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Sunday, March 24 - Turn

This sermon was preached for the Third Sunday of Lent, Sunday, March 24 at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, MA. The readings for this sermon are: Exodus 3:1-15, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9, and Psalm 63:1-8.

I was doing some reflecting with some of my classmates as we prepare to graduate from seminary and I shared that one of the main lessons I keep learning again and again is that everyone I meet is pretty much just doing their best. Most of the time, we’re all flawed human beings just doing our darnedest. One of my classmates thought about that for a second and then said, “I have a story for you.”

And she told me about when she served at as a parish administrator in a church in England. There was this woman that came to the church week after week and asked for five bus tokens. Never said why, never asked for anything more. Just five tokens for the bus week in and week out. Until, one week the woman stopped coming. When she appeared some time later, she came in and said to my classmate, “I have a gift for you: If you are ever homeless, know that you can ride the 51 bus down the coast and back all night. And if you lie in the back of the bus and don’t bother anyone you can get a good full night’s sleep.”

And my classmate said, you know, that really was a gift. This woman, she probably had her life together at one point, and then she didn’t. And now she was getting it back together again. And what she had to offer to someone else was the knowledge that got her through. And wrapped up in that gift for my classmate was a reminder that at any moment things might fall apart, things do fall apart. And that woman wasn’t about to leave my classmate empty-handed when it did.

In our Gospel passage today, the people bring bad news to Jesus. Things have fallen apart. A group of Galileans have been slaughtered in their house of worship. Faulty engineering brought death crashing down from the sky in Jerusalem. The people bring the bad news of their world to Jesus and lay it at his feet.

Jesus knows the answer they are expecting. He knows that a typical rabbinical response would have been something like: the wicked had it coming. Let that be an example to you. It’s familiar theology -- we’ve just read Paul slip into it in his letter to the church in Corinth: those people who suffered deserved their fate. All of this is a test and the worthy survive. God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.

But here, Jesus rejects those easy answers. He sees through the implications of the comforting lie that bad things happen to bad people. Jesus challenges the listeners to search their hearts.

Do you think that because they suffered they were worse than you? Do you think that because you are alive and fortunate you are better, more loved than they?

Terrible stuff happens. Tragedy strikes. Lives fall apart. None of that, none of that has any say on your own belovedness or wickedness or worth.

Here is the choice Jesus has to offer us: Repent. Or as Bishop Michael Curry might say in the Way of Love: Turn. Turn toward God. Turn toward one another. Give your gifts now. Build now. Change now. Love now. Eternal life lies in the turning toward.

Then Jesus does as Jesus does and tells a confusing parable. And I’ll tell you, throughout the centuries, commentaries have debated its symbolism. Is God the vineyard keeper who is disappointed in the fig tree that won’t bear fruit? Is Jesus the gardener who asks that the fruitless tree be spared? Or maybe Jesus is the tree and God is the gardener or the tree is Israel or the tree is the Church or the Church is the vineyard keeper. There’s a lot of guesses as to what the number three means, too.

Leaving all that aside, here is what I know. I know there are times in my life where I have been called to be the gardener for someone else. There have been times when I have realized that I need to trust that the person who let me down is a human being just doing their best. Times when I saw I needed to advocate for second chances for someone else -- or more than that, when I needed get down in the dirt and spread around stinky manure. And I know, too, there have been many times in my life when I have been that fruitless tree, hoping that someone else will turn and give me the grace to grow into what I’m striving to be.

These Galileans in the synagogue, these Jerusalemites below the tower? They were just people. People doing their best. You are a human being. Doing your best.

How many of us need to hear, at some point or another: This thing that happened to you, this divorce, this rejection letter, this job loss, this diagnosis, doesn’t have anything to say to your ultimate worthiness, your final salvation, the true meaning of your life. And it doesn’t for that other person over there, either.

When things fall apart, and tragedy strikes, and the fruit tree branches stay empty, sometimes you are the gardener and sometimes you are the tree. And sometimes, perhaps we're both. Because sometimes the tree leans over and says, “I have a gift for you.” Sometimes a homeless member of your community brings you a paper heart that has scrawled on it, “You don’t have to have it all figured out to move forward.”

So turn. Turn to God. Turn to each other. Turn and see what God sees: flawed, beloved human beings doing their darnedest.

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