Hope: The Thing With Feathers – sermon on Feb. 28, 2016
Isaiah 55: 1-9 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a ruler and commander of the peoples. Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor.”
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Luke 13: 1-9 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 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.”
Then he told this parable: “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.’”
Sermon: Hope: The Thing With Feathers by Rev. Doreen Oughton
So I was wondering this week, how did people get their news in Jesus’ time? Was there a daily papyrus that was delivered? Was there a town crier? Or was news just spread in casual contact – like gossip? I tried to find out, but google didn’t help me. So I’m at a loss as to how news traveled, but I can probably make a good guess that the content of that news wasn’t much different from what we get today – natural disasters, people behaving badly, accidents and tragedies. Remember that Israel was an occupied country, and the natives were not at all happy about the Roman occupation. I’m sure the Roman take on the news was different than that of the common Israeli citizen.
Our Gospel story this morning opens with Jesus hearing some new. He’s been on the road, making his way to Jerusalem, stopping in towns and villages teaching and healing. He is told that some people from Galilee, where he is from, were killed by Pilate when they were offering sacrifices at the Temple. Now you know that people don’t usually just report the facts when it comes to news. They talk about what it means, how it affects people, speculate about causes, maybe give some back story on the parties involved in the newsworthy event. The reading doesn’t tell us any more about what was said by others, but I am sure there was lots of discussion going on.
Did the reactions of people to the story vary? Did people frame it in different ways? I’m wondering about all this because I am puzzled by Jesus’ reaction. He asks, “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the others from Galilee? Is that why they suffered?” Given that response, I wonder if people were somehow blaming the victims. It’s hard to imagine, especially as that would be siding with Pilate – the Roman ruler, over their own people! Or maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just a way of saying, “look, things are so bad with Rome, you’ve really got to watch your step. One wrong move could get you killed.” So not that the Galileans were wrong and Pilate right, just that they weren’t careful enough given the bloodthirsty nature of Pilate.
And the rest of Jesus’ response is puzzling too. He seems to be saying that of course it is not the fault of the Galileans that they died – they weren’t worse sinners than anyone else. Nor were the 18 people who died when a tower fell worse sinners than anyone else. And he cautioned the listeners that unless they repent, they too will perish. It seems he is saying, “They weren’t any worse sinners than you. So repent before a tower falls on you, or you are killed by Pilate or some other tyrant.” Then he tells a parable about a fruitless fig tree, and how the man who owns the tree wants to cut it down, but the gardener wants one more year to nurture it, see if some figs can be coaxed out of it.
So here’s what I’ve come up with. I could absolutely be wrong, so if you want to study this passage on your own and you come up with a different message, a different application to how it can mean something in our lives, please let me know. Maybe just the face value of his urging of people to repent is enough. But I started to think that when Jesus was talking about perishing, perhaps he wasn’t talking about dying. Maybe the perishing of the Galileans and the tower victims was not in their death but in their living. Their perishing was not a punishment for any sin, but a consequence of how they lived.
Let’s say you live in Flint, Michigan, and the water you drink is affecting your ability to learn, to pay attention. It makes you more aggressive and hyperactive. It’s not killing you, but you are perishing. Then you stop drinking the water. You start to feel better. Maybe some of the effects are reversible, or you get some help in managing the ones that are not. You may even start to thrive. You live a long life, overcome many obstacles, and at some point, you die. When was it that you perished? I mean we will all die, but will we all perish?
The people hearing the news of the killing of the Galilean, I would imagine, were very upset. It was another outrageous example of how awful this occupation was. The Romans were cruel, disrespectful of the Jewish religious practices and laws with their insistence on putting idols in the Jewish Temple. Things must have felt pretty hopeless to them. Even though they knew themselves to be God’s chosen people, and believed that God was good, they were move impressed by Roman evil than by God’s goodness. Could the same be said about us? Don’t we love our pessimism? To listen to some on the campaign trail is to wallow in pessimism, to conclude that this country is on the verge of complete collapse.
Into this pessimism Jesus speaks – “Repent or you shall perish.” I don’t know that I would hear these as words of hope in hard times. Is this the “good news” we are supposed to be sharing – repent or you shall perish? It doesn’t feel good to me. And yet, what if it is not a threat but a truth-telling. Not that God will punish us if we don’t straighten up and fly right, but that we are already perishing in the way we live. We hear the question of the prophet Isaiah, “why spend money on what is not bread, and labor on what does not satisfy?” We hear that God’s thoughts and ways are not our thoughts and ways. But CAN they be? Is it God’s will that our thoughts and ways begin to align with God’s? If so, we have to see where we are off. We have to see that we NEED to turn – to repent, if we are to eat what is good, if we are to live in the ways of God.
As much as we love our pessimism, we don’t seem all that willing to do things differently. We want the world to change around us, to become better without us having to do things differently. Hard news can be good news. It may be the way out of hopelessness, out of our self-made suffering / perishing, and into a thriving life.
One of the commentators refers to a scene in a book – Infinite Jest. There is a young athlete obsessed with becoming a star tennis pro. He’s so obsessed he can’t eat or sleep, his performance is suffering. His ambition is eating him alive, so he goes to talk to the tennis school’s “guru.” The guru is a great listener, no judgment, no condescension, but he tells the student a hard truth. He says, “Those pros that you envy? They don’t have what you are craving. They are trapped, just as you are.” The student is not pleased. “Is this supposed to be good news? This is awful news.” The guru says, “You have been snared in an untruth, but the truth will set you free. The truth is that fame is not the exit from any cage.” The student replies, “Then I’m stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There is no way out.” The guru says, “You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage.”
Are we aware of the fact of the cage? Do we see our choices as lose-lose? If we think of repentance as being filled and tormented by guilt, or suffering hardship as penance, we may well feel trapped. Repent or perish – feels like there’s no way out. But if we can lean into God’s goodness, patiently till the soil of our souls, take responsibility for our actions, nurture the desire to change our lives, growing in love, perhaps we will find the door opened for us as we spread our wings and soar. As Emily Dickenson said, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never. stops. at all. May it be so.
