UCC Church of Charlotte

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Which Is It?
Isaiah 55:1-9
Luke 13:1-9

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.
    
The Bible is much easier to read if we don’t read all of it.  It is
easier for it to fit the ideas we already have if we just leave out
the difficult portions.
    
For example, churches that preach from the Bible “Wives submit to your
husbands, as to Christ” somehow often forget to keep reading.
“Husbands, be as Christ to your wives…being willing to lay down your
life for her as Christ was willing to die for the church.”  Read only
half of the passage can mean endorsing lopsided relationships and
demean the image of God in which all people are created.

Read the whole passage and we find that Paul calls for much more
mutuality, a giving of the self to the other in a love that honors and
blesses each.  To use only half of the passage is like reading half of
the instructions on heavy machinery – it endangers the user and all
around them.  Bad forms of patriarchy can easily be supported by a
half reading of the text, but somehow such ways get torn down when we
read the whole thing.
    
I am sure nobody here has ever done this, but I have heard it said
that some people read the Bible not in hopes of being transformed, but
to find that which agrees with us, to find support for that which we
already hold true and near and dear.  If that is the case, it would
perhaps seem better to not open it at all.  As soon as we open the
Bible, we find ourselves in a strange world that invites us into
newness, however many times we have opened it before.
    
In today’s readings, for example, there is something here for the
judgmental and something here for the ones who say, “It’s all good.”
The problem is, they are put back to back.

Come you who thirst, you who are hungry, come and eat and drink and
slake your thirst and satisfy your hunger without paying.

Let the tree live another year, master, let me dig around it, and put
manure around it and tend it one more year.  Be patient with the tree
that isn’t doing as it should.

These seem a stark contrast to the admonition for the wicked to
forsake his ways.  These don’t mesh with the idea that these people
who suffered so terribly are no different that we who live and that we
too must repent lest we perish the same way.

So which is it?  Is it the judgment or the grace?  Is God merciful or
righteous and just?

We might try and say that Isaiah moves from grace to judgment and the
Gospel moves from judgment to grace, but we can find plenty of
passages that move the other way as well.

We might read them to say, “Well, God is providing for us, but calling
those sinners over there to repent.”  The same Gospel warns against
such judgments and cautions against such pretense.
    
I think we get a mixed message here because we are such mixed people.
We who toil and labor and are heavy burdened, the message of rest is
for us.  And we who are imperfect, who try and miss, who make bad
decisions, the message of repentance, of changing our course, of
turning is for us.  And we are the same “we.”  As Pogo says, “We have
met the enemy and they is us.”
    
Jesus catches the people asking about some recent tragedies, a falling
tower, religious pilgrims sacrificed by pagan political powers.  How
sinful must they have been to warrant such treatments?
    
Do we not wonder the same things sometimes?  What did Haiti, Chile,
Malaysia, Rwanda, China, Iraq, New Orleans do to deserve this?  And
the religious pundits are ready to give easy answers.  “God is
punishing sin!”  Then why was Bourbon Street, home to the world famous
excesses of Mardi Gras, not hit as hard as the homes of the working
class poor in the Ninth Ward?
    
Why do the religious pundits always seem to attribute other people’s
suffering to the will of God and the punishment of sin, and their own
suffering to the work of the devil?
    
Jesus says that the ones in the tower collapse, and the ones so
brutally killed and used by Pilate, are no different than you and me,
and all need to repent.  We all face the fragility of life, the
possibility of disasters beyond our control, the potential wrath of
those with power over us.
    
Amidst this fragileness, does anyone here have nothing they need to
repent? Nothing in life that distracts them from God and from our
doing what God calls us to do?  Nothing is life that couldn’t use
handing over to God?  Nothing that needs healing?
    
It is not about judgment and grace as opposing forces, or about which
God we want to follow, that of patience and love or that of
righteousness and justice.
    
It means we are all in this together.
    
We all face the difficulties of life, whether hardship or temptation.
    
None of us has gotten to this point without some bad decisions, some
poor choices, some willingness to settle for less than the fullness
God offers.
    
And in our shared humanity, God shows a patience far beyond our own.
    
There is no fruit upon this tree?  Cut it down.  Better it had never
been planted.  It is a waste of ground.
    
Is this not the judgment we so easily pass on parts of our own lives,
and on those around us?
    
No, no, says the gardener.  Let it alone another season.  Let me work
on it.  There is still hope.
    
Stories don’t often settle the matter.  They merely point us in a
direction.  They don’t often give us all the answers.  Often, they
raise more questions.
    
Questions like, in our shared human fragileness on this earth, how can
we not see that we are so much alike?
    
Or, what in my life needs to be turned over to God?
    
Or, how is it that I am always striving after stuff, when God spreads
a banquet and provides all my needs?
    
And the questions, well, they might just lead us into living a new way.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.