It’s really not that big a part of the sermon, but buffaloes are just amazing death-bringers. So, be warned!
Luke 13:1-9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Psalm 63:1-8; Isaiah 55:1-9
Every so often we get a gospel lesson that really is, for lack of a better term, gloomy. This isn’t the kind of message we like to hear. We don’t want Jesus to say things like, “Repent or Die!” It’s not the kind of thing we’re used to hearing from the guy whose sound bites are always about love and forgiveness and mercy. But a good portion of Jesus’ sayings really are this way. Jesus gives some pretty strong examples, and even uses some pretty strong direct language to talk about following him is going to be like.
Lutherans have an especially hard time with things like “Repent or Die”. We’re brought up hearing that God does everything for us when it comes to salvation. One of the fundamental tenants of being Lutheran is that we are saved by grace through faith and not by works, lest any should boast. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is enough for our salvation, and once we’re saved we’re good. Sometimes we even avoid doing good works because we don’t want to do anything that might possibly look like earning our salvation.
But back to this repentance business. I don’t think Lutherans quite understand repentance, and I think part of the problem is that we don’t really respect sin. I know that’s an odd way to say it, but I think it’s the best word. Let me put it like this. Have you ever seen a buffalo? More specifically, have you ever seen a buffalo in Yellowstone park? A buffalo is a freakishly scary animal. It’s big; it’s fast; and it has a serious temper. In Yellowstone there are countless warnings about the buffalo. They all have the same message: “Do not under any circumstances approach the buffalo to try and take a picture of it up close because they’re bigger than you, faster than you, stronger than you, and can get very angry in your direction far quicker than you possibly can imagine or cope with.”
One of the main reasons for these signs is because people don’t respect the buffalo. I have seen more people do exactly what they say not to do, just to snap a picture. Every so often, and I’m sure it’s more common than the media typically reports, one of those buffalo will charge whoever is taking the picture and severely injure or kill them. Now, curiously enough, if you realize that the buffalo is bigger, faster, and angrier than you and maintain a healthy level of respect toward the buffalo – and by that I mean you stay in the safety of your car and listen to the warning signs – you will be just fine.
Sin is just as feisty as a buffalo, and oftentimes we forget this. We may not have to worry about sin’s eternal effect on our lives because of the forgiveness we have in Jesus Christ, but that’s like saying we don’t have to worry about the buffalo because there’s hospitals to patch us up afterward. Sin is a very real danger to us.
The people in the first century were keenly aware of the dangers of sin. They believed that if someone was injured, or someone was born with some kind of birth defect it was because of their sin or their parent’s sin. And that led into a situation where people who didn’t have anything disastrous happen to them assumed they were less sinful than others. I may as well open up the can of worms, but our culture continues to have this sense. If there’s a big disaster somewhere, there’s always a few people who blame the sin of whomever the disaster happened to. On the other side of that is the belief that whoever wasn’t effected must be less sinful than the others.
Jesus throws that idea out in our gospel. To Jesus, it doesn’t matter if you have a little sin or a lot of sin – everyone has sinned. So when he says, “Unless you repent, you’ll surely die” he’s saying that because of sin, everyone is under the punishment of sin, which is death. The only way out is to make a significant change in the way things are going – specifically accepting that you’re not God, God is.
Now we have a lot of ideas about what that looks like. To some groups it’s called being “born again”. To others its “getting saved”. To others its “receiving the Holy Spirit”. Sometimes its just “being a believer”. But whatever word is used, it means turning one’s life over to God.
But there’s more to this kind of repentance than just having the intellectual knowledge of salvation. Jesus continues with a parable about a fig tree that isn’t bearing fruit. The jist of the parable is this: If you have a fruit tree that isn’t making fruit, the tree really isn’t good for anything if you’re in the business of selling fruit. So, if there’s no fruit, you get rid of the tree and replace it with one that will bear fruit, otherwise you just lose money in the care of the tree. But instead of cutting it down right away, the tree is essentially given every opportunity to produce fruit, complete with fertilizer to help it grow and the special attention of the guy in charge.
In this parable, the fig tree is the person who has heard what Jesus is saying: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near!” But just like a tree doesn’t always bear fruit right away, someone may not repent the first time they hear this news. And even if they do repent, without some kind of outward sign, some kind of fruit, there’s no way to know if the repentance stuck. There are any number of ways this can play out. The fruit can be community service. The fruit could be telling other people about Jesus. But there’s still some kind of fruit. That’s what we’re called to do as Christians, is to go in the world and bear fruit, not out of obligation, but out of our joyful response to what Christ has done for us.