Daily Archives: March 23, 2025

Reckoning with Evil: A Sermon for 3LentC, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

3 Lent

March 23, 2025

We all do it. We see someone’s suffering, perhaps even our own, and wonder, “What did I do to deserve that?” We might ask, “Why is God punishing me?” when diagnosed with cancer, or some other random misfortune befalls us. We might ask ourselves when we see someone in poverty, or unhoused, what decisions they made earlier in life that brought them to this point. It’s human; it’s natural. We want misfortune, suffering to have meaning, and so we look for reasons, or assign blame. Since the first humans began to think reflectively, we have wondered about the origin of evil or suffering, and we have developed intricate explanatory systems—religion not the least of them, to help us negotiate, make sense of, and respond to them.

Such questions bring us to the heart of today’s gospel reading, several enigmatic and perhaps unrelated sayings attributed to Jesus and brought together in this place by Luke. Jesus references two apparently somewhat contemporary events. In the first, Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea who had executed some Galileans while they were making sacrifices; or to put in imagery we might understand, people killed while seeking refuge from bombing in a church. The second example might be even stranger. The tower of Siloam falls and kills 18 people who were unlucky enough to be in the vicinity when the tower came down.

Jesus uses these two stories to make a point. He asks his listeners if these people deserved to die, if they were any more sinful than anyone else in Jerusalem. And then he lays down a warning, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Philosophers distinguish between natural evil and moral evil. Natural evil is the evil or suffering that comes about through natural disaster—tsunamis, earthquakes, and the like. Moral evil is evil that is a result of human action—the holocaust. These two examples of Jesus encompass both types of evil—a random accident, and a crime perpetrated by someone. In either case, our very human tendency is to assign blame. We want to place suffering in a context that makes sense of it, and that makes it conform to our view of the world.

 Jesus here reminds his listeners that there is plenty of blame to go around. The fact that some people were killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed didn’t mean that they were any more sinful than anyone else in Jerusalem.

But the reading doesn’t end there. After this word of warning, Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree. This story seems to be another version of a story in Mark and Matthew. There Jesus comes to a fig tree, looking for fruit but finds none. In fact, Mark observes, it wasn’t fig season. But Jesus curses the tree, and the next day, as they walk by it again, the disciples notice that it has shriveled up. In Luke’s version, it is a parable in which a landowner comes looking for figs, as he has in the two preceding years. But the fig tree is barren, so the landowner tells the gardener to pull it out. But the gardener objects, suggesting instead that they fertilize it and wait to see what happens the next year.

What are we to make of that? Well, if Luke is really reworking the story from Mark, then we see him turning a message of doom into a message of hope. The message from the death of the Galileans and the victims of the Tower of Siloam was loud and clear: “Repent or perish.” But with the fig tree, another message comes forward: “Let’s nurture the tree and see what happens next year. Perhaps we’ll get a crop of figs then.”

Waiting may be an option when it’s a fig tree, but waiting seems irresponsible when the lives of thousands are at stake. The reading from Exodus offers a different perspective on this dynamic. 

Moses, a Hebrew child  was spared genocide when his mother put him in a reed basket in the Nile.  He was found and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter. As a young adult, he came across an Egyptian whipping a Hebrew slave. Moses killed him and fled Egypt, ending up in the land of Midian, where we encounter him in our story.

And he encounters God. Tending sheep on God’s mountain, Mt. Horeb, also known as Mt. Sinai, Moses sees a bush that is on fire but is not consumed by the fire. When he goes to investigate, he hears the voice of God speaking to him, revealing Godself to him, calling him to be a messenger and prophet of God. There is much to contemplate here; the theophany itself, the revelation of God’s name, Moses’ call, but for our purposes, what matters is something God says to Moses:

“I have observed the misery of my people;

“I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters;

“Indeed, I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians….”

The God who appears to Moses in a burning bush is a God who hears the cries of the oppressed and suffering, and delivers them from their distress. But, and this is the important thing, while sometimes that deliverance involves miracle or supernatural power; other times, most times, perhaps, that deliverance makes use of flawed and weak individuals and communities. 

In response to God’s statement that Moses will be the means of the Hebrews’ escape from bondage, Moses asks, “Why me? Who am I?” Later he will claim that he lacks a good speaking voice and so God will bring Moses’ brother Aaron alongside as an assistant and spokesperson.

The point is this. We see evil, suffering, oppression, all around us—in the racism of our society and especially our criminal justice system; in the plight of refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers on our borders and throughout the country. We see evil especially in the wars that continue to rage, not just in Ukraine.. We see this suffering. It may turn our stomachs, bring tears to our eyes. The images may open our wallets as we donate to the humanitarian efforts. We may even know people who dropped everything and are now involved directly in helping those who are suffering, people who have opened their hearts, and their homes.

In light of the magnitude of the suffering and oppression, such efforts may seem of little value, a drop in the bucket. But just as God sent Christ into the world, into the middle of humanity’s messy life, full of pain and suffering, God calls us into those places of suffering and oppression; to be present there as God is present; sometimes with selfless acts of heroism. Other times, we are called to fertilize and tend an unproductive fig tree, hoping and waiting that in seasons to come it will bear fruit.

My friends, in these challenging and heartbreaking times, our faith may falter; we may wonder whether God is still at work in the world. We may wonder whether the forces of justice and truth can overcome the hatred, lies, and oppression that surround us. But God hears the cries of the oppressed, just as we do, and God is working to deliver them, through our prayers and our actions. In these dark times, may we pray, and hope, and wait, and work for justice and for peace.

Go Tell that Fox! A Sermon for 2 LentC, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

Apparently, I neglected to post this last week…

March 16, 2025

One late November afternoon a couple of years ago, as the shadows were lengthening, I was taking a walk on the southwest bike path. I looked ahead and saw a man and his son standing still, watching something. I stopped and asked what was going on. The man pointed; there was a fox in someone’s backyard, trying to figure out how to get into a chicken coop. Eventually, the dad took matters into his own hands, possibly because he wanted to shield his young son from seeing the mayhem that could take place.  He climbed down the bank, entered the yard, and chased the fox away. The hens were safe, at least for now.

It’s one of those cultural tropes we all know: foxes and henhouses, common to cartoons, stories, and fables, and even the teachings of Jesus. It’s startling though, to encounter it in real life, even if in the back of our minds, we know that there are lots of foxes around here—I’ve even seen one in front of the church—and there are lots of hens. Yet it’s startling to encounter the image in scripture.

Luke has done something quite interesting with these sayings. In Matthew, they appear much later in the story, when Jesus is teaching in the temple in Jerusalem in the last week of his life. Luke places them much earlier. Jesus and his disciples are on the way to Jerusalem, but they won’t get there for quite some time. Herod (Antipas) the Son of Herod the Great has already appeared in Luke’s gospel—he arrested John the Baptist just before Jesus began his public ministry. Although Luke doesn’t mention John’s death in his gospel, it is assumed.

 We’re actually jumping around a bit in our reading of Luke. For the past several weeks, our texts have come from relatively early in the gospel. Last week we read the story of Jesus’ temptation, which takes place just before Jesus begins his public ministry. Today’s reading comes from Luke 13, and it’s important to note that it comes from a lengthy section—chapters 9-19, that Luke places is the context of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. It’s also important to note that Luke has moved one of these sayings, Jesus’ lament for Jerusalem. In Matthew, Jesus says this in the last week of his life, while he is in Jerusalem, and in fact, while he is in the temple.

So, Luke removes these sayings chronologically and temporally from Jerusalem and the cross, but even here, with perhaps months or weeks to go before Calvary, the crucifixion suddenly impinges on Jesus’ activity. Pharisees come to Jesus to warn him that Herod wants to kill him. That in itself may seem surprising. We’re programmed by two thousand years of history to assume Jesus and the Pharisees were opposed to each other but remember both wanted to take Torah seriously, to offer ordinary people ways of being faithful in the world.

Jesus calls Herod Antipas a fox. There’s a double edge to this epithet. We tend to associate foxes with slyness or craftiness, so there’s a sense in which Jesus may be offering Herod a compliment. After all, it takes tact, and wiliness to succeed in an imperial system like Rome. At any moment, the caprice of the ruler may turn on you, and survival requires being very adept at maneuvering. But at the same time, foxes are predators, preying on the weak and vulnerable, taking advantage of every weakness in an opponent, or potential meal.

But even if Herod is a fox, a threat, Jesus seems to be saying that he will go about his work—casting out demons and healing people. He won’t be distracted from his ministry by Herod’s machinations. 

There’s a full range of emotions on display in these few verses. Jesus expresses courage in his refusal to turn away from the threat; he shows his sense of purpose in continuing to go about the business of his daily ministry. He is resolute about his fate, as he reminds them that he is on his way to Jerusalem, and that he knows that like other prophets, he will be killed there. Holy Week and the cross loom very large. The sequence of days is mentioned; and Jesus alludes to the triumphal entry—Palm Sunday. 

 In spite of all that, knowing what is to come; how he’ll be treated not only by the authorities but by the people of Jerusalem, he expresses deep love and concern for the city to which he is travelling. The tenderness with which he speaks, comparing himself to a mother hen protecting her chicks, is a world away from the defiance with which the passage begins. 

There’s something else worth pointing out. Jesus and Herod would have a final confrontation, in Jerusalem, in Holy Week. In an episode unique to Luke’s gospel, it would be Herod who would have Jesus dressed in purple, royal garb. Intended as mockery, the incident lays bare the different kinds of authority wielded by Jesus and Herod. Herod relied on force to maintain power; exploiting the weak, and punishing those, like John the Baptist, that he perceived as threats. On the other hand, Jesus’ power was and is a power based in love and vulnerability, like the care of a mother hen for her chicks; the love of the crucified one.

These alternative models may seem as relevant today as they were two thousand years ago. We see Jesus weeping for Jerusalem, here, and again, only in Luke, when he enters Jerusalem in the final days of his life. Luke’s readers would have known all too well what would happen to do Jerusalem; defeated and destroyed, laying in ruins, its riches and bounty carried back to Rome to demonstrate Rome’s power and the fate of those who opposed it. 

We see those alternative models of power and authority on display in our world today, and much closer to home. The power of greed, the lust for domination, the demands for utter fealty fill our media and stoke our fears and nightmares. We see institutions and individuals submitting meekly and without protest, passively watching as victims suffer and rights are trampled. And we feel helpless, impotent.

But Jesus wept for Jerusalem, he lamented that he wished he could gather its residents like a hen gathers her chicks. It’s hardly an act of defiance, or one that would make a difference in the long run. But his example, an example of self-giving, sacrificial love, poured out on the cross, leads to God’s victory over evil and death. It is our hope, our faith that God’s love prevails, and that our own small acts of love, weeping for victims, protecting the vulnerable, bearing witness to Christ, do make a difference. They are signs and acts of love that bind us to and in God’s love, confronting and breaking the powers of evil and death, and building blocks of God’s coming reign.