Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
| Text: Luke 13:6-9 Jesus 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 round it and fertilise it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.” |
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Taking sin seriously
We are in the middle of the
Lenten season and in just 3 weeks we will be entering the week when we will
remember the trials, suffering and death that Jesus endured to free us from the
curse that sin has brought into our lives.
It shouldn’t surprise us that today our Gospel reading leads us to talk
about that very unpopular subject – sin.
I say it’s an unpopular subject
because we find it easy to talk about sin in a general way – like we can talk
about the evil of a particular government and how its people are being treated.
We talk about how sin is affecting our world, nature, climate, world order.
Paul talks about nature groaning under the weight of sin (Romans 8:22).
We talk about sin in other people’s lives and how that sin is affecting their
well-being, their health, their financial situation, their family life.
We talk about the evil of gambling or domestic violence or teens without
boundaries and see the ripple effect on other people.
It’s like we are standing back
and observing sin at work. Sin is
out there. Sin affects people
everywhere.
But when we start talking about
sin as something that is at the very heart of you and me and it’s pointed out
how a particular sin is affecting our lives, our relationships, our health, our
connection with God and those close to us, we start to get prickly.
We get defensive. How dare
someone point the finger at us.
We’re okay and we might even quote some Scripture and say, “How about looking at
the log in your own eye before picking out the splinter in mine”?
Talking about sin is a tricky
thing and believe me as a pastor it’s not easy to confront a person about a
particular sin. I can’t give you
details of real stories for obvious reasons but suppose that it’s clear that a
married man in the congregation is having an affair with another woman who is
also married.
Of course there are two possible
reactions.
On the one hand, when he is confronted with what is going on this man comes to
the realisation that he had been foolish to think that this was okay.
He comes to see that sin has led them both astray, persuaded them that
their needs were all that mattered, dragging them into a terrible and hurtful
situation. Things needed to change.
The man confesses his guilt, seeks God’s forgiveness and absolution and prays
for the strength to turn things around.
On the other hand, such a
confrontation might be met with an angry refusal to acknowledge that what they
were doing is harmful and hurtful.
This is their business and angrily tells the pastor to butt out.
If God is upset – too bad.
The sin of “what I want I get” gets in the way of that person seeing that he is
being led away from God.
Over the
centuries preachers have tried to emphasize the power of sin in people’s lives
by dramatically describing the consequences of sin.
A preacher in his famous sermon from the 18th century said,
“The wrath of God burns
against his enemies . . . There is
nothing between you and hell – but air. God
holds you over the pit of death as one holds a spider or some other loathsome
insect over the fire . . . If you
cry to God to pity you, he will crush you under his feet without mercy; he will
crush out your blood, and make it fly . . . O sinner!
Consider the fearful danger you are in.” (Jonathan Edwards, 1741).
This is powerful language
describing the danger that the sinner is in.
It’s the stuff of nightmares as you imagine God dangling you like a
helpless insect over the fires of hell or God squeezing the life out of you with
his foot. The preacher is taking
sin seriously. He scares the living
daylights out of his listeners but unfortunately is very light on God’s mercy
and love.
Today’s readings speak about
both sin and the merciful nature of God. Isaiah
in the Old Testament reading sums this up nicely,
“Let the wicked leave their way of life
and change their way of thinking.
Let them turn to the Lord, our God; he is merciful and quick to forgive” (Isaiah
55:7).
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is
confronted with a question about sin.
He is asked about a couple of recent events that happened in Jerusalem.
Some Galileans were worshipping in the temple, when Pontius Pilate sent
in troops and killed them right then and there as they were offering their
sacrifices. And then there was that
terrible crash when the Tower of Siloam fell and killed 18 people.
Jesus is asked, “Did these
people die because they were really terrible sinners?
Were they guiltier than everyone else and deserved death as a punishment
for their sin?
Jesus shocked his listeners when
he said, “No way! Their sin is
no greater than your sin!” (Luke 13:5). They
weren’t expecting that. They were
expecting Jesus to confirm that an unusual sickness or an early death meant that
the victim or perhaps a close relative had done something terribly sinful to
bring on this tragedy.
No, Jesus is saying.
Everyone without exception is equally guilty of sin.
Everyone’s heart is filled with evil.
Everyone is disobedient to God’s way.
Sin is a serious thing in everyone’s life.
No one can look down their nose at someone else as if that person were
more guilty in God’s eyes. “All
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” as Paul says (Romans 3:23).
Jesus is giving his listeners
the same warning that the preacher of the 1700s who proclaimed, “O sinner!
Consider the fearful danger you are in.
There is nothing between you and hell
– but air.” Jesus wants to
impress on his listeners that sin has awful consequences when he said, “I
tell you that if you do not turn away from your sins, you will all die”.
I can imagine that these words
of Jesus must have stunned the crowd, and a shocked silence fell over those
listening to him. This is heavy
stuff. People are looking at their
feet. They are aware of the sin
controlling their lives and perhaps even despairing a little that God will
squash them like a bug because they are so hopelessly caught in the web of sin.
Pauls says, “The sinful nature is
always hostile to God. It never did obey
God’s laws, and it never will” (Romans 8:7). “The wages of sin is death” (Romans
6:23). With sin in control what hope is there?
Suddenly Jesus’ voice breaks the
silence. “Listen, there was a man who
planted a fig tree. Three years passed
and the man is looking forward to the taste of a ripe fig, but he sees that the
fig tree still hasn’t produced any fruit.
He calls to his gardener, ‘Hey!
Get over here’. ‘Why is this
tree still here? It’s taking up
soil and moisture and space. Cut it
down, right now.’”
Jesus pauses.
As they listened, they knew Jesus wasn’t giving them a gardening lesson.
He was talking about God’s disappointment, his judgement on their sin.
They were trees just taking up space and not loving God and one another
as they had been taught in the Scriptures.
“Leave it alone for one more
year”, the gardener pleads, “and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it.
If it bears fruit next year fine!
If not, then cut it down.”
And with that, Jesus ends his
story of the fig tree. We are left
to ponder the generosity, the patience, the grace of the gardener who was
prepared to give the tree another chance.
“Leave it alone”, he says, “and I’ll give it every chance to come good”.
Did the tree respond to the
kindness, generosity and care of the gardener?
Jesus leaves the ending up to us as we put ourselves into the story and
wonder how we are responding to Jesus’ message, “Unless you repent, you too
will perish”.
Our readings today take sin
seriously. They call us to
acknowledge that something has disrupted the closeness and connectedness and
friendship we have with God and with our fellow human beings.
Jesus uses the word “Repent” – “Repent or you will perish”.
Unfortunately, ever since the
Garden of Eden and especially in our times, so many deny the powerful impact
that sin has on their lives. They
pass sin off as of no consequence, as being “normal”.
They deny that they will ever be held to account.
They don’t believe they need God’s help in overcoming the power of sin to
destroy, to kill, to lead astray, to have eternal consequences.
They make up their own rules; they are their own masters.
In the face of this denial of
the impact of sin, Jesus calls us to repent as we head toward Good Friday.
What does it mean to repent?
Repent means knowing in faith that God is reaching out to us with his loving
hand to embrace us. It means
turning away from sin and back to him.
Repent means to change what is broken in our lives because Jesus has dealt with
our broken lives on the cross and gave us forgiveness and a new life.
Repent means trusting God’s power to give us the strength, the will-power, the
hope to face evil and embrace the challenge to live new lives.
Repentance is having faith in God’s grace to bring about radical change in us,
every day of our lives.
Because of sin, Jesus gives
himself for us. He becomes the
manure (you can’t get anything humbler than that), the fertiliser for us as he
is rejected, laughed at, and crucified as a criminal.
On the cross, nails, thorns and a spear dig into him.
He waters the ground with his own blood.
He does everything. We do
nothing. With the Spirit’s help we
simply trust in his grace. In
Christ, we are made beautiful, fruitful gardens.
We don’t know how the tree in
Jesus’ parable responded to the gardeners extra attention.
And so, we are left to ask ourselves,
Sin is a powerful destructive force in my life -
have I listened to the loving call of my Saviour to “repent”, to check how sin
has taken control of my life?
How have I responded to God's grace and turned back to him and be renewed?
How has God's grace worked in me so that I bear good fruit?
There’s no denying it, we are
sinners, but sinners living under the grace and forgiveness of God.
And so we pray with the Psalmist,
Remove my sin, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. (Psalms 51:7)
© Pastor Vince
Gerhardy
E-mail: sermonsonthenet@outlook.com
