Church of the Incarnation

It was a beautiful July day in Connecticut. A gentle breeze had swept away the clouds. The sun shone brightly through rippled glass and illuminated the crisp white pews of the simple colonial church. Jonathan Edwards climbed the stairs to the pulpit and looked out at the eager faces of his congregation. This second generation of settlers had already lost sight of why their parents came to the New World. Everyday life here was difficult, fraught with unexpected danger and back-breaking toil. And so the people came here, to church. They came to hear why their life was so hard. They came for reassurance that God was with them - they came for hope.

Jonathan Edwards looked into their expectant eyes, took a deep breath, and began to preach:

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince...." 1

These are ludicrously grotesque images, but deep down, don't we wonder if maybe they're accurate? Don't we suspect that perhaps the God of the universe, who has numbered the hairs on our heads, "to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid," don't we suspect that the God who knows us that well must be sickened by us?

This is the fear at the heart of the question that begins today's gospel. Rumors are flying about some devout Galileans who were slaughtered by Pilate in the very act of making their sacrifices to God. The people want to know if this gruesome end was some sort of divine payback for the Galileans' wretched sinfulness. But Jesus hears not only the question they ask but also the deeper question they don't dare ask: "if God punishes devout Galileans that severely, what worse punishment must we expect?"

It's easy to think that way - when things are going well, it must be because God's pleased with us and when things are going badly, it must be because God's punishing us for something. We make God into some sort of cosmic Santa Claus, making his list and checking it twice, ready to zap us if we're naughty rather than nice. This kind of thinking is rampant in the Hebrew Scriptures, but it's based on a fundamental misconception. God never promises us life will be easy. God promises Abraham offspring as numerous as the stars in the heavens - and every parent knows what a nightmare that promise will be many days. God promises the people of Israel freedom from their bondage in Egypt - which turns into a 40-year trek through the desert. Right before today's gospel Jesus says, "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!" 2 Life will be hard, even for those who follow Christ.

So Jesus doesn't attempt to explain the suffering of the Galileans, but shifts the focus to the question they didn't dare ask. He says, "Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." OK, I realize I give some version of this same rant every sermon, but our translations of the Bible miss so much! It sounds like Jesus is saying, "Unless you repent, Santa God's gonna zap you like he did the Galileans." But that's not at all what the Greek suggests. "You will all perish just as they did." The verb translated "perish" actually means "destroy." And it's an unusual construction - it's the middle voice. In active voice the subject does the action - "I destroy" and in passive voice the subject receives the action- "I am destroyed." Well in middle voice the subject does the action to himself - "I destroy myself." So Jesus literally says, "Unless you repent, you will all destroy yourselves just as they did." There's no Santa God waiting to zap them. Rather, their lack of repentance will lead them to torture themselves, lying awake at night racked with guilt, toiling away by day trying to make atonement. They'll destroy themselves just as completely as Pilate did the Galileans.

Doesn't this ring true? I know I still carry around the burden of failed relationships and family squabbles, wrongs I've committed and not confessed. And there are days when I destroy myself with worrying about it. But true repentance is hard. See, repentance isn't just a matter of saying, "Mom, I'm sorry I was stubborn - please forgive me." Repentance is stopping in my tracks, turning around, and heading in an altogether new direction. True repentance is finding a new way to relate to my mother without any of the old stubbornness... or pettiness, or resentment, or any of the other things that keep me from seeing her as the precious child of God that she is.

True repentance seems beyond my grasp. And so I'm left feeling like Jonathan Edwards' bug, dangling over the eager flames of my own self-destruction, hanging on by a slender thread.

But luckily Jesus doesn't leave me there; he continues his answer with the parable of the fig tree. Fig trees were notoriously difficult to grow. It usually took three years of unproductive growth before a fig tree would produce fruit. The payoff was huge with a fig tree, though - it would yield a full harvest of figs twice a year, summer and winter. So it wasn't unusual for a landowner like the one in the parable to allot valuable land in his vineyard to a fig tree. This landowner has waited patiently for three years and finally comes to collect the long-awaited fruit from his fig tree. But there is none. So he tells the gardener to cut it down. But the gardener intercedes for the tree, pleading, "Let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it." "Let it alone" - again, this word has many meanings. It means to put up with something, to endure it or permit it, but it also means to pardon a thing or even to forgive it. It's the word Jesus uses on the cross when he says, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing."3

This story is about grace. It's about God recognizing that we've had ample time and opportunity and still haven't repented. And yet it's about God having even more patience with us and forgiving us even longer. "Let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it." Fig trees are nice, but the gardener's suggesting far more effort than anyone would normally expend on a fig tree. So this story is about God continuing to work with us - cultivating our soil (and spreading a little manure around when it will help) - so that we can come to true repentance.

Even Jonathan Edwards recognized the grace God holds out to us. Sure, he said, "God holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire." But he went on to say, "and yet it is nothing but [God's] hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment." 4 God continues to show patience and mercy and grace.

I know I need to repent - when we prayed the decalogue earlier, I realized even more deeply that I needed to repent. But true repentance - stopping in my sinful and selfish tracks to turn in a new direction - doesn't come quickly. So does that mean I'm a sinner in the hand of an angry God, dangling over the flames of my own self-destruction? Maybe. But that means I'm not just dangling at the end of a slender thread; I'm nestled gently in the palm of God, learning to repent of selfishness and to turn instead toward God's love.

Amen.

References:

1. Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1979), 252-3.
2. Luke 12:51.
3. Luke 23:34.
4. Edwards, 253

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