Our Call to Repentance and Fruitfulness
March 23, 2025 – The 3rd Sunday in Lent, Year C
Exodus 3:1-15 • Psalm 63:1-8 • 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 • Luke 13:1-9
We have waded into the waters of Lent, long enough to begin to get pruny, steeped in our season of obedience and devotion, reflection and penitence, fasting and prayer. In this season we seek nearness of God in our spiritual wilderness, but as we make our way, we are not necessarily fully aware of what we are doing and how we are doing it. There are often interruptions and course-corrections. Have we really thought about what we are doing on this journey and the implications of what we’re doing now and in the time to come?
We may be going about our business, not unlike Moses, doing what we do, living simply, practicing obedience. Then the unexpected comes along, and a call is given to us, an opportunity, if we are willing to accept it. The thing about callings, especially calls from God, is that they seem impossible. And they would be, but for the assurance of God’s promise: “I will be with you.” An ordinary day becomes a banner day, never to be forgotten. A burning bush helps sear the day into one’s memory, too. We have something important to do.
We may, like the Corinthians, wonder whether we’re doing it right. It being our spiritual practices or whatever it is we are called to do, and right being the one-hundred-percent orthodox, God-approved way. Paul directs them, as us, to order our thoughts and intentions to focus on God first and foremost. To put anything or anyone before God is idolatry. Our season of examination leads us to consider how all the things we think, say, or do actually reflect our love of God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and how we extend that love to our neighbors as ourself. Lent begs us to get this reflective. Our psalm for today gives us a portrait of what our lives are or can be when we fully and wholeheartedly love God above all else. We thirst for no other. Our soul content “as with marrow and fatness” is fed by God alone. When we let all else fall away and live into our dependence on God, there we are–the child of God we are created to be, and surely this child of God will do right.
When we are born into this world, we are no less the child of God than before we were knit together in our mother’s womb, yet the world so quickly shrouds us in this material life, with all its preoccupations, suffering, and temptations. We so easily lose our way trying to live life the “right” way, even if it’s all wrong. We don’t know we are going the wrong way or are lost unless we are told or shown otherwise.
Just this week I happily followed my virtual map on a sunny drive that took me to unfamiliar roads. I hastily put in a general destination and unwisely had not checked the route. I soaked up the vistas and the music until the gravel roads demanded my attention and became more like paths. I ended up stopped at a closed gate that told me I could neither hunt nor trespass. Though I had a general idea where I was, I had no clear idea of how to get to where I needed to go. My lack of preparation, attention and intention, and specificity could have gone badly. Fortunately, all the resources I needed were available to reorient my path and arrive safely at my destination. At one point I literally laughed out loud, the irony of being lost in the woods while wandering in the wilderness of Lent not being lost on me as I made a multi-point turn-around to get on the right path.
However mature or immature we are in faith, and wherever we are in our spiritual journey, any time we reach a clear sign or get a course correction, our response might be a defensive one. How dare they block off a road? Don’t they know Google Maps will direct through here? Or when someone tells us what to do, might we ask, “Who are they to judge? How can they really know? Does this even apply to me?” The disciples may have felt such a defensiveness with Jesus. Whether they are complaining about their own sacrifices being tainted or pointing out the demise of others, Jesus directs their attention toward the suffering of others that could easily be their own. Rather than “othering” others, he holds a mirror so the disciples can see their own possible future. In case they missed it the first time, Jesus repeats: “unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
In a culture where hardly anyone has escaped the voice of “Repent or burn in hell,” our guard may be up, too. We don’t believe in a wrathful and vengeful God. We’re not like “them.” Yet we hear the voice of Jesus: “unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” We might be tempted to reject the warning outright. We certainly don't take it literally–our blood won’t be spilled or towers fall upon us. Then Jesus offers a parable, as if affirming for us that we don’t have to take it literally. Like the disciples, we have an imperative to listen and reflect, to pray and learn.
A fig tree is planted in a vineyard, and the landowner checks on it each year for three years, finding no fruit. “Cut it down!” he says. “Why waste the soil?” The gardener, however, intercedes respectfully. “Sir, give me one more year,” he requests. “I’ll aerate and fertilize it, and we’ll see if all is well and good. If not, you can cut it down.”
Just previously in Luke, Jesus had given the disciples other stories of those who were on a path toward spiritual if not physical death and destruction. Here, Jesus concludes his point vividly. With clarity and urgency, Jesus leaves little room to hear anything but the call to repentance. Time to shape up or ship out. Fish or cut bait. Bear fruit or be cut down. The Son of Man has come and will do what he can, but it is up to the one who has the ability, responsibility, and call to produce and bear fruit if they want to live.
I love thinking of the work of the gardener. Digging around the tree, he aerates the soul. Agriculturally, the aeration is important, but think about what this means. He’s allowing space for air to circulate, for space to breathe, for inspiration. Spiritually inspired, there’s room for the Holy Spirit to do her work. The manure, too, has its role. Think of all the shtuff we contend with in our lives, the obstacles and challenges we face, the wounds and scars we bear, the resilience we garner not because we want to but because it is the product of our survival. Fertilizer is nourishment, often an amendment for what is lacking, and God– who is faithful and with us–gives us nourishment, too, chiefly in the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Our need for spiritual nourishment by God is as plain as our physical thirst and hunger. God is faithful and with us, providing us what we need to be fruitful. As difficult as it may be to hear, for us who are like the fig tree, the call to repent is the call to wake up to living a life that is not sustainably adding to or benefitting the vineyard, the kin-dom of God, and to get back on track for doing what we are called to do.
A local foundation funded a three-year grant for community organizing here in Northwest Arkansas. Each year the foundation checked on the progress of the organization. Meetings happened, trainings were held, relationships were developed across the I-49 corridor and among various denominations, traditions, and cultures. Everyone involved shares a love of Northwest Arkansas as their home, as our community. The measure of success was a financial one and one of quantity. Relationships, however, defy quantification. Since the original grant expired, leaders within the organization have said, “Give us time; let us do some more intentional work.” Over the years, there has been more going on than checking for fruit. There have been texts and calls exchanged, meals shared, realizations made and seen–all like living together and watching a tree daily as twigs grow and buds open to leaves. It takes time to flower, let alone blossom to fruit.
What the civil rights movements have taught us is that the real power is the undeniable presence of Spirit. Our connection to our higher power, the greater good, our God, is our strength. Rather than focusing solely on what we can do, we can focus on what God can do through us, with us, let alone for us. Moses certainly did not deliver the Israelites out of bondage on his own, but he did his part. He bore fruit that fed the purpose. So, too, have faith traditions played fundamental roles in advancing the well-being of God’s children throughout history, when the purpose was truly for the well-being of all. Churches have been places of praise and worship and places of town halls. Religious communities know about hospitality and having plenty of room around the table. Faith focused on life, love, and liberation bursts forth in fruits of the Spirit, abundant and gracious. And don’t you know it makes the powers and principalities tremble with rage when confronted with the power of God revealed in God’s people? When the fruit that is born and shared are fruits of justice, fruit of compassion? When the fruit that is harvested feeds the children and the widowed? When the fruit liberates the oppressed, comforts the afflicted, and welcomes the stranger? Thank God for planting such trees, that they might be the kind of trees we raise up in this place, with God’s help.
Our call to repentance is urgent. The time is now. We are such a tree, each one of us. The fruit that we are called to bear is just the thing our unique gifts, skills, experience, and resources make us able to create and to share. Now is the time to examine our ways and make sure that we are doing all we can to be fruitful, remembering that it’s not about our power alone. Now is the time to examine our ways and the surrounding conditions to make sure we are being cared for in life-giving ways, that we have space to breathe and let Spirit move about us and within us, that we are being nourished not only by the life lessons we learn but especially that we are being fed by the heavenly banquet of Holy Communion, and that we are doing our part in building up the reign of God here and now.
Jesus knew where he was headed, what he was doing, and how he was going to get there. After having survived his own temptations in the wilderness and living to fulfill God’s will, Jesus could see everyone else navigating their lives in reckless abandon deeper into suffering and toward death and destruction. Jesus’s urgent call to repentance, rather than being a vengeful threat, is a gracious admonition given to us all in love and faithfulness, to make sure we find our way toward the fullness of life now and life everlasting simply by doing what we were born to do. We will need help along the way, and it will be provided. We are not without plentiful resources, nor are we alone. God is with us, always, holding us fast.
The Rev. Sara Milford