Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, March 23, 2025

Exodus 3:1-15+Psalm 63:1-8+1 Corinthians 10:1-13+Luke 13:1-9

There is probably no greater theological challenge than the question of why bad things happen to good people. Pediatric cancer, violent tornadoes, tragic accidents. There is no end to the ways in which we are challenged to believe in a God who is good, who is all-powerful. Because would an all-powerful good God allow such things to happen?

An infinite number of books and treatises have been written on the subject of theodicy which is what this area of theology is called, and it is more than I can wrestle with in a few minutes on a Sunday morning, but I think Jesus is helpful with this rather strange story about blood being mingled with sacrifices and a tower falling on a crowd and killing 18 of them. What Jesus is talking about are people going about their business, some being persecuted and killed by a brutal empire and others victims of what might have been shoddy, short-cutted workmanship. We don't really know anything about these events. But Jesus challenges his listeners with a question, "do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?" (Luke 13:4). He clearly expects us to answer in the negative, but this is not really a question we dare answer, because as soon as we start keeping score about who does and does not deserve what punishment, one of two things will happen: we will conveniently absolve ourselves of everything or we might just find ourselves on the deserving-of-punishment side of the equation.

But it's human math and record-keeping that Jesus is here to dismantle. God's ways are not our ways, and God's accounting is not our accounting. Trying to go down that road leads nowhere good.

So, why does he follow this up with such an accusing question, "I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did" (Luke 13:5). We do not often think of Jesus as one in a long line of prophets because he was more than just a prophet. But Jeremiah and Amos and Micah and all the rest were known for calling people to repentance, to get right with God. Invasion and disaster loomed in every century from every direction from the beginning of Israel's existence, and one way to encourage people to remain faithful no matter what awfulness swirled around them was to call them to turn and re-turn to the Lord. There was also a sincere belief that misbehavior and unfaithfulness led to God's judgment, whether it meant exile or occupation. So that's part of what Jesus is doing here, just calling people to faithfulness, to repentance or turning around, to return to God.

But that's not all.

Two Sundays ago, on the First Sunday in Lent, we chanted the Great Litany in procession, and much of that old litany is about repentance. One of my favorite petitions says

From all oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from
violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and 
unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us. (BCP 149)

Dying suddenly and unprepared. These people Jesus refers to in these events all died suddenly and unprepared. Perhaps they had not turned away from whatever wayward life they were leading or made whole those they had cheated, or maybe they had not told their families they loved them when they left the house that morning or made provision for their care in the event of their death. There are many ways of being unprepared for death, and one of those is not to have prayed for forgiveness for whatever things we may have done or left undone. It's why deathbed confessions are such a thing in books and films.

For Jesus, the way to avoid dying unprepared is to live a life of faith, prayer, repentance, and service. And Jesus is showing the way. Don't forget where we are in Luke's gospel. Jesus has set his face for Jerusalem. He is on the road to what he knows will be his death. He cannot afford to be unprepared, and he doesn't want those around him to be unprepared, either, because there was every likelihood that they might accompany him on the road to crucifixion.

And lest you think that you need to start keeping track of how well you are doing on the repentance profit and loss sheet, we have a fig tree that the gardener does not want to give up on. That's God not giving up on us. As the Apostle Paul puts it to the Corinthians, "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and...will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing...will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it" (1 Corinthians 10:13). It always goes back to God's faithfulness rather than our own, God's salvation and not anything we can accomplish alone. We need not keep score because God does not keep score.

God does not promise that bad things won't happen to us. What God promises is that this loving Creator of ours will be with us in it. That's why the incarnation, the enfleshment of God in human form, is central to our faith, because God lived and breathed and suffered as we do, so God knows. We are not alone on our journey through life no matter what happens to us, whether we bring disaster on ourselves or it comes out of nowhere or is a product of unhinged political machinations. The promise is this: God in Christ is with us always, even to the end of the age.

Thanks be to God.