By Rev. Canon David B. Tabo-oy
“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
v6And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. v7And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ v8And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. v9Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” Luke 13:5-9
Repent, Jesus says, for that’s the first step in the Christian life. Confess your sins before God and receive God’s forgiveness. In that sense, confession is good for the soul, true confession, not the kind of glib admission that says, “Sure I’ve sinned. Who hasn’t?” True confession that begins with a heartfelt remorse, a feeling of failure to live up to God’s love and a desire to reform. “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus said, and part of what he was speaking about is those who feel the pain of a guilty conscience and grieve in the awareness that we have failed to live up to the expectations of God and those around us.
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Confession is good for the soul — yes, we know that — but how can we develop a true sense of heartfelt remorse for our sinfulness and a real desire to change our ways? Most of us are willing to confess our sins as long as we don’t have to change. We are willing to admit to a blemish or two on our moral complexion but nothing that can not be cosmetically covered up with a coating of good manners. None of us wants to admit that our sinfulness may require reconstructive surgery! After all, we like to think that God is happy with us the way we are and really only wants to make us happy with ourselves. We are in the middle of our Christian Lenten observance. Lent is the season of self-examination, penitence, prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and by reading and meditating on the Word of God. But the most appropriate way by which we can observe a holy Lent is through true repentance. This is one le
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Every time a calamity of great magnitude strikes and causes losses of lives and destruction of properties, we ask the question “why” as we survey the devastations. The same question was asked after the strong earthquake that shook Baguio city and other parts of region in July 1990. Thousands of lives were lost during that fateful day. Was there any explanation, perhaps of a metaphysical kind, that might lead us to some understanding of how and why a catastrophe of this magnitude could have happened?
Some years ago when Mayon volcano in Albay erupted the residence took it in a stride. They have had several in their lifetime of that experience. Then the super typhoon came and devastated the region. Incessant rains for days followed. The people around the volcano who have already suffered from the ash fall and super typhoon– but were quite used to it were not used to another calamity that befallen them: mudslides that buried scores of people including children. The grief of those affected was captured by an elderly whose laments was splashed in the newspapers and aired on the evening news: “Why us? Even the children are not spared!”
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The whole theme of this 3rd Sunday in Lent in the prayers and Scriptures readings is about the special relationship between God and God’s chosen people, and the responsibility the chosen people have toward God. Perhaps we have too easily said that God is love, and gives love to everyone, and forgives everyone — what was once called “cheap grace.” It is not that God isn’t all these things. It is that we are called to be more than all these things. The first thing for us to note today is that we are the baptized members of the Kingdom. God has chosen us. God is with us and nothing can separate us from God’s love.
In the Gospel today, Jesus’ is being asked about justice. He is being asked about the sort of justice in which we are interested: the justice that affects us. “Why me?” we all cry. “Why do innocent people get hurt in an accident?” “Why do little children get killed in war?” “Why do I get cancer?” Were innocent people among those killed by the Governor Pilate? Were some of those killed when that tower fell down in Siloam good people?” Jesus doesn’t give them an easy answer. That’s the problem.
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In today’s gospel Jesus is talking to people with an attitude. They brought to him stories of certain Galileans who had suffered at the hands of Pilate. Jesus notices that the attitude of those telling the stories is not sympathetic to the plight of those who suffered. Rather, they are telling stories in order to draw attention to themselves. They were saying that if those who died were as half righteous as the story tellers – they would to have died. The dead suffered and died because of their unrighteousness. They were not clean enough. Jesus is disgusted by the underlying attitude of this people. He told them in their faces that in God’s sight they are no more righteous or acceptable. They are just as sinful and deserving of judgment as all other human beings. He warns them that they too will perish if they do not repent, if they do not make a complete transformation from their evil ways.
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The message speaks to all of us. We all have this self-centered mindset to some degree. It is rooted in our being human and sinful. To express it in another way it says, “I am better than those other people. I deserve more respect, more understanding. I deserve acceptance more than they.” It is also the attitude that will say, “those people are not good enough. They need to be removed. They should be tucked away, out of sight.” Just imagine what a church (or society) we would have if all of the members will have the same attitude. It can be a very dangerous attitude, especially when it is grounded in such callousness about the suffering of other people.
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This morning we hear Jesus’ parable of the fig tree, telling us to repent and bear good fruit. We know what the Christian life requires of us and yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we also know how far short we fall. Jesus says that we all fall short. None makes the mark. Left to ourselves, we are, without exception, all doomed! If we have been spared the suffering that a neighbor has experienced, it is not because we are more righteous than that neighbor. The message of Jesus in this passage: It is by God’s grace that you have been spared. Now change your attitude. Be transformed. Repent. Otherwise, you too will perish. God’s grace comes with a responsibility to change. It calls us to become a new kind of person; the kind of person, as Saint Paul says, who will bear fruit and in whom the gifts of the Spirit blossom.
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The parable in the last four verses in the Gospel warns us to take nothing for granted. Yes, in Jesus Christ we have an advocate who intercedes for us and in whom God’s grace is poured on us in various ways. But, as the parable teaches us, the intercession is for a limited time – while God is a god of second chances – there is a limit in the hope that we will change and bear fruit. “I will dig around it and put manure on it,” says the gardener, “if it bears fruit next year well and good, if not, you may cut it down.’ (vv.8-9)
This Lenten Season let us always remember and be warned. But for the grace of God, we fall short of the goal and are doomed. Therefore be transformed and bear fruit. Otherwise you will perish.
Let us pray.
God of forgiveness, you have given us assurance in Jesus that when we confess our sins with penitence, you will forgive. Caught up in our own selfish desires, we have sinned against you, refusing to let ourselves be used as channels of blessings for others, taking you and our neighbors for granted. Give us a contrite spirit to humble ourselves before you, as Jesus has taught us. Amen.**
