I’d like to begin this morning by talking about the punctuation in the
sermon title. Here at Rutgers we like to have our sermon titles up on the
signboards by Monday afternoon. That way no one’s confused about who’s
preaching, and folks have a full week to chew on the topic. The trouble is
– speaking for myself – I usually don’t know what my topic is on
Monday morning. Now, by last Monday, I had read the gospel and realized I’d
have to say something about repentance and perishing. I figured if I put
both words in the title – Repent or Perish – I’d be covered. I also knew
that Jesus’ words disturbed me, that I would want to qualify them, to put
them in their historical context, to ask what Jesus really meant: so I put
a question mark at the end. But after all the signboards went up, I was
afraid it still looked like I was planning to yell at people to “Repent or
Perish!” (I polled the Christian Education Committee when we met on Monday
night, and they allowed that the single question mark was a little subtle.)
So on Tuesday morning – with the help of the office staff – I decided two
question marks with an exclamation point would do the trick. That it would
convey – I hoped – the doubt, that faint sense of alarm, that “he didn’t
really mean that, did he?” approach that I expected to take with the text.
When our scene opens, Jesus is talking to the crowds on his way to
Jerusalem. He’s just told them a series of parables about being ready to
meet God in judgment. Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit, he
says, like slaves waiting for their master to return from the wedding
banquet. I’ve come to bring fire and division to earth, not peace; make
up with your accuser before you go to court and it’s too late. All this
talk about conflict and judgment prompts some in the crowd to tell him about
some Galileans who were killed by Pontius Pilate when they went to make
sacrifices at the temple. Jesus detects their unspoken question: Did that
terrible fate happen to them because they had done something wrong? Did
they deserve it? NO, Jesus says: those Galileans were no worse sinners
than any other Galileans. He brings up an example of his own to hammer
home the point: those eighteen people killed when that tower fell in Siloam
weren’t especially sinful either. But after each “No” Jesus adds these
puzzling words: “Unless you repent, you will perish just as they did.”
I suspect that when many of us hear these words, we flash back to those
childhood images of heaven and hell. We’ve just died, we’ve been swept up
to the pearly gates, and St. Peter – looking like Burl Ives in a white sheet
with a very large clipboard – decides whether we sufficiently repented while
on earth to enter heaven. Now, we know there is no “heaven-land” of people
playing harps on top of the clouds. We know there’s no fiery pit in the
middle of the earth populated by red devils with pitchforks. We may also
have trouble believing that St. Peter – or anyone else up there – is
keeping score. After all, who are the repentant or the unrepentant (the
righteous or the wicked)? The earliest Christians, those first readers
of Luke, seemed to have a pretty clear answer: to repent was to turn
towards God, confess Jesus and live as he had commanded. Jesus was coming
again, at an unexpected hour but soon, and he would bring God’s justice
with him. They saw the signs: the temple destroyed, Jerusalem in ruins,
families ripped apart. Of course, repent or perish. There was no time to
waste.
Two thousand years later, ecumenical Christian doctrine still holds, for
the most part, that there will be a second Advent, that Christ will come
again and establish God’s reign in its fullness. The oppressed will be
liberated, the righteous vindicated, the evil punished. We in the pews may
believe it – theoretically – but most of us have trouble wrapping our head
around it. It’s so fantastic, so remote. Those of us of the liberal
Protestant persuasion may even balk at the idea of evildoers, whoever they
are, perishing in God’s reign. Is there anyone, ultimately, outside the
pale of God’s forgiveness? At the very least, the old categories don’t work
– such as Christians saved, non-Christians in trouble. ???Repent or
Perish???
But physical death, now or in the eschaton, is not the only way to perish....
Most of us go through our days quite certain that we are alive. We eat, we
drink, we talk with friends, watch TV, go to work, hug our children, attend
Session meetings. We may be happy, anxious, depressed --- we’re alive.
But I challenge you – and myself – sometime, not necessarily now, to ask
if there is an area of your life that is so painful, or dangerous, or
overwhelming, that you don’t even live there. A place in yourself or an
area of your life that is dead to you, disowned, mostly forgotten, lost
forever as far as you’re concerned and good riddance.
I think that for many of us, one of those dead areas is the place where
we relate to people who are suffering, people suffering terribly whom we
don’t necessarily know. We see the homeless on the subway, we watch footage
of the earthquakes in India or El Salvador, we read about AIDS in
Africa, sweatshops in Thailand, and maybe we send a small check. We know,
deep down, that what we do or don’t do means life or death for others. We
may even suspect that some of that suffering means more stuff, more
affluence, for us. And we feel so guilty, or confused – these issues are
always so complicated – tired or overwhelmed that we don’t deal. We take
care of our business and tell God to go away when our conscience
starts bugging us. We are dead to ways we might be in solidarity with
others, ways we could work for justice, dead to the claims of our brothers
and sisters upon us.
Or maybe the area where we are perishing is the place of intimacy with
others. Friends or lovers or families have betrayed us so badly that we
don’t even think of being close to someone – really close – as a possibility
anymore. We’re friendly, we’re cordial, but we’ve turned our backs on more.
“I know that you are perishing,” Christ says to us, “Repent, and you
shall live.” The promise of the gospel is that we don’t have to stay in our
safe, restricted zones. We don’t have to be dead to that which scares or
hurts us or seems impossible. God promises us abundant life. Life where we
can face our demons, overcome our fears, live with joy, do what may seem
impossible. God only asks that we turn towards God, beginning with prayer.
To repent does not mean to live perfectly, or sinlessly. It does not mean a
life free from pain or struggle. It simply means, at bottom, to turn towards
God, beginning with prayer, in whom we can live fully.
Jesus does not end with the words, “Unless you repent, you will perish.”
He ends with a parable of a fig tree. The owner of a vineyard wants to cut
down this tree that has not born fruit for three years. But the gardener
asks him to wait one more year to see if some fertilizer, and some loving
care, will make the tree fruitful.... In our Bible study on Wednesday
afternoon, John Gingrich told us about the fig trees he had seen in the Holy
Land. It’s not like being in a temperate climate, he said, where trees are
lush with leaves and fruit falls on the ground. In that hot and dry climate,
those fig trees are struggling, gnarled and solitary along the side of the
road, barely surviving. You can see, he said, how much effort is involved in
just being a fig tree, even an unproductive, unrepentant fig tree. God
knows, and God’s mercy we have been provided a gardener – many gardeners,
really. We have the love of Christ, the words of scripture, the prayers and
liturgy of the church, each other. God has also given us time. Not
unlimited time – we’re not immortal – but time to turn towards God, time for
all our branches to become green with life, and to start bearing fruit.
Thanks be to God.
Please join me in prayer:
Grant unto us, O God, the fullness of your promises.
Where we have been weak, grant us your strength;
Where we have been confused; grant us your guidance;
Where we have been dead, grant us your life;
Apart from you we can do nothing;
In and with you we can do all things. Amen.