Introduction and Call to Worship
Our focus today is on that old fashioned virtue of repentance. So with repentant hearts, lifted by the knowledge of God’s gracious forgiveness and new life in Jesus Christ, let us come with praise to Almighty God.
Today’s Readings
First Reading Isaiah 55:1-9
God, who is in every way far above mortals, calls the people of Israel to himself, inviting them to revel in his generous goodness.
Second Reading 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
The Apostle Paul uses the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness as a picture of his Corinthian readers’ Christian pilgrimage.
Gospel Luke 13:1-9
Jesus uses the stories of two recent incidents, followed by a parable, to call his hearers to true repentance.
HOMILY
“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” (Luke 13:5)
A respected Christian has been on an unexpectedly long business trip. He finally walks into the priest’s house and confesses. He has met an old flame. Twenty years earlier, in his youthful, passionate obedience to God, he had broken the relationship because she did not share his faith. Now, in spite of his marriage and children, his middle-aged faith is not up to the challenge. “Break with her,” says the priest, “go back to your family.” “I know that’s what I should do,” replies the man, “I’m miserable and sorry but I can’t and I won’t leave her.”
Everyone ends up hurt. In the words of today’s Gospel everyone experiences a degree of “perishing” due to “sin” from which there is no real “repentance”.
The Gospel reading is made up of three short stories. The first is about the plight of certain Galileans whom Pilate executed. In the second, Jesus mentions eighteen people who died when a tower collapsed. These were obviously both incidents that merited the first-century equivalent of newspaper headlines. In both cases – one involving crime and punishment, the other an accident – people may have thought this was God’s judgement on some secret sin. In both cases Jesus says, “No, these people were not especially sinful; but unless you repent you will perish as they did.”
Jesus turned the almost pleasurable hobby of gossiping about other people’s disasters into an occasion to think about our own failings. He does not get into academic debate but uses these stories to urge his hearers themselves to repentance. They become pictures of a judgement in which all will perish; the only way to escape is by repentance before God.
The third story, a parable, teaches us more about the nature of repentance. A tree produces no fruit and is threatened with the axe (judgement again). The gardener insists on giving the tree more time, another year in which he can care for it, and it has another chance to bear fruit. This short parable yields a couple of insights. First, repentance is sometimes said to mean being sorry for what we’ve done wrong, but that’s only half the story. The tree may or may not have felt sorry for failing to bear fruit, but the question was: will it bear fruit next year? Will it change its behaviour? The unfaithful husband, who started this talk, was indeed sorry for what he had done, but what use was that when he refused to change his behaviour?
Repentance is not a little bit of sorrow which magically wipes away our wrongdoing - and allows us to do the same thing all over again. Repentance starts with remorse for the past but also continues into a change of behaviour and a change of heart for the future. Repentance is a tough business. It means overcoming our pride and illegitimate desire, and reorienting ourselves in a new direction. This can be hard indeed, and take time. But if this sounds hard, the second point from the parable shows how God comes to our aid.
The gardener’s insistence on giving the tree more time to fruit points to God’s grace. In grace God withholds judgement. And more than this, God cares for us, good or bad, and nurtures us. And at the smallest sign of our willingness to repent he strengthens and encourages us. And when our repentance does not seem to match the gravity of something we’ve done wrong, God’s grace makes up the deficit. He draws near to us and calls us towards himself, deeper into life, away from perishing into spiritual death. God’s aim is never judgement or punishment, but salvation and fullness of life.
We started this Homily with a man who had plainly done wrong and caused suffering. We could discuss the surrounding circumstances and rights and wrongs of his situation, but like Jesus, let’s eschew academic debate and judgement on others and simply say, “This man was not especially sinful; but unless we repent we will perish as he did.”
This Lent, while we have time, let’s take some of that time to review our lives and meet with God in repentance. Not that we should wallow in our own inadequacy, but rather seek a purer, holier life. As Isaiah says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6).
SUMMARY
1. Jesus does not get into academic debate about crime and punishment or accidental deaths but exhorts his listeners to repent or suffer a similar fate.
2. Repentance starts with sorrow in the heart for the past and a change of heart and behaviour for the future.
3. Like the gardener, God withholds judgement, giving us time and another chance to come to him and change our lives.
4. We are called to “seek the Lord while he may be found”.
Redemptorist Publication 2010, ‘Living Word’ for Common Worship.
Edited by Jane Williams.
