Musical Prelude and Service.

Isaiah 55:1-9 & Luke 13:1-9
Where is God in the midst of this suffering? Am I being punished for some reason? What did I do to deserve this?
One of these, or a combination of these questions keep arising on a regular basis. Our questioning of the notion of a loving God inflicting harm on undeserving people has been around for at least as long as we have been writing down our thoughts.
The reading from Isaiah this morning comes from how scholars consider the second stage of the prophet’s writing. The Israelites are in exile. They are struggling to come to terms with the fact that their beloved kingdom was invaded and conquered, even though they saw themselves as the chosen people, protected by God. How did God let this happen? Or why did God do this to us?
Are they being punished for the collective sin of the Hebrew people?
Isaiah’s writing insists that God has not abandoned the Israelites. God’s love endures. But there are consequences for turning away from God. The rulers; the wealthy and the powerful, ignored the plight of the poor and the powerless. They exploited those with no voice. God’s people were already suffering at the hands of the rulers of Israel and Judah long before the Babylonians came along.
Israel forgot their commitment to God, failed to care for one another and refused to offer comfort to the widow, the stranger and the poor. The rulers and the elite gave their allegiance to other gods. Gods of power and wealth. They lost themselves in self interest.
And yet, Isaiah says now from exile, that God is still there and promises there is a new life. There is hope of a new world. A new life of abundance. If the people are ready to give up their devotion and hunger for the shallow offerings they pursue. For a people in exile; a people occupied by an occupying empire; where do you place your hope? With the values and promises of your captors? The people who marched you away from your homes to find your way in a strange land? Or do you return to the promise and the values encouraged by the God who guided you out of slavery and occupation once before?
God offers an abundance of the good things of life. Of bread and milk, of wine and water. God offers an abundance of what we truly need, if only we will trust in God and follow God into this new life.
Through Isaiah, God promises the Hebrew people a renewed covenant. A covenant of abundance, God’s justice, God’s love, God’s faith. God’s way of being in relationship is not like ours. God’s thoughts, God’s way of relating to the world can seem incomprehensible to our experience and our wisdom. And yet, it is God who continues to hold faith with people who keep forgetting all God has and continues to do for them.
This way of struggling with God’s relationship to the world, arises again in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus continues on his journey to Jerusalem, and he is confronted by people questioning why people have died in such a tragic way. What was the manner of their sin that they had to suffer such a death?
And Jesus responds that it was not a consequence of their sin. God did not punish them for their sins. Were their sins any greater than so many other people’s sins who continue to live?
Jesus points to the Galileans who died when a tower collapsed. Were their sins deserving of punishment over so many others who avoided death? Suffering and calamity are not punishments for sin. But…sin does have consequences. And those consequences can include death and calamity; just not necessarily for those who have sinned.
Pilot demanded people work in unsafe conditions. Who knows what else may have been going on in the construction of this tower. But the concern for the health and the safety; for the life of those working, was not likely part of the consideration of those in charge. The people in charge of these work were not focused on the humanity of those at risk. And people died.
What we do and don’t do. When we remain silent in the face of violence. These decisions have consequences.
So, where do we find God in all of this? While people are suffering and dying? If they are not being punished; then where exactly is God in the midst of such suffering?
God is right there offering comfort and urging people to see the world through new eyes. Urging people to recognize the humanity and worth of their fellow human beings. To find a new way of being in the world, and weeping with those who are suffering in the midst of such chaos and cruelty.
Jesus closes out this reading today by offering a parable of a fig tree. A tree that, having failed to provide fruit, is threatened with being torn out and thrown away; until the gardener suggests giving it some added attentions and another chance. Quite often this parable has been read in such a way that the landowner is viewed as God and the gardener as Jesus intervening on our behalf.
But let’s re-evaluate. God as the harsh landowner ready to give up on this tree? It doesn’t conform to so many other messages from Jesus as to how God greets and celebrates the people making their way back to God. The father scanning the horizon for the returning son. The lady searching for the missing coin.
Instead, perhaps God, in the person of Jesus, is the gardener nurturing and loving the tree; offering it hope of a new life in the midst of a cruel and uncaring world. The ruthless landowner is our common expectation of how things should be in our world.
You are failing to do what is expected of you?
You are not being productive enough?
You aren’t providing what the world demands of you?
Let us tear you from the ground you know and throw you on the scrap heap.
And in that environment Jesus says, we love you and care for you and offer you the support and the nurture we know you need. Let us love you into being what God meant for you to be. Beloved.
We are continuing our Lenten journey. We are following Jesus on his road to the cross. For many of us, we have been taught that Jesus had to die on that cross so that God could forgive us for our sins. That Jesus was required to carry the burden of our collective sin.
But there are other ways of viewing Jesus on the cross.
God, in the person of Jesus, loves us so completely that he is prepared to die on a cross to keep telling us of God’s unending love. Jesus is not prepared to turn away from us even as humanity nails him to that cross.
God in Jesus is prepared to suffer the pain of betrayal, of abandonment, of torture and death as he experiences all of what it means to be human.
God’s love is not like our love. God’s mercy is not like our mercy. God’s justice is not like our justice. God’s ways are not like our ways.
And so, as we endure our own suffering, our pain, our grief. As we face our own mortality; God in the person of Jesus can look at us and say, I know your pain. And I weep with you, and I welcome you. I embrace you; I offer you y strength and my peace.
And as I have said before, Jesus’ story does not end on the cross or in the tomb. It continues to an open and empty tomb and the promises of new life, new love.
A new world with an abundance of love, of justice, of new life.
So that we may say, thanks be to God. Amen
Rev. Warner Bloomfield

Music provided with permission through licensing with CCLI License number
2701258 and One License # A-731789