You don’t want to be like those sinners. They died.
Paul’s comparing his church in Corinth to the people of Israel out in the wilderness with God – remembering all the things that went wrong then, when the people didn’t fully trust in God, giving examples and asking: “You don’t want to die for your sins, do you?”
No, of course not.
You and I might add: God wouldn’t do that nowadays anyway, right? Didn’t Jesus change that?
Jesus does have some thoughts about that, which we heard today.
As people tell him about a group of Galileans slaughtered by Romans when they came to worship in Jerusalem, Jesus specifically says, No, they didn’t die for their sins.
They’re no worse sinners than the rest of us. God didn’t smite them for being bad.
That part should be pretty comfortable for us. Our modern theologies and ideologies reject the idea that collapsing walls or hurricanes or other disasters are God’s punishment for sin.
But the human tendency to blame the victim hasn’t quite faded out in our society. We still ask questions or make unconscious assumptions about what a person was doing “wrong” when they get assaulted; still talk about a pandemic virus and protective measures as if the moral rightness and wrongness of our choices determine our fate, even if we know differently from personal experience.
We probably do that because we want to protect ourselves. We want to know that we can avert disaster by doing the “right thing”. It’s a natural, human thing to want that kind of control, but Jesus is having none of it:
Those folks didn’t bring it on themselves, he says.
But if you don’t repent, you’ll perish the same way.
You’re just as much at risk.
And - you can do something about it.
Repent.
Turn toward God.
We can’t protect ourselves from disaster and death by making ourselves more righteous (or at least “less bad” than the “worst sinners”). We can’t control fate that way.
But we can embrace God’s control of our fate.
We can accept and respond to God’s care.
The idolatry Paul is warning against, the habit Jesus is urging us to change, is an indifference or resistance to God’s care; to God’s working in and around us to heal us and the world.
We resist, most likely, because God’s care isn’t always comfortable or comforting.
God’s care is aimed at our growth, at our becoming vibrant and life-giving, bearing fruit for the healing and nurture of the world, being more whole than we ever dream we could be.
And that’s glorious, but rarely restful. It usually involves unanticipated change and disturbing our comfort zones.
Jesus tells us a story about a fig tree that’s failing to produce fruit.
The logical thing, of course, is to get rid of that tree.
But the gardener says, Wait. Let me care for the tree a bit more. Dig around and fertilize it.
Which suggests that perhaps God’s care for us, God’s loving work to nourish us, may often feel like digging up and disturbing all the solid ground around us. And piling up a lot of …manure on us.
It’s not always easy, or comfortable, to be cared for in that way.
In a way that’s all about our fruitfulness, increasing our strength and abundance and vitality.
I’ve been through plenty of uncomfortable growth experiences in my life, and I bet you have, too. Experiences where it felt like the people who were supposed to be caring for me – parents, teachers, friends, pastors – stirred up things I didn’t want to change, brought me face to face with a lot of …manure in my life that I didn’t want to confront, or learn from, but nonetheless contained what I needed to grow stronger, more faithful, more generous, more vital, more whole.
A teacher who told me the truth about why I was about to fail their class. Friends who were honest about how I was hurting our relationship. A friend who backed me kicking and muttering into therapy I truly needed.
People who brought me face-to-face with the ways in which I had to admit that I had no power in myself to help myself, as we prayed at the beginning of this service – so that I could discover that I needed, and wanted, the care that God and my friends offered to me. And discover that each of those people disturbing me were holding all my discomfort and growth in strong protection and generous love. And I just needed to trust that care, and respond.
I suspect you also have had at least some experience of unwanted insight, disruptive change; of uncomfortable growth, and life-giving care that didn’t quite feel like care.
After all, all of us go through adolescence.
That time when everything changes, nothing is comfortable, and in a lot of cases, care feels like punishment. Perhaps you remember how malicious it felt when your parents tried to get you off the phone so that you’d get enough sleep? Or how punitive it felt when parents or teachers or coaches took choices away from you, and told you you’d regret what you wanted to do?
Perhaps you also know how punishingly painful it sometimes feels to be the one holding the boundaries of protection and love and care – to try to get an adolescent you love to get enough sleep, or help them make wise choices?
You don’t have to be an adolescent to experience that.
The whole people of Israel went through that – as Paul reminds the church at Corinth – when God plucked them out of the limiting, oppressing, comfort zone of Egypt so that they could grow into a mature chosen people, and surrounded them in the wilderness with rules and resources meant to keep them safe and healthy and growing and vibrant, and Israel felt scared and vulnerable and resentful of the new rules.
You don’t have to be an adolescent, or a notorious sinner, or anything other than human to have had one or more experiences of how terrifying – and yet encouraging – it is to be forced or led to confront your fears, your inadequacies, your failings – to have the solid ground around you dug up, by someone who has your best interest at heart.
You don’t have to be an adolescent, or a fig tree, to grow stronger, healthier, more faithful from being held in a loving care that won’t let us be comfortable with less than wholeness, however much the process of growth disturbs us.
That’s what Jesus is telling us.
Today, and over and over again.
He’s inviting us, Paul’s reminding us, to look for, to recognize, to turn toward and embrace and trust the loving care that won’t let us be comfortable with idleness and complaint, that won’t let us stay lonely, hopeless, or limited, no matter how uncomfortable it is to become vibrant, fruitful, joyous, and beloved.
The season of Lent is a good one in which to look for and respond to the evidence of God’s care – for you, for me, for others. To watch for the moments or hours when we feel God bringing us air and nutrients and loving attention, even just a little, and to embrace those changes. To watch for moments or days when we feel God forcing us to grow stronger, deeper, wiser; disturbing the earth around us, and stirring up the …fertilizer we might not want, but need, and to practice trust as that happens.
A friend reminded me recently of studies that show that the practice of keeping a “gratitude journal” – of simply noting down each day one thing to be thankful for – like the taste of a favorite food, sunlight, life itself, the continued global availability of chocolate – noting down one thing a day makes us measurably healthier, happier, stronger people.
I expect, too, that if you or I made it a habit, every day, to notice one thing about God’s care, we might become stronger, more faithful, loving and joyful, life-giving and vibrant people.
So will you watch with me, this Lent, for those signs of God’s care? Keep a “fertilizer” journal, maybe?
Look for God digging you free of where the world’s gotten too packed down around you, fertilizing your growth? For where God is spending time with us; nourishing and disturbing and nurturing you; or holding the world together when it’s too much for me, or you, or all of us?
Will you watch with me for God’s deep, unshakable faithful care, and give thanks, and see what we grow into, together?
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