24 March 2018 | Liz Caughey
Just over a week ago I was cycling on the West Coast of the South Island with my husband Tony and my sister, Jen, two of my very favourite people. We had a wonderful time, despite the constant rain for three of the four days – but then it wouldn’t have been a West Coast experience without that! On the Friday we stopped for a break and Tony was checking his phone. I noticed he was reading with great intensity, and asked him what it was, and he said, ‘something terrible has happened’. And he told me about the massacre in Christchurch, the city where he was born and raised. … We were going there the next day. So while you were here at church last Sunday, we three walked from our motel to the mosque, and paid our respects. Although there were hundreds of people doing that, the whole place was quiet, subdued, and the presence all around the mosque of police with rifles was disturbing.
Some days later, knowing I was rostered on to preach, I looked at the readings for today. And my goodness, how can anyone say that the Bible isn’t relevant in our time? It won’t have escaped your notice that the Gospel reading has astonishing parallels with the two major Christchurch tragedies of recent years – the earthquake of 2011 and the massacre of our Muslim brothers and sisters Friday week ago.
Now, the main themes of today’s Gospel are repentance and fruitfulness. Repentance has two meanings. Firstly, the way most people use it today, to mean ‘sorrow, regret, remorse’. But biblically, repentance is when we turn towards God or re-turn to God. Turning away from wrong ways of being, towards right ways, moving towards God.
I found the Gospel reading uncomfortable because three times it talks about people dying as punishment for their sins. As it turns out, a lot comes down to the difference in understanding of words between their century and ours.
Jesus is told about some Galileans who have being slaughtered by Pontius Pilate while making their sacrifices in the temple, and he then mentions 18 people who were crushed by a falling tower. He asks his disciples whether they think that those who were killed, died because they were more sinful than everyone else.
This was the accepted belief in OT times – that if something bad happened to someone, it was because they had sinned, and they were being punished by God. For us, that is an outrageous claim, because we know God to be loving, forgiving and merciful, not vengeful. But some people still believe this, and it definitely lingers in our language in a superstitious way – people say things like, ‘what did he do to deserve that? Or … ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.
Jesus goes on to answer his own question. He says, twice, emphatically, “No, I tell you”. So there it is, a categorical statement from Christ over 2000 years ago, denying that sin results in punishment from God. Those people in the temple and by the tower were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Yet then he goes on to say, unless you repent, you will all perish as they did – ____which seems to contradict what He just said! However, it seems from the Greek word for ‘perish’ that it means not ‘to die physically’ but to suffer separation from God, so, a spiritual death. So Jesus is telling his followers that they need to brush up their sinful lives and turn towards God, if they don’t want to ‘perish’ spiritually.
Finally, Jesus refers to the fig tree being cut down if it doesn’t bear fruit. If the fig tree is a metaphor for humans, as I read it to be, then I don’t understand why he seems now to be subscribing to the ‘God punishes sin’ view. Because I believe that God loves each of us just as we are, with all our faults, and that He is endlessly patient. God knows we’ll never be perfect and I believe God is always open to our repentance no matter how long it might take. Perhaps Jesus’ parable was simply a way of motivating us to act on repentance in a more urgent and intentional way.
We never ever master repentance because we cannot be perfect. So repentance is lifelong and it evolves, just like our relationship with God. It’s something that, with practice, we get better at. A turning back to the right path means finding again right relationship with God and with one another. The challenge of repentance is that it involves choice and change – in relationships, personal responsibility, self-control, and behaviours.
The thing with tragedies is that they stop us in our tracks and provide an opportunity to think deeply about what matters. They shake us up and rend cracks in our ordinary life, throwing us off balance. The ground of certainty and assumption shifts beneath us, and we are brought face to face with the fact that life is precarious – and therefore all the more precious. And we reassess our lives and behaviours, and very commonly it is a catalyst for repentance, that is, a turning towards right ways of being.
In the aftermath of a tragedy we see the presence of God in people’s responses to what has happened – as we have seen in Christchurch and across NZ – in the love shown and the support offered, the vigils and prayers, the reaching out to those previously seen as ‘other’, the generosity, desire for peace, kindness, gentleness, and the determination to be mindful of cultural and religious differences so we don’t offend. Many of these responses are called the ‘fruits of the Spirit’. These are aspects of us that come to fruition through repentance. As we turn to God, like the fig tree, we are nurtured to bear fruit. We don’t have to become a whole new tree. We just bear the fruit that we were created to bear, and have the capacity to bear.
Now I don’t know whether Jacinda Ardern is a woman of faith now. I have read that she was raised a Mormon but left that church because its views on homosexuality were incompatible with hers. I have found her response to the recent tragedy remarkable, and fully in alignment with the fruits of the Spirit. She is singing a new song in our political arena, and for that matter, internationally. A song – that stands alongside, is strong, compassionate, opens doors and welcomes; offers new possibilities, solutions and ways of being. The country is responding in kind. People of diverse cultures are reaching out to each other and drawing together in the face of this horror, and are caring for and about each other on a scale we’ve not seen before. It seems everyone has been galvanised into the action of neighbourliness and acceptance of difference and of our mutual humanity. It feels like a groundswell of turning towards right ways of being. I see the compassionate hand of God at work in the responses to all this suffering. Is it possible that repentance can happen on such a grand scale? It is a remarkable thing to witness and be part of. Christchurch is using love to expel hate.
And the whole world, too, is watching and commenting favourably of Jacinda’s demeanour, actions and words – and those of all New Zealanders – because they are SO DIFFERENT to the current global culture! She is lifting the bar for leaders, and is a wonderful antidote to other politicians worldwide. Optimist that I am, I pray that this is the beginning of a new era in New Zealand, when love, peace and equality will defeat hate and violence and bigotry and division. All of us here have a part to play in that – no matter how small.
In these times of distress, we can take strength from Scripture and prayer, and we can use those also to support others. We can lead the change we want to see, and we must love our neighbours, all of them, truly. Because repentance, forgiveness and relationship cannot be separated. … When people turn towards right ways of being, with the grace of God, they can change in extraordinary and wonderful ways.
Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Amen.
(Teresa of Avila)