The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Luke.

At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them–do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'”(Luke 13:1-9)

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In light of what has been happening in the Ukraine, this past three or so years, with bombing of homes, hospitals, schools, and so on and hearing the horrific death toll, we  have to wonder who do people have to die like that? Where is God at a time like this?

Men, women, children. Dying in horrifying bombardments, people who were just sheltering in certain buildings they thought would be safe havens.

 Why?

Why do people have to die like that? 

That same question, was being answered by Jesus in the account we have just heard, from Luke’s gospel, as the disciples wrestled with that ” Why?”

Pilate was always alert to any sign of insurrection arising from the Jews, so on one occasion when protests seemed imminent,  he had his soldiers hide their uniforms under civilian clothing and carry cudgels instead of swords, and they were to mingle among the people protesting.

They were to then throw off their disguises and beat those who were protesting.

Some people died.

Were they killed because they were sinners?

And what about those who were crushed when the  tower at Siloam fell?

Were they sinners too?

If they had been ‘good’ then would they have been spared?

“No,” Jesus says. We are all sinners.

“They didn’t die because of their sins.” But if you don’t repent, then you will surely die like them – not in the same way – but  suddenly, without the opportunity to repent.

Saying that God didn’t punish those people for their sins, is not to say that we don’t eventually have to face some hard questioning,   but that God is patient. He wants his children to come back to Him, to turn their lives around. And He will wait for us.

Jesus uses a story of a fig farmer to explain this. The owner of the vineyard sees the tree which hasn’t borne fruit in three years and orders it cut down. The gardener asks for more time.

“I will fertilize it. I will water it. Give it a chance. If it is still barren next year, then we will cut it down.”

God has always called his children to repentance. “Come back to me,” he calls to us. “Come back.” If you are thirsty, or hungry, and don’t have any money, then come back anyway. I will receive you, and feed and water you.

If you are a sinner, and have nothing to show for your life. And you are in need of love and forgiveness and tenderness, and need to belong once more, then that’s alright.

Come back and be welcomed.

This last sentiment is from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, of course, our first reading today. God, through Isaiah is calling the children of Israel to return to him, and he will take them back to their own land, where they will experience his wonderful generosity again.

William Lamartine Thomson must have had those verses of Isaiah in mind when he wrote that wonderful old hymn, ‘Softly and Tenderly’, over a hundred years ago.  It’s a song we often sing during services in retirement homes. Here is one verse:

Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading,
Pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not His mercies,
Mercies for you and for me?

That is straightforward enough isn’t it?

 Why wait around?

Why put off coming to Jesus?

You know what you have to do.

You know how much you need to turn it around.

So why wait?

The Emperor Constantine didn’t want to be baptised as a Christian until he had had enough of a good time. He didn’t want to respond too soon, when the pleasures of this world were still attractive to him.

He had the idea that to accept Christ you had to obey a set of rules.

He didn’t yet know the joy which comes from just knowing Jesus, and which is a joy  far superior to what the world has to offer.

The next verse of that hymn is a bit more direct, however. I always thought it was too bleak to sing at a retirement home, and I thought we should omit it, but I always remembered too late.  It goes: –

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me;
Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,
Coming for you and for me

Deathbeds are coming!!

What a ghoulish thought.

Deathbeds are coming!!!

When I was a new rector, I went to Maplecrest  Lodge in Grimsby, to do a service, and  I was introduced to Owen Patterson, a retired minister of Trinity United Church.

Owen was old, and sitting in a wheelchair.

Now Owen had a wicked sense of humour.

Too wicked if you ask me.

He looked at me with a wicked smile, and said, “You are looking at what you will become.”

Holy Moley!

Just what I didn’t want to hear.

I had already wondered if age is  contagious. Like if you mixed with old people, you caught it, and became old yourself. 

And it’s true!!

I started out young, and after visiting retirement homes where old people hang out, I have gotten older.

But when the retirees sang that verse –  ‘shadows are gathering, deathbeds  are coming,’  it didn’t faze them, they just sang those words as lustily as they did all the words.

Remembering those tragedies, in the Ukraine,  and elsewhere,  and the two tragedies noted in the Gospel story told today, we should be aware that deathbeds can come for us at any age.

Suddenly!

If we don’t know that today, then we will never know it.

But I am not expecting a rush today, or any day this week, of people wanting to talk to me about turning their lives around.  I don’t suppose there will be a rush to lawyers of people suddenly anxious to get their wills done.

And anyway, that’s not what it is about.

We are not talking about taking out insurance against going to the wrong place, here.

We are talking about realising that God loves us, and wants us back with him. Not out of fear. Not out of panic.

I don’t even believe he wants us back out of regret.

You will remember in Jesus’  parable of the prodigal,  how the son, having spent all his money and living in absolute poverty on a pig farm, decides to go home.

He regrets what he has done, and he doesn’t think he can ever be forgiven. He just figures that maybe he can get a better job as a hired hand on his dad’s farm, and be content with that.

What he doesn’t know. And perhaps this is the tragedy of that story – what he doesn’t know – is the sheer depth of his father’s love for him.

There is no talk of him being a hired hand. No recrimination. No judgment. Simply out of his father’s love for him, he is welcomed, and in the joy his father has in just having him home, his wrongs are forgotten. 

I wonder how many of us never realised the extent of our parents’ love for us until we looked back years later and saw as clear as day what we had never seen up close. 

I wonder how many of us haven’t realised how much we have loved someone until we have lost them.

The people of Jesus’ time had  no idea  of the depth or the breadth or height of the love of God. They thought that people were punished for their wrongs by a vengeful God.

A person to whom good things happened was automatically considered to be blessed by God, and a person to whom bad things happened was automatically considered to be punished by God.

Sounds logical doesn’t it?

How often have you heard someone who has problems say, “I don’t know what I did to deserve this? “

And this, even after Jesus has explained about the unconditional love of the Father.

Even when Jesus showed that love in healing the sick.

Even when he hung on that cross .

People still didn’t make the connection.

He wants us to come back out of a realisation of  how much He loves us.

Some people are shocked to hear that.

But maybe we need to be shocked into realising the depth and beauty of God’s love for us.

You know, there are mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters who have a depth and a beauty of love for us, but which sometimes, we just don’t see.

How much harder is it for us to recognise such love in a far away God?

But God understands.

He tells us, ‘My thoughts and my ways are not like yours.  Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, my thoughts and my ways are higher than yours.’

And Jesus brings that love right up front and centre for us.  He brings it down here to earth for us all to see and to marvel at.

To marvel at the depth of it.

Because otherwise we would have no idea, would we?

What is so mind boggling, is that  even after his death on that cross, even after that sacrifice, that horrible display of how low we humans can sink, He still wants us to follow him.

How could that possibly be?  Well composer Thomson has no doubts.

O for the wonderful love He has promised,
Promised for you and for me!
Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon,
Pardon for you and for me.

Come home. Come home.

Aren’t those words, ‘Come home,’ the most beautiful words in the English language?

I once read the obituary of the man responsible, during World War Two,  for setting up the radio beacon to which weary pilots, some flying alone, would tune their radios, to guide them home..

How good they must have felt to hear that tone, bringing them safely home.

Earnestly Tenderly, Jesus is calling.

          Calling O sinner, come home.

It has to feel good to respond to such an appeal, hasn’t it?

And really, how much more could He do?

Amen.