedy in Siloam, where a tower apparently fell and killed them. Again, we don’t know a lot about it, but, really, construction tragedies are nothing new. It’s a tragedy, for sure, and it was on peoples’ minds, but that’s about it. It’s a good illustration. And what it and the incident with Pilate illustrate is that the world is out to get you and you deserve it.
When you get into the car, and another car t-bones you, you deserve it. When your house burns down, you deserve it. When you get robbed, you deserve it. When the junk of life gets thrown at you, because of your sin, because of what you’ve thought, what you’ve said, what you’ve done, you absolutely deserve it. And for it, you should die. You should absolutely die. You have done evil things, and you should expect evil to be repaid for evil.
Unless you repent. Here’s what I want you to picture: I want you to picture a whiteboard that represents your life. You have been given instructions to use all the colored markers to draw a beautiful picture. Instead, what you’ve done is taken only the black marker and written every curse word you know, you’ve written horrible things about God, you’ve drawn pictures of you breaking the Law of God, the deviancy that exists in your heart. The problem is, God is coming over to look at what you’ve done. And now you’re scared. Now you realize what you’ve done. Now you realize that if He sees it, He’s going to throw you in hell. And so you hide, and before He even gets there, you’re screaming out for Him not to look. You scream out for Him to turn His eyes away. For Him to forgive you. And God is already there. God looks at your board, and shakes His head. He knew you would do this, of course. So, He sends His Son over to the board, who takes an eraser, and carefully takes away every speck of ink that you put on that board. It’s all gone. But, is that enough?
It’s not. This whiteboard is your life, and it needs a beautiful picture put on it. What you didn’t notice is that, as the Son of God erased your tragic hubris, it didn’t stay on the eraser, but was placed upon His skin in permanent marker. And you never noticed before, but the Son had beautiful images and names written upon His own skin, and as He took the eraser over your board, it transferred everything from Him onto that white surface. Gone are your vile accusations against God, and put into its place are beautiful words, images, prayers, songs, praises to God. And God looks at the board, and looks at His Son, and strikes Him dead for all that is vile on Him, but puts a ribbon, a medal, an A+ on your board. You’ve done it. You’re good. The Son of God lays dead before you.
This is repentance and forgiveness. You are to be holy, and you are not. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, comes to you and, in your repentance, wipes you clean from all your sin. But, that’s not enough. First, someone has to pay for it, and second, you still need that which is good. Removing the evil does not provide good, in and of itself. So, not only is all your evil given to Jesus, but all His good is given to you. The Father counts you worthy for the sake of Christ, even as the wrath of God is poured out on Him.
Repentance comes through faith, and faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So, hear the Word of God: repent of your sin, or the world will come after you, and it will take you. Now, I know that the world is still going to hit us, even after we are counted fully in Christ. But, what can it do? A tower falls on you? Who cares? You get to go be with your Lord. A thief robs you? Okay, count it as giving to the poor. All those whom you love forsake you. You have a family in Christ. It’s not to say these things are wildly difficult; they are. But, when counted against the debt that you have been forgiven, it allows you to take them more in stride. It allows you to work to deal with them. It allows you to see them written on your Savior’s face and know that He has redeemed it and will pay it back to you double in the life which is to come.
Like the fig tree, sometimes what’s needed for us to bear the fruit of repentance is to be dug around a bit. That can be painful. It exposes things we thought we hidden. It opens us up to others damaging us. But it also can be freeing. It can provide more water, and, in this case, that means more reminders of our Baptism. It provides more nourishment, again, more reliance on the Lord’s Supper. It means that we have a chance. And sometimes, the manure has got to be spread. Take that exactly that way. Sometimes, you have to be covered in this world’s filth, because through it, we begin to grow and bear fruit.
When the world comes at you hard, lean more upon the promises of your God. He will never leave you or forsake you. He forgives all your sins. Vengeance is His. You shall be raised. You shall have a body like His own. Lean on His promises when you’re covered in the manure of the world. Understand, when you go through this, it’s not because the Lord doesn’t like you. It’s because He loves you, and, even if you don’t understand it, the Lord sees what is necessary to help you grow. If you’re going through all this, know it is the Lord there doing this, not because He’s some kind of capricious monster, but, even though He knows it’ll hurt, the pain we go through will help us grow and will mold us more into the shape of the Son of God.
And then lean on your family here. Sometimes, I worry that we’ve forgotten as a congregation what it means to be a family, to have all things in common, to share with one another. But, we’re working on that. And as we work, share your pain, your heartache, your sorrows, your griefs, your troubles with those around you. Burden them with it, so that they burden you with theirs, and then, together, you rise up and share the load, not your own load, but the burden of Christ, which is joy and peace.
You, in yourself, are evil. You cannot win forgiveness for yourself. You cannot be good for goodness’ sake. But, the Lord is good, and there is no evil in Him save all of sin, which He took to Himself on the cross. For you, He was counted the greatest sinner so that you could be accepted by His Father. And though we must repent, we must see the depths of our depravity, we have a Savior who has plumbed those depths and forgiven us all our sin that we might live forever with Him. Do not be like the world, who has no hope in anything but themselves. Be a tree, covered with manure, and exposed, bearing the fruit of repentance, for the Lord would desire you do grow, for He loves you and He shall teach you His ways. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment