Urgent Fruit

Luke 13:1-9 (Exodus 3:1-15)

I tell you, unless you repent, you will all perish just like those Galileans slaughtered with their sacrificial animals. Like the eighteen people under that collapsed tower at Siloam.

 

Unless you repent, you will all die.

 

Feel uncomfortable yet?

I do.

 

I hear this type of rhetoric from TV preachers after hurricanes, fires, other fatal catastrophes – “you’ll all die like this if you don’t repent/make America a Christian nation, etc.”  Sometimes explicit, sometimes just implied.

 

But today we are hearing it from Jesus.

Jesus. The one who literally came to save us from disaster and evil.

 

From Jesus, while he is telling a crowd in Jerusalem that the TV Evangelist and Pontificating Politician trope of “disaster is God’s punishment for sinners” is wrong. Telling the crowd that their local equivalent to “fires in LA are proof of God’s judgement on sinful sexuality or immoral diversity and equity” is plain nonsense.

God doesn’t drop walls on people because they are worse humans than others.

God doesn’t send fire or tsunami or indiscriminate slaughter by Roman-collaborating law-enforcement to punish people for being bad.

(He told us that two thousand years ago and we still haven’t all managed to internalize it.)

 

Because Jesus is very clear that disaster is not God’s punishment for sin.

But, he tells us, if you do not repent, you will die like them.

 

That seems a little… self-contradictory, maybe?

 

But it’s not.

Because Jesus is telling us that God doesn’t punish that way.
AND that it’s vital and urgent to be right with God, whether we happen to die in our beds at a great old age, or suddenly in a meteor strike.

That if we don’t repent, we – like the local disaster victims cited in today’s conversation – will die without having found the center and purpose of our lives.

 

Because when Jesus talks about repentance, he’s not talking about making a list of our faults and misdeeds and promising not to do the Bad Things again.

When Jesus says “repent”, it means turning your whole heart, your primary attention, toward God’s presence and work in this world. Turning your whole being to the love of God calling us to be transformed by God, to love like God.

 

Of course, that’s easier said than done for many of us.

Jesus knows that.

It can be quite difficult, often, to understand what God is actually up to in the world. And I think it’s a pretty safe guess that was as much of a challenge in Jerusalem twenty centuries ago as it is in the US right now.

Or in Gaza, or Congo, or a lot of other places in the world today.

Turning our whole selves to God, getting fully aligned with God’s love and action in the world, would be a lot easier if God would make it obvious how the day-to-day obstacles and frustrations of our lives have anything to do with God’s love for all people.

Turning our whole hearts to God’s will would be a lot simpler if Jesus clearly explained how international chaos or a mounting pile of national lawsuits, or anything else on the internet or evening news is supposed to help carry humanity to eternal life.

 

But we probably won’t get the clear memo explaining all that this week. Or even in our lifetimes.

And still, urgently, that turning toward God is what we need. That shifting of our attention toward unconditional love, toward the possibility of transformation, toward awe at the holy presence choosing to be with us, is what Jesus urgently warns us toward, demands of us – in the face of frustrations and chaos.

 

Because we need it, to truly live.

Sometimes we need it merely to survive.

And we absolutely need it to “bear fruit”.

 

To become people whose own actions and choices and words nourish others, and ourselves, with God’s love. Like Moses, in our story today, turning from “Why me?” to the deep awareness of God’s promise to be with us, and becoming a beacon of liberation for God’s people.

We need that turn toward God to become people who shape the world around us – a little at a time – to be more like God’s kingdom: generous, and brave, and hope-filled. Growing and life-giving for us, and for others.

 

We need that shifting of our hearts toward the active love of God in order to “bear fruit” of words and actions and choices that may even truly save someone else’s life, or soul and heart. Or save our own.

 

Our world needs that fruit from us now.

It always has.

 

And we ourselves need to experience that fruit of peace and generosity and profound hope and insistent love growing in and through us. Because the fruit we bear for God and others nourishes our own souls first.

And it’s who and what we were created to be and do.

 

But Jesus knows we don’t pull off that essential, urgent transformation all by ourselves.

You heard the story he told us, of the gardener who wants to help that fruitless fig tree become fruitful. Who knows that a fruitless tree can’t be sustained, but says, “let me do everything possible to help this tree grow and bear. Let this round of the seasons be an opportunity, even if it’s all over this time next year.”

 

There’s still time to repent.

Still time to bear fruit.

Still time to be helped, guided, and nurtured so that we can.

 

And equally, urgently, THIS is the time.

This place, this season, this moment as Jesus talks to us, is the time to urgently reorient ourselves to God, away from the demands and noise of cultural expectations, of daily business, of “success” and “failure” and “how it is.”

Before the tree is cut down, this, urgently, is the time to bear fruit – to confidently seek God’s love amid the noise, and let God’s love grow through us into generosity, and courage, and nourishment, and practical, everyday care for one another: helping hands, encouraging words, demands for justice, food for this day, pain relief, inspiration, joy.

 

And the good news is that there is someone to help us - someone who is working to loosen the tight-packed soil of anxiety, strain, and self-interest around our hearts. Working to fertilize our souls with awareness of the strengthening, life-giving presence of God.

 

And when we respond, when we start to open ourselves, draw from God’s earth and God’s people the nourishment we need to bear fruit, every degree we turn toward God, the easier it gets (a tiny bit at a time) to see God’s love at work.
Every step you or I take closer to diving entirely into the flow of love and transformation God pours out into the world, the clearer it is to see God’s work bringing love here, everywhere – right in the middle of all those daily frustrations and obstacles, right in the path of the chaos or intractable challenges swirling around the globe.

And the more we may become the gardeners who help others bear fruit. 

 

So we cannot wait – truly – we cannot wait to begin.

Love Your Enemies

Luke 6:27-38

A lot of what Jesus has to say in this morning’s gospel story sounds like familiar moral teaching to many of us who’ve spent much time in church. (Raise your hand if you’ve heard “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” before.) But other bits may be startling, when we take them literally.

 

All the moral teaching about generosity – giving more than others ask or demand (or sue you for), being merciful, not judging or condemning, lend and do good without expecting any return – are rooted by Jesus in the idea that we must love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless and pray for people who revile, curse, or insult us.

 

Wait, what!?

 

Anyone hearing Jesus the first time, or listening to Jesus now, might naturally ask: “How can it possibly be a good idea to love the people who are doing horrible things to everyone – or even just to us?

(Isn’t the right thing to object? To protest, to try to stop the horrible things?
Of course it is.)

For that matter, isn’t it genuinely dangerous to cooperate with abuse, to offer yourself to others’ violence, to give generously to thieves – whether government or corporate or malicious lawsuit thieves, or pickpockets and car window smashers?

(Of course it is. What a terrible idea.)

 

And Jesus was saying these things directly and first to a bunch of people who were living under occupation, with an autocratic local ruler, and were, in many cases, subsistence farmers and fishers and tradespeople.

Sounds dangerous. And odd that Jesus is talking to the disempowered about how to act from a position of power. Talking to the “have nots” about how to act from having abundance.

 

Because he’s not talking about how to collaborate with oppression.

He’s talking about how to act when we already live, here and now, in the kingdom of God.

How to act in the midst of the often screwed up, mean and broken world we occupy, when you are already living in the fullness of God’s love and strength and power, filled up and running over the containers of our lives. With peace like a river, joy like a fountain, and love like an ocean in our souls.

 

Because that’s how Jesus himself lives, and how Jesus tries to teach us to live.

 

If you live like that, it’s not so dangerous to be generous to thieves and haters and internet trolls and imperious Roman soldiers. Because no matter what you give away to them, you yourself will never run out of love and strength and trust and goodness. And that is an act of resistance against violence and hatred and evil.

When you live filled up with the unlimited peace, joy, resilience, and love God places within you, cannot be drained or conquered; you cannot lose, because God’s love can never run out.

 

It’s still scary.

Your cheek is still going to get hurt when you turn it to a Roman soldier or riot cop.

You’re still going to be chilly when you give away not just your outerwear, but your shirt.

You’re still going to be missing the material goods or wealth or time that you gave away to someone who hadn’t earned it and won’t pay it back.

It’s still going to be a big emotional effort to love those enemies.

 

Which love – by the way – does not mean you have to agree with, or cooperate with those enemies.

Loving your enemy, Jesus’ way, means not concession or collaboration, but empathy.

Many of us here may have known a toddler terrorist at some point in our lives, and have already practiced this. Because when that self-centered and reckless child of God is noisily and violently upset that grapes are juicy today (like they are every day), or that their shoes are too yellow for the occasion, or that the world is just wrong, we know how to say in our hearts “Same, friend. Same. I feel you.” AND make clear that we are still not going to throw the grapes at other people, or kick every shelf in Target.

 

Loving your enemies does not mean condoning their actions, or giving up resistance to evil. It means looking at the “enemy” across from you and remembering that this person, too, was created by God, is a beloved child of God, and God yearns for them (and us) to turn from enmity and evil, and be filled with the peace and joy and love of God running through their souls.

AND loving your enemy prompts you to object to the evil-doing, protest the horrors, urge the end of violence, protect others from abuse.

Because love wants what is best for the other.

And God’s love, joy, and peace will – given the chance – push evil and the desire for enemies and conquest out of anyone’s heart and soul.

 

And none of this – none of that enemy-love, that generosity to the undeserving, that willingness to meet violence with peace, to bless the haters – is something Jesus is telling us to do from our own strength and resources.

None of it is what God expects us to do to earn God’s love.

All of it is what we do when we are tapped in to the love and joy and peace of God welling up within us. When we are rooted in God’s strength, not depending on our own limited endurance.

 

And for those of us who don’t always feel the peace, joy, and love of God welling up within us, and giving us power to transform hate to love, I promise you, Jesus is not telling us to seek out abuse from a position of weakness or give what we do not actually have.

But he’s still speaking to you, to us, all the same.

And I believe he’s telling us to do what we can do, if we can’t do it all like him.

 

To pay attention so you notice the day when you do have the peace or the strength you need to make a generous gesture to the world’s most annoying co-worker, if you don’t have enough peace and strength to love your mortal enemy.

To notice when you have the compassion or the joy that makes it more natural, just for today, to give to the undeserving, to settle an argument without winning it, to demand justice for others again, even though the first seventeen attempts fell on deaf ears, or got you in trouble.

 

And to pay attention so we notice the others around us who bubble up with peace, or joy, or love. Because those examples, those fountains of grace, can deepen our experience of the love of God that will make us more like Jesus. More capable of that transforming generosity.

 

I know I can always find those examples in the Trinity Preschool.

Any time I might need it, our children and teachers will remind me that the answer to almost any need is to be a good listener – and then I quiet myself for a moment, and notice God whispering unconditional love into my ears and heart. 

Any time I need it, I can find joy in the play and friendships and new discoveries our children are sharing – and that helps unclog the fountain of God’s joy that wants to bubble in my soul.

And when I really need a reminder that love can never be defeated, one child will quietly mention in chapel that God never leaves us. And my heart stops for a second, and starts beating again with all the rhythm of God’s love.

 

Those reminders are all around us, even if you don’t get to spend time in our Preschool like I do.

I find examples day-to-day in surprising places on the internet, and among my family and friends, when I am paying attention. I know that seeing peace resist violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, love overwhelm hate in front of the US Supreme Court, or good done without expectation of return on a playground in elementary school, has transformed lives and re-directed the course of society.

I know there are thousands more little words and actions that, if we watch and listen, can free God’s power and love, God’s joy and peace, to spill through you and me, so that like Jesus, we can do the impossible.

Love our enemies – just a bit or with all our hearts.

Give beyond anyone’s expectations, turn violence into peace, turn the world merciful and good – for a moment, with one action – or with all of our lives.

 

Rooted in God

Jeremiah 17:5-10

“Like a tree rooted by flowing water – free from fear and anxiety in times of stress and distress.” Did you notice that image from the prophet Jeremiah this morning?

I wonder how many of us, today, feel like you fit in that image? Vibrant and fruitful and well-resourced in the face of trouble?

 

Not me, most days, honestly.

 

I want to be strong, and fruitful, not vulnerable to the waves of strain and distress that come from the world around us. I long to be non-anxious in drought and trouble.

 

And sometimes, for a minute, a day even, I can feel that undaunted strength, flowing from God.

But most of us, here in this time and place, are taught to start with self-reliance instead of God-reliance – to turn to God only when the drought and trouble have already worn us out and dried us up, and when we’ve felt ourselves fail already, and might not even notice the resources God is trying to bring to our thirst – be it a thirst for healing or justice or relief or security or peace.

And Jeremiah warns us that’s not sustainable.

 

Jeremiah’s telling us, today, that his promise of peaceful, confident fruitfulness even in trouble is the blessing that comes not just from trusting God when we have to, but of trusting God before we exhaust our self-sufficiency. Trusting God before we trust ourselves; as the foundation of how we use our own resources.

 

That’s countercultural for many of us, however much we want, and need, to be able to meet times of trouble and distress with confidence and calm, like Jeremiah’s well-rooted tree.

 

But over and over again, humans like us, people of faith, have done that countercultural thing, trusted first in God…and we often tell their stories as heroes of the Bible, or saints of the church.

 

And we also can recognize that countercultural blessing in stories about lives close to ours, intertwined with and among us. This month, as we celebrate the leadership, hope, and achievement of African American History Month, the idea of Jeremiah’s well-watered tree reminds me of my visit last month to the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture.
Exhibit after exhibit resonated with the strength of communities and individuals well-rooted in connection to the divine, in trust in God, in love of one another, neighbors, and even enemies.

Roots well-watered in faith producing artistry, innovation, courage and beauty, whether amid stark deserts of enslavement and deliberate oppression, or the heats of political and social change. Stories of musicians and artists, politicians and preachers, healers and humorists, bearing fruit in droughts and rains, and watering the faith of others.

 

One story, dear to me, which has watered my faith, and my own trust in God, for years, is one The Episcopal Church officially celebrated for the first time last Tuesday.

February 11 is the anniversary of the ordination, in 1989, of Barbara Clementine Harris as the first woman bishop of the Episcopal Church, and of the world-wide Anglican Communion. In the United States, that remembrance resonates even more in February, because the first woman bishop in our church was an African-American woman.

 

One of the stories I’ve heard often re-told about that day is that despite the heated and often vitriolic objections to her ordination, despite the trouble roiling in the church as people struggled with the fear of change, despite even the death threats, Bishop Barbara declined the Kevlar vest she was offered for physical protection during the ordination service, saying that if she were to be shot, what better place to go than at the altar.
The tree watered in trust, Jeremiah tells us, will not fear when heat comes.

 

The granddaughter of enslaved persons, active in the civil rights movement, an advocate for justice and for the rights of the disenfranchised in her day-to-day life, both before and after her ordination as a priest, Bishop Harris knew a lot about living in the desert, in drought of respect, liberty, and choices; or in systems where resources were dried up and withheld.

A child of the Episcopal Church, born in Philadelphia, worshipping with her mother at the Church of the Advocate, steeped in the hymns of faith, Bishop Harris grew from, and nurtured, deep roots of trust in God’s strength and faithfulness and love.

 

On the anniversary of her consecration this week, a friend quoted Bishop Harris saying,

“Often as we sail over the tempestuous sea of life, our world is in storm on a personal, national, and global level. But not only is Christ on the ship, Christ is in command — even when he seems to be asleep. ….” And what a comfort lies in the simple thought: “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.”

 

Her deeply rooted trust in God’s faithfulness shaped her life and ministry even more than being “the first” of so many things in the church. History records the facts of her life, the barriers surmounted, the battles led and won for equity in the church across every line of gender, race, and sexuality through her deep strength in God.

But her friends and colleagues tell the stories that show the vitality of the living water of God’s faithfulness flowing through her – bubbling up in joy and wicked wit (mostly stories I can’t tell from the pulpit; ask me at coffee hour); in deeply personal care for others that made you feel like you were the only one in the room; in bluntly realist encouragement of others to act courageously and faithfully in the face of ordinary troubles and wide-reaching injustice; in community built by singing hymns around the piano, shared laughter… The fullness of God’s love and strength shone out of her, vibrant and vivid, even from across a large convention hall.

 

In fact, Bishop Barbara’s day-to-day life and actions not only demonstrated the fruitfulness of her own rooted trust in God, but rooted those around her into the deep, unquenchable waters of God’s faithfulness, knitting trust in God into the lives she touchedn – including mine, at a distance.

Rooting trust in God’s faithfulness into the church and the world she shaped, with her historic roles, and her whole and holy self.

 

And Jeremiah encourages you and me to be the same. To be deeply rooted in our trust in God, whose “eye is on the sparrow”, and will not forget us in our times of drought and trouble.

Jeremiah invites and admonishes us to trust in God, not just when we’ve already run out of options, but because our hearts always want to be rooted in a love that can’t be drained by the heats and strains of the world around us. Because our hearts want to be more whole, more loving, more holy. And the strength for that comes not from our own effort, but from a bone-deep, root-deep reliance on the faithfulness of God in all circumstances.

 

And then, like Bishop Barbara, like named and unnamed saints and heroes and ordinary folk throughout history, we too may be able to water the roots of others. To pour God’s unquenchable faithfulness into deserts of oppression or need, loneliness or pain, wherever and whenever we meet them. To resist any force seeking to dry up God’s love in our lives, and to water the lives of others with hope, and joy, and unlimited, nourishing, life-giving love.