Someone in the congregation forwarded a cartoon to me by e-mail this week, a humorous cartoon with a biblical slant. And I did find it funny, actually laugh-out-loud funny. My description won’t do it justice, but I’ll try anyway. The caption of the cartoon is “How dinosaurs became extinct.” And the picture worth a thousand words shows what is obviously Noah’s Ark sailing off in the distance, crowded with pairs of all the animals on the earth. But in the foreground sits a pair of dinosaurs, perched on a rock on shore, watching the ark sail out of reach toward the horizon. “Oh shucks!” says one to the other. “Was that today?”
The dinosaur doesn’t really say “shucks.” His expletive is a bit stronger than that, but I felt I had to tone down the language just a bit for the pulpit. But you get the point anyway. Dinosaurs became extinct because they simply missed the boat. A comment added to the cartoon says: “the first senior moment.” Now many jokes are made about senior moments these days. And, in truth, such lapses of memory as the aging dinosaurs had can lead not only to missed appointments but even to more serious consequences, such even as the dinosaurs had in missing a rather critical appointment.
So I wrote back to the person who sent me the e-mail: “That’s right, Marty,” I said. “Don’t miss the boat. And thanks for sending me the opening illustration for this Sunday’s sermon.” I don’t know what I’d do without the material you constantly feed me.
So, yes, the cartoon was funny. But missing the boat can also be a serious matter, especially when the boat sailing off in the distance may be your very last chance to get onboard to where you want to go. And that’s why I saw in the cartoon itself a serious side as well, an apt reference to our scripture passage this morning from Luke.
Prior to Luke’s ominous little story about murdered Galileans and people killed by a collapsed tower, he reports that Jesus has been warning people along the way about the nature of the times in which they are living. He has been preaching that they need to be on the lookout for signs foretelling that great changes are about to occur. They need to be ready for the great upheaval on the horizon. Many of Jesus’ followers believed that a new order was about to be ushered in.
Today’s story fits into that whole section by warning everyone not to assume that something dreadful can’t happen to them. Some people report to Jesus having heard that Pilate brutally slaughtered some pilgrims come from Galilee to Jerusalem, mingling their blood with the blood of their sacrificial animals in the Temple. Jesus responds to this story with the question: Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?
He then applies the example of eighteen people who were reported to have been killed when one of the towers in the wall of the city collapsed on them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? he asks them. No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.
So what is Jesus saying? In one way he tries to dispel the old idea that misfortune always comes from God to punish people who deserve it. That’s the idea, you remember, that Job’s friends tried to convince Job to accept: that his awful misfortunes must have been due to some sin of his he wasn’t aware of. A just God punishes only people who deserve it, they say, and all misfortune is a sign of God’s punishment. Well, that’s not something Jesus believed. He expressed that quite directly the day his disciples asked him if a man they saw who had been born blind had himself sinned to cause his blindness or if sins of his parents were to blame. Jesus said that neither the man nor his parents bore responsibility for the birth defect, but that through the condition of the man’s blindness God might yet work miracles.
What I think Jesus is saying in response to the report of the murder of the Galileans and to the collapse of the tower is that life is precarious. Bad things can happen to good people. As Jesus said it, rain falls on the just and the unjust. Many times – whether as the result of intentional human cruelty or what appears to be pure accident – life can be brought to a sudden and crashing halt. And then there’s no time left to get things right.
Getting things right can take on a quite comprehensive meaning for our living. Jesus tried to warn us against allowing our lives to fall out of touch with God’s will and purpose for us. To be separated from God is to allow our lives to fall into despair and darkness. He called us to repent and turn to God so that in whatever time we have left in life we realize the joy of full and abundant life to which God in Jesus calls us and that in time beyond mortal life we are already wrapped in God’s love. Maybe that’s one reason we often use the word “pass” to mean die.
Luke tells us that Jesus knew Isaiah very well. We can almost hear Jesus in the words of Isaiah that Adam read for us a few minutes ago, words of corrective warning to the people: Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,/and your labor for that which does not satisfy?/Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,/and delight yourselves on rich food.
We heard a few weeks ago how on the Mount of Transfiguration three of Jesus’ disciples saw him along with Moses and Elijah in transcendent light and how the voice of God spoke out of the cloud saying of Jesus, “This is my son, My Chosen; listen to him!” Sometimes what the disciples and all the rest of us need to listen to is a warning. We need to get our lives in order for we never know how much time we have.
I think we all understand this. It’s just that as life moves along its daily course we easily can lose sight of what really matters. We can make choices that have dire consequences. In that way, God’s judgment then does fall heavily upon us. We often tempt God by what we do and what we leave undone to bring down upon us the consequences that naturally follow. We never get off scot free for behavior that separates us from God.
God is merciful and just, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. But God’s mercy has its limits. Life itself has its limits. That seems to be the truth in the little parable about the fig tree. Fruit-bearing fig trees had historically been used to describe God’s relationship with the people Israel. But in the parable Jesus tells the fig tree isn’t bearing any fruit at all. The owner of the vineyard wants to cut it down. “Why should it be wasting the soil?” the owner asks. But the gardener pleads with the owner to give the tree one more year, promising to fertilize it and water it in hopes that it will turn around and become fruit bearing. So the owner relents and gives the gardener permission to allow the tree one more year. But by that time, if it hasn’t borne fruit, it will have to be cut down.
What are we to make of this little parable? We can easily turn it into an allegory and identify the characters. We can say that the owner of the vineyard is God, that the gardener is Jesus, and that the fig tree is still the people of Israel. Then the allegorized parable says that the old tradition has ceased bearing fruit and is about to be done away with. Except that Jesus begs for mercy and for an extension to the time of sentencing. That’s one way to read the parable.
But we know that parables are more than simply allegories. Parables are rich little stories set alongside reality to speak on many different levels. And the level on which we become part of the parable is the level which invites us to see in the fruitless fig tree our own barrenness that can occur as we become merely slothful at best, intentionally faithless at worst. Jesus told us that our faith would be expressed in our living, not in our proclaiming. By the fruit we bear, or don’t bear, we will be known, he said, and our lives assessed. And there comes a time when time runs out for us. God no longer has patience for our wasting the soil on which we live. Life itself has its limits.
It’s the message we’ve heard throughout this passage. Life is precarious, uncertain, and short. That’s why we need to get our affairs in order. More precisely, we need to repent, to turn around toward the ways of God and away from those things that separate us and distance us from God’s hope and purpose for us.
Can we see why this passage from Luke is assigned for a Sunday in Lent? Lent is our yearly reminder that repentance is a way of life. It may begin with a dramatic moment, a vivid insight, that causes us to put life in order, but it continues as a lifelong habit and purposeful journey. Another good Reformed word for lifelong repentance is sanctification, a process over time of growing closer to God, moving again toward a life that reflects God’s own image created in us.
Lent reminds us to do the hard work of looking honestly at the selfishness and sin that separate us from God. It’s never too early to begin, though it can become too late. It behooves us to heed the warning from our God who desires to be merciful, forgiving, and accepting, but who reminds us that we have a part to play in response to the covenant that binds us as it has bound every would-be follower of God from the time of creation onward. Every life has its limits. How much time do we have? Only God knows. But we do know this much: it is wise not to presume to know more than we can know or to test God beyond the limits God has established. Amen.