Year C

Luke 13:1-9

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The God of Second Chances

Some thirty years ago, a rabbi by the name of Harold Kushner wrote a life changing book for me and for many, titled ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” The Wednesday night Lenten study is reading his newest book. On several occasion in the past, I have lead group studies of the book ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People’ and I have recommended it to many people who have experienced bad things happening in their lives that have led them to become angry with God, themselves and others. When Rabbi Kushner’s son was three years old he was diagnosed with a disease that eventually killed him two days after his fourteenth birthday. The Rabbi said he was then faced with one of life’s most difficult questions: Why, God? Why, me? I have served you faithfully. Why, my son? Years later, he wrote this book of the doubts and fears that are very real when tragedy happens.

He says, “I write this book to help others who might one day find themselves in a similar predicament. I write it for all those who want to go on believing, but whose anger at God makes it hard for them to hold onto their faith and be comforted by religion. And I write it for all those people whose love of God and devotion to God has led them to blame themselves for their suffering and believe that they deserve it.” He says, “The idea that God gives people what they deserve, that our misdeeds cause our misfortune, is a neat and attractive solution to the problem of evil, but it has a number of serious limitations. It teaches people to blame themselves. It creates guilt even when there is no basis for guilt. It makes people hate God and themselves, and most disturbing of all, it does not even fit the facts.”

All the responses to tragedy in this book have one thing in common. They all assume that God is the cause and they all try to understand why God would want them to suffer. Is it a test, or for our own good, is it punishment, does God not care?  Rabbi Kushner says, “There may be another approach, maybe God does not cause our misfortunes. Sometimes there is no reason. We have choices in life. God allows us to be human and we make mistakes. We can’t explain some things any more than we can explain life living in a world of inflexible natural laws. Life sometimes is not fair. We can’t control everything in a world of good and evil.” Then, how can we forgive a world for not being perfect?  He says, we can forgive by turning to God for help in those times.

In psalm 122, the psalmist writes, “I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where does my help come? My helps comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” In today’s psalm we read “for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.” Our help, our strength to persevere, our comfort comes from the Lord in this life filled with good and evil. Our help, proclaimed in all the readings today, comes from a God who knows and experienced suffering. This God has provided a world of good things for us and does not want us to suffer but allows us to be human. The reality is we often turn away from God and we are inclined to go after those things that not only do not satisfy our deepest needs but can even be harmful to us. We think these things will provide meaning, purpose, and the identity we seek.

Such is the essence of sin, which means, literally, “to miss the mark.” The season of Lent invites us to take stock of our sin and its consequences. Luke’s Gospel commands us to repent and move into the abundant, fruit-bearing growth that God has made possible through Jesus Christ. Repentance, in this context, is God imploring us to turn away from those things that would hurt us. This season is the time to talk about these things so we are aware of where we need to turn around. Because the ultimate purpose in Lent is to strengthen our spiritual lives with a God who over and over again calls us to turn back.

This is what Paul is reminding the Corinthians, as he urges them to not forget their history; the people of God have failed God before, and they are in danger of failing again. The temptation to seek other gods, and to place trust in something other than God, was a continuing struggle. He assured them that God is faithful. When temptation comes, God’s grace or love is also present to help endure. Paul’s call for repentance was based on examples from the past, and the warning of the Gospel is based on a commonly held belief that illness and misfortune were God’s punishment for sin. Even though several of the prophets of old had tried to explain to the Israelites that suffering did not come by the will of God, the idea persisted as it does today, and examples of suffering were presented to Jesus.

In the light of these examples Jesus, takes up the task of the prophets before him to correct false belief. He tells them there was no reason to believe that either group of unfortunates was more sinful than the others. Yet, their fate was to be a warning to repent; not to scold, badger, or judge but to say that no one person is better or more worthy than another. We all contribute to the brokenness and pain of the world by our choices and deserve judgment. Yet, if God was not merciful and in the business of meting out judgment and curses in relation to our sin, there probably would not be anyone left on the planet. God invites all people to receive the grace and forgiveness offered freely through the cross to everyone who returns to the Lord, that God may have mercy on them, for God will abundantly pardon.

The prophet Isaiah reminded us that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways and this understanding is emphasized in the parable Jesus tells of the barren fig tree where he offers God’s life-giving message of second chances. The man tells the gardener to give the barren fig tree one more year. This is a story of divine compassion because the Lord gives an infinite number of changes; still, we need to respond to God’s mercy and change our lives. For the fig tree there is a definite limit. If it falls to produce, even the gardener who cares for it will finally agree to its removal. Reminding us that it is important we produce fruit from our lives of faith, for when we don’t, we can spiritually die and turn away from God.

Lent is the season of “one more year”. Rather than just leave us to our own devises and desires, God gives us one more year to repent and embrace the new life offered to us in Jesus Christ. We are invited to pay attention to the way sin has us in its grip so we can repent and return to the Lord receiving mercy and help from a God who abundantly pardons. We are not able to understand or control everything in this world of good and evil. Yet without answers, there is one thing we can be assured of is the love of God who seeks our hearts, minds and souls over and over again for life. As the psalmist prayed let this be our prayer “O God, you are my God, I seek you, for you have been my help, my soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”  In the theme of Lent “return to the Lord your God.”