Something has to die before something is born.

 Third Sunday of Lent  C  2022

 

An elderly woman decided to prepare her will and told her priest she had two final requests:

First, she wanted to be cremated, and second,
She wanted her ashes scattered over Wal-Mart.

"Wal-Mart?" the priest exclaimed.
"Why Wal-Mart?"
"Then I'll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week"

This elderly woman certainly had a sense of humor.

But we need to take a careful at today’s Gospel as we ask ourselves who Jesus is and is Jesus an angry Savior?

 

Jesus, in today’s Gospel, sounds angry and threatening and we must talk about that. “Repent or you will perish,” he says. The tower at Siloam fell on eighteen people. Then it seems like Jesus wants to curse the fig tree.

Is the loving Lord whom we have known actually furious and offended?

Let us look: 

The closer you come to the real center of God, the more your fear turns to gratitude.

News comes to Jesus that Pilate has murdered a number of Galilean people. Still worse, Pilate has mixed their blood with that of sacrificed animals. This is a terrible, gruesome story, worthy of denunciation. Is it like what Putin to the innocent people of Ukraine?  Is it like the madness in the violent slaughter of so many innocent lives?

Well, Jesus draws a point from it:

Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?

By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent,
you will all perish as they did!

What is the logic here? It seems you don’t have to murder people in order to get punished. You can qualify just by failing to repent!

Why is Jesus so harsh? Is he a truly an angry savior? Was he angry in the same way a lot of people think the God of the Old Testament was? Unforgiving, warlike, furious, demanding an infinite sacrifice to make up for humankind’s sins against an infinite God?*

No.

On the contrary, when we look at the First Reading, we do not find an irate God at all. Instead, we find a tender one, grieving over the troubles of his people.

 God said to Moses:  “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt
and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers,
so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them.”

God speaks these words miraculously to Moses from the midst of a burning bush that is not consumed by its own flames! He begins to instruct Moses about how to rescue God’s people. Great compassion from the depths of the transcendent God.

Didn’t Jesus have the same kind of compassion for his own people?

Yes.

He tells a parable in the second half of the Gospel that might help us understand.

An orchard owner orders his gardener to chop down a sadly unproductive fig tree. The gardener advises him to leave it one more year and see if, with some tending, it will bear fruit. Give it one more chance.

Who does the heartless orchard owner represent? We always assume that it is God.  But, on the contrary, Jesus is not the orchard owner but the gardener, asking mercy for the disobedient fig tree. Each one of us is that fig tree in the parable.  We are the recipients of the mercy of Jesus.

 

Christ presents himself as the gardener --- the one who patiently and humbly works in the situations of our lives to bring forth life and healing.

 

As we look at our lives during Lent, we ask ourselves:  are we bearing fruit?  We are called to use and share the giftedness that God has given to each  one of us.  Life is precious.  Life is also short.  We are called to make the best of each day that is given to us.

 

The Lord’s call for us to repent is not a new demand being placed on us by an angry Savior.  Recall the words spoken to us as the ashes were placed on your forehead on Ash Wednesday:  “Repent and Believe in the Gospel.”

Repentance is necessary for us all.  In the Gospel parable, Jesus’ call for repentance is balanced by the patience of God as seen in the image of the compassionate gardener.  The parable of the fig tree is about a compassionate God, the gardener, giving us a chance over and over again to bear fruit.  The gardener spoke the compassionate words:  “Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground it and fertilize it.  It may bear fruit in the future.

In spite of the whole history of humankind to the contrary, we still think life should be painless.  And contrary to that same unanimous experience, we won’t accept the fact that most growth, most progress, most good things in life come out of some pain.

 

This is not an accident; it is the basic structure of life.  It is simply a fact of life that something has to die before something is born, that the old must make way for the new.  In Christian terms, it is the paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Its first principle is that only those who lose their lives ever find a life.  It means that God can bring good out of evil and life out of death.  It also means that burning bushes are likely to scorch us while they enlighten us.

 

 

Lent invites us to believe in the Gospel of God’s love for us.  Jesus loves you Can you believe it?  The Christian life is a response to God’s overwhelming love.

Yes, we are called to repent, to a change of heart, to conversion.  We then are empowered to show that love to all without exception – especially to those considered unlovable, beyond love, or not good enough.

 

Repent and Believe in the Gospel!  This is a demanding Lenten way of life.  Yet, imagine what we would be life, what the Church could be life at the end of Lent, 40 days later, if we took these summonses to heart?

 

 

Repent and believe in the Gospel.