Witness to New Life

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 24:1-12 (and Luke 24:13-53). Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

I just love Luke’s Easter story. I love the way Luke unfolds the narrative of the Resurrection. And one of the things I love best is the way Luke tells one single story spread out over several small scenes, each scene building in intensity and meaning and joy. It takes Luke an entire chapter to tell the story of Easter, as each scene adds one more piece of the overall pattern. The Gospel reading we just heard is only the beginning, only the first scene in the story; and it’s moving and it’s joyful and it’s powerful – but it’s just the start – and if we want to get the whole story, we have to fill in the rest.

So this is how it goes: Early on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James go to the tomb where the body of Jesus was put in haste on Friday afternoon. And when they get there they find the tomb open and the body gone; and two angels appear to tell them Jesus is not there, he has been raised, exactly as he had told them he would be. They run to tell the rest of the disciples, the eleven apostles and their companions, and most of them don’t believe it. But Peter runs to the tomb, and looks inside – and he doesn’t see angels, but he does see the shroud from Jesus’ body lying by itself – which means this wasn’t an ordinary grave robbing, someone didn’t just take the body, because they wouldn’t have left the shroud behind – but something has happened that has made the shroud just not necessary anymore.

Later that day, two disciples are walking from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus, and as they walk a stranger comes up and joins them. And this stranger seems to know more about Jesus than they do, and tells them about all the passages in scripture that prove the Messiah must suffer and then enter into glory. And as the stranger speaks the disciples feel their hearts kindled with fire and energy, so that they ask the stranger to stay with them when they stop for a meal. And at the table the stranger takes the bread and blesses it and breaks it – and with that gesture they recognize it’s Jesus, risen and alive – and as soon as they know him he vanishes from their sight.

And they are so excited that they’ve seen Jesus that they run all the way back to Jerusalem, a journey that took them half the day on the way out, and they burst into the room where the apostles are – and before they can say “We have seen Jesus!” the whole company tells them “The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Peter!” And while they’re all shouting in joy and confusion, Jesus himself suddenly is standing there among them, alive and whole and real; and he says “Peace be with you,” and he shows them his hands and his feet, and he sits down to eat with them, and they give him a piece of broiled fish (I love that little detail!), and as they share the meal he opens their minds to understand the New Life, and to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.

That is the whole story Luke tells about Easter. Years later, when Peter is out being Jesus’ witness, preaching to the household of Cornelius, he sums up the whole Easter experience by remembering how the risen, living Jesus appeared “not to all the people, but to us … who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

And in a way I think that is the key to the whole chapter-long story. Jesus appeared to those who ate and drank with him. In this story Luke shows people receiving two kinds of evidence of the Resurrection, two kinds of witness that convince them Jesus is alive.

The first kind of witness is sensory experience, the evident perception of Jesus with them. The women see the angels. Peter sees the shroud left behind. The Emmaus disciples see and hear the stranger walking with them. The group of disciples together in the upper room see Jesus among them, and touch his hands and feet. They all have perceptual experience of Jesus as alive.

But what I find really interesting is that Luke implies that such sensory, perceptual evidence is inconclusive. The women see the angels but aren't quite sure what to make of them. Peter sees the tomb empty, but only goes home "amazed." The Emmaus disciples see Jesus but don't know who he is. The group in the upper room can see Jesus well enough, but they're not sure that what they're seeing is not a ghost. They all have perceptual experience, but by itself the perception is not enough.

What convinces them of the reality of Resurrection is the other sort of evidence Luke narrates, and that is the witness of relationship, that is the experience of an inner change in themselves in the presence of the Risen Jesus. The women who came to the tomb in sorrow, expecting to anoint a dead body, leave the tomb filled with joy, ready to proclaim something extraordinary. The Emmaus disciples feel their hearts on fire with wisdom and spirit. The upper room gathering experience their minds opened up and new understanding and courage and energy filling them to go out and tell the story. The breaking of the bread, the sharing of the meal, reveals truth to them, and nourishes them to live in that truth themselves. The really convincing evidence of resurrection in Luke's story is the transformation, the renewal, the New Life they feel in themselves when the Risen Jesus gives himself to them in relationship by eating and drinking with them.

And that is precisely what is going on here for us in this Easter morning Eucharist. We experience Resurrection as we eat and drink with the Risen Jesus, and feel in ourselves the renewal and transformation that relationship in New Life brings.

You know, sometimes I hear people say that they wish they could have been eyewitnesses of the Resurrection themselves, that they could have been there in Jerusalem on the first Easter morning and seen the evidence of the Risen Jesus with their own eyes and touched him with their own hands – because then they could really know, then they could really be sure. And I understand that feeling. But what Luke tells us in his story is that that kind of sensory evidence, that kind of perceptual experience, is not the most convincing, even for the eyewitnesses. Even for the eyewitnesses, the evidence that made the most difference was the relational experience – and that kind of experience we have, even 2000 years later, as we gather here on this Easter morning, as we gather on every Sunday morning, to eat and drink with each other in the Name of Jesus, and in this relationship to witness the promise and the power and the transformation of the New Life in us.

Someone among us is grieving a death or a loss or a change in their life. And they come to church, and the hymns and the songs and the prayers and the smiles on people’s faces and the joy in the air lifts their spirits and gives them hope that there is something for them beyond their grief – and that is a witness to New Life.

Someone among us is facing a difficult decision, and they’re not sure what to do, they’re not sure they’re even qualified to make such a decision. And they turn to their church friends, and they talk and pray and discern together, the person finds the courage to choose and the will to follow through on that choice – and that is a witness to New Life.

Someone among us is seeking a way for their life, something to commit to, something to value, something that is more than just money and success and status the way most people measure them. And they hear the Gospel – maybe the same Gospel story they’ve heard many times before – but this time, in this situation, with these people, the Gospel speaks to them in a new way, and they see in Jesus the invitation to a love that gives them meaning and value and purpose – and that is a witness to New Life.

We know the Resurrection is real, we are witnesses to New Life, because we see it and know it and feel it in ourselves in these relationships we have in the Name of Jesus, these relationships centered and symbolized in eating and drinking together, sharing the bread and the wine, gathering at the table, loving each other as the Risen, Living Jesus loves us.

That is the New Life Jesus opens up for us. That is what we celebrate together on this Easter Day, and for all eternity. Amen.

Obedient to Human Form

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Philippians 2:5-11. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

“Being found in human form, Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.”

I was in a Bible study once where we were looking at this passage, and in response to the first study question — “What words or images catch your attention?” — one of the people in the group said the word that always caught his attention was obedient, that Jesus’ death on the cross was an act of obedience. And that in turn got me to thinking: In dying on the cross, just what was Jesus obeying? Who or what demanded Jesus’ obedience even to the point of death?

One way of answering that is to say that Jesus was obeying God, that it was God’s plan from all eternity that the Word should be incarnate in Jesus, the Word should take flesh in Jesus, so that Jesus could be killed, so that the shedding of Jesus’ sacrificial blood could pay the price humanity owed to God because of sin. It was God’s plan from all eternity that Jesus should be punished so that we could be set free — and when Jesus died on the cross, he did so out of obedience to God’s eternal plan.

But I have to admit that I have some trouble with that interpretation. You see, the Bible speaks over and over again — Jesus speaks over and over again — about how God forgives sins, and forgiveness doesn’t mean punishing one person so that other people can go free. Forgiveness means not punishing, intentionally giving up the right to punish, choosing something other than punishment to make relationship right. The more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I’ve done theological reflection on it, the more I’ve come to think that it was not God’s plan for Jesus to be killed so that we could be forgiven. It was God’s plan for Jesus to proclaim forgiveness of sins and new life in communion in grace, and Jesus was killed by worldly powers that didn’t want to hear that proclamation. So if Jesus was “obedient to the point of death,” it wasn’t God’s plan he was obeying.

What then did Jesus obey? I think Paul gives us the answer in the very same verse that mentions obedience: “Being found in human form,” he says, “Jesus became obedient.” What Jesus was obeying, even to the point of death, was “human form,” human nature, the basic ground and condition of what it means to be a human being.

Because whether we like it or not, it is part of human nature that we die. We spend lots of time and energy and cosmetics and fantasy trying to deny it, but we are mortal. We are transient. We are here for a few years, a few decades, then we’re gone. We began this Lenten season on Ash Wednesday with a mark of our mortality, with ashes that say to us “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is a part of “being found in human form” that we die.

We could even say that dying is part of our life. We die a little every day. Every moment is a little bit of passing away. Think about it: Right now, in this moment, you are having an experience, and the experience is vivid and vibrant and present and alive. But after this moment comes another moment, and that moment brings a new experience, and the experience you’re having now will pass away to make room for that new experience, and as it passes away it becomes less vivid, less vibrant, less present, less alive. As moment by moment comes to us, all our experiences fade and dwindle and pass away, until some of them we can’t even capture in memory anymore. The philosopher Whitehead says that our life is a “perpetual perishing” — because the moments fade, because we can’t hold on, because nothing ever stays the same, because we are always changing, because everything we put together sooner or later falls apart, because everything we accomplish has its moment and then passes away. It is part of human nature that we die, and we die a little every day.

And Jesus, being found in human form, became obedient, obedient to human nature, obedient to human nature even to the point of death.

And therefore, Paul says, God exalted him, therefore God raised him up, therefore God gave him a name above all other names, therefore God took his death and made it the source of life.

The death and resurrection of Jesus — this tragic and triumphant tale we tell in the Solemn Reading of the Passion and the celebration of the Eucharist on this Palm Sunday — the death and resurrection of Jesus is simultaneously the deepest mystery of our faith and the most basic ordinary truth about being human. The death and resurrection of Jesus tells us that it is part of human nature that we die, and that if we will be obedient even to that, if we will commend even that into God’s hands, then God will take our perishing and raise it up to the possibility of new life. The death and resurrection of Jesus tells us that our human form — even our transience, even our passingness, even the way each moment fades when the new moment comes — our human form can be the channel and the instrument for God’s creative grace, for God’s creating energy, which can take up all the fading moments of our lives and make out of them possibilities for doing something new. The death and resurrection of Jesus tells us that we must be ready to die to what is, so that we can be alive to what in God we can yet become.

There was a parishioner in a church I served in Tennessee who was a recovering alcoholic — and who was not at all shy about telling people how much her faith and her church’s support meant to her recovery. She told a group of us once that the hardest thing she ever did was the day she looked in the mirror and said to her reflection “You are an alcoholic. You've been pretending for a long time. You’ve been in denial for a long time. You’ve built up this image of yourself as someone in control, as someone who can handle it. But that is a lie. That is not who you are. You are an alcoholic. And if you don’t accept that, it will kill you.” She told us that facing that truth about herself was hard, the hardest thing she’d ever done — that giving up her image of herself felt like giving up everything, it felt like dying. But if she hadn’t accepted the truth, she said, if she hadn’t become obedient to that reality, she said, she never could have turned her life around, she never could have admitted she needed help, she never would have gone to an AA meeting and gotten a sponsor and started to do the hard work of becoming sober. She had to become obedient to the truth about herself before she could offer that truth to God, and let God’s grace come to her and take her up and make of her the possibility for something new. If she hadn’t become obedient to that hard truth, she would never have let God exalt her to being the sober, alive, joyful person she was when I knew her.

And I think that is the good news of the Passion for us, too. Because we all have hard truths about ourselves we have to face. We all have difficult realities to which we must become obedient. A relationship ends. A career opportunity becomes a disappointment. A dream you’ve cherished for years turns out to be something you’ll never be able to do. A diagnosis tells you you’ll have less time than you’d thought. Someone you love dearly is no longer there. The way we’ve always done it is no longer enough to do it now. You look in the mirror and realize you are not the person you’ve been pretending to be. We all have hard truths we must face, truths of our limitations, our failings, our perishing, our mortality. And the mystery of the Passion tells us that it is only by facing those truths, only by admitting those pains, only by becoming obedient to that reality, that we can commend our spirits to God, that we can open up the way for grace to come to us and raise us up and make of us new possibilities for life and light and love.

Being found in human form, Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — and therefore God exalted him, and gave him the name above every other name. May we share in such obedience, and in such exaltation, all in the Name of Christ. Amen.

Who Really Knows?

By the Rev. Dr. John D. Lane

This sermon is based on John 12:3. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.


Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

It is often said that John’s account is the most theological of the four gospels. Mark’s version is the most direct and succinct. Matthew and Luke expand upon Mark and add many stories and parables of their own. Luke is my personal favorite. He is great with language and is the only evangelist who tells the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal you heard last week.

By contrast, John wants not only to tell us stories, but to interpret what they mean. He does not care a great deal about when events occur, but about their significance. We encounter Mary and Martha once in Luke’s gospel, and twice in John’s, where their brother Lazarus also appears.  In addition, John’s gospel is full of Jesus’ long and sometimes hard to follow discourses.

Luke’s Mary and Martha story is played out in many families. I’m sure most of you know it–or think you do. Jesus is visiting, along with his gang of disciples. Martha is working her fingers to the bone in the kitchen, making certain that everyone gets a good meal and a memorable experience at her house. Meanwhile, her sister Mary is lollygagging, contentedly sitting at Jesus’ feet. So Martha complains to Jesus, asking him if he isn’t distressed that Mary is good for nothing, all while Martha herself slaves away.

The gospels tend to be efficient, terse, brief, economical with words, but in my imagination Jesus says something like, “Martha, just take a break. You don’t have to make such a fuss over us. My guys and I would have been just as happy if you had sent out for pizza, or made us some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,. Mary is in here listening to important ideas and participating in the discussion. Why don’t you take off your apron and join us here in the den?”

Often this Mary and Martha story is presented in a kind of post-modern ‘different strokes for different folks’ way, often a little patronizing of Mary. In this fantasy version, some of us are Marthas, practical types, taking care of business. And some of us are dreamers, kind of lost in the headlights of life. Hail, Martha! If it weren’t for her, nothing important would ever get done. Mary, you ought to be grateful to your sister.

But this is the very opposite of what the story tells us. As Jesus himself puts it, in the text, not just in my imagination, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Sometimes we need to listen up, especially when Jesus is talking. Last week, preaching in Nelson County, I pointed out that the Prodigal was not forgiven because he repented. The Father forgave him before he confessed his sins. For the Prodigal and for Mary and Martha, we need to read the text very carefully. Otherwise, we tend to hear what we think is in there, even when it’s not.

Lazarus, who was risen from the dead in the preceding chapter, is only mentioned as present in today’s story. John, economical in his storytelling assumes we remember the earlier great miracle. Being raised from the dead made Lazarus a local celebrity. Everyone wanted to see him. The Jewish leaders wanted him dead for all time so that the people wouldn’t be reminded of Jesus and his power every time they looked at Lazarus.

In chapter 12 it is neither the hard-working Martha nor the uniquely blessed Lazarus who is the center of the story, but everyone’s favorite biblical space cadet, Mary. We aren’t certain how she comes to understand Jesus, but she is the one who truly gets it. Martha hasn’t been paying attention because she’s way too busy doing ‘important things.’ I’m sure Lazarus has his own issues. Three days in the tomb has perhaps left him pretty confused.

In John’s gospel and in the overall story of Jesus, we have to be ready for surprises. A clergy friend of mine, Harry Pritchett, wrote a campfire/vacation bible school song called “God is a surprise.” You’ll be pleased to know that I won’t attempt to sing it this morning. Besides miracles themselves, God picks unlikely people to carry out his work, people like the liar Abram, the murderer Moses, the adulterer David, the Christian persecutor Paul, the coward Peter. Given this crew, we have no reason to believe that we ourselves can’t help to carry out God’s mission. God is a surprise, often counter-cultural, turning the world upside down, saying things in the Bible which, if we pay careful attention, are the opposite of what we expect.

I had a neighbor growing up whose body matured a lot faster than his mind. In fact, he soon grew to 6'9". David was a bully, though he usually let me alone. I was a year or two younger, and always a lot smaller. He was about 17 when he stole someone’s new Corvette and took it for a joy ride. Afraid that he’d get caught, David drove it into a flooded quarry. Someone ratted him out, and I still remember the picture on the first page of the newspaper of everyone’s favorite dream car dangling from the crane picking it out of the water.

David got his day in court, and he was lucky enough to get a wise judge. He gave David the choice between prison or the service. It didn’t take very long until he was in the US Navy. It tickled my mother that this giant wound up in the close quarters of a nuclear submarine. He served his 4 years, then became a patrolman in the Princeton Township Police Department, the very force who had handcuffed him not too long before. He got married, adopting his wife’s two kids, and lives an exemplary life. The last time I saw him, we had a very nice conversation. I didn’t mention the Corvette. Did I say he’s much bigger than I am?

Like the judge in my friend David’s case, Jesus sees something more in Mary than others do. Bethany, where Jesus is in essence hiding out, is an easy walk to Jerusalem. Martha cooks. Lazarus is counted as present. It is however the flaky Mary who sees deeply and understands what is going on. Knowing the danger that Jesus is in, she brings out a pound of very costly perfume, and begins to anoint Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her hair. She understands who Jesus is and she understands what is going to happen. As Jesus himself points out, she is anointing his body for burial.

The challenge to us is to be open to the Spirit. To recognize that God can be surprising, indeed that God is a surprise. To look beyond our own familiar but often incorrect reading of scripture. To dig deeper. To see more clearly what God is telling us. To pray fervently that we may know God’s will. To go beyond ourselves in becoming better and better followers of Jesus. And beyond all else be open to the Grace of God.

A Human Point of View

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

"From now, on we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way."

I have to admit that when I first read those words from our Epistle reading today, they really threw me for a loop. "A human point of view"? What's so bad about a "human point of view"? We're human beings – what other kind of point of view could we have? God became human in Jesus; doesn't that mean human beings, including their "human point of view" have been blessed and raised up to a greater life in God? Why then should we disparage the "human point of view"?

Well, it helped a little when I checked this line out in other translations, and in the original Greek. What Paul actually says here is "we regard no one according to the flesh." Ah, that makes more sense! Because you see, in Paul's writings, he uses the word "flesh" in a very particular way. For Paul, the "flesh" is one part of a human being, but not the whole human being. For Paul, the "flesh" is not just the muscle and organs and tissue, not just the body, which is the way we usually use the word; but Paul uses the word "flesh" to mean a particular psychosomatic reality, a combination of bodily factors and psychological tendencies that all revolve around satisfying our appetites. For Paul, the "flesh" is a pattern of feeling and reacting that is all about making sure that you are the most important thing in your entire universe. The "flesh" is that in us which is essentially self-centered, entirely focused on preserving our own self-images, completely devoted to gratifying our own self-involved desires. Because it is essentially self-centered, the "flesh" is also essentially opposed to God: the "flesh" doesn't care about God's calls to us to work for justice and peace, to build up right-relationships of mutual well-being, to turn outward beyond ourselves to give and receive in generosity and grace; the "flesh" knows nothing about loving God and loving our neighbors; the "flesh" is exactly the opposite of the spirit that opens to God and lives in God and co-creates with God. The special way Paul uses the word, the "flesh" represents pretty much the worst behaviors of being human.

So to regard someone "according to the flesh" is to regard them in pretty much the worst kind of way. Regarding things "according to the flesh" means seeing them and thinking about them and treating them only as means toward your own gratification. It means treating everything around you as nothing more than counters in the calculus of your own satisfaction. It means not caring at all about what things or people are in their own rights, but only caring about what they can do for you. Regarding things "according to the flesh" is being just about as greedy as you can be.

And I think we get a couple of wonderful example of regarding things "according to the flesh" in the two sons in the parable in our Gospel today. Yes, I said "two sons": I think both the prodigal younger son and the dutiful older son are guilty of putting themselves at the center of their universes and watching everything else – including their father – revolve around them.

That's pretty obvious, I suppose, for the younger son. He doesn't care at all for his father: he says "Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me," which means "I want what's coming to me when you're dead," or the short version, "I wish you were dead," which is a pretty uncaring thing to say to your father. He doesn't care at all about his property, squandering it in dissolute living. It's not even clear that he cares about forgiveness: when he decides to go home, he doesn't even plan on asking his father to take him back, he's just thinking about the three hots and a cot that he can get as a farmhand on his father's ranch. Right up until the very end, the younger son is measuring everything in terms of what it will do for him, he's regarding everything and everyone "according to the flesh."

And the same thing is true of the older son. Oh, he's less obvious about it than his younger brother, but he is every bit as much "according to the flesh." He works on the farm, he does his duty – and he resents every minute of it, he spends all his time counting up how many brownie points he's earned and how much his father owes him for being such a good son. And he's banking all those brownie points; he's never even asked for a small goat for a feast with his friends, because that's one more thing he can tell himself his father owes him. Right up until the very end, the older son is measuring everything in terms of what is owed to him, he's regarding everything and everyone "according to the flesh."

And, as the brothers in the parable illustrate, regarding everyone "according to the flesh" can be a pretty burdensome way to live. They don't make it look like much fun. Between Paul and the parable both, we're left with the question "Isn't there a better way to regard things than 'according to the flesh'"?

Of course there's a better way – and we see that better way at work in the father in the parable. When the father looks at his sons he doesn't see them just in terms of himself. He doesn't see them as disappointments to his hopes, or drains on his resources, or hands for his farm, or investments for his old age. When the father looks at his sons he sees them in their own rights, with the gifts and the passions and the faults and the foibles they each have, with the accomplishments and the potentials that are theirs and nobody else's. And more than that, when the father looks at his sons he sees them as partners in relationship, as ones who can co-create with him moments of joy and love and celebration. After all, it is the father who goes out to them – to the younger son on the road and to the older son in the field – it is the father who goes out to them and brings them in to the party. The father regards them, not just in terms if what they can do for him, but in terms if what they can do together to create joy and peace and reconciliation and love. The father sees them in just the opposite way from regarding them "according to the flesh."

Now the father's point of view, Jesus makes very clear, is God's point of view. And the point of view of God is shared in Christ; and the point of view of Christ can be shared with us as well. Paul says, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God." The grace that comes from God is given to us in Christ, and that gift of the Spirit opens us up to a new creation, to a new creativity. It changes us, and it changes how we see the world: it empowers us to recognize the creating work of God all around us, and to realize how we can join with God as created co-creators to bring into being occasions of joy and peace and justice and well-being and love. The reconciling love of God frees us from the point of view of the "flesh," it frees us from seeing everything simply in terms of how it can satisfy our mere appetites, and it creates us anew to be ambassadors for Christ, missioners of Christ's own work in the world. The reconciling love of God helps us be like the father in the parable, to go out to meet people where they are and welcome everyone into the party of God's joyful love.

In this Lenten season, may our special devotions open the way for God's Spirit to free us from regarding according to the flesh, and fill us with reconciling love. Amen.

Unless You Repent

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 13:1-9. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

"Unless you repent, you will all perish."

These surprisingly threatening words from Jesus in our Gospel this morning come in a scene where Jesus is teaching, and someone in the crowd raises a question about how to interpret something in the news, some current event. There were some Galileans, anti-Roman activists probably, insurrectionists possibly, whom Pontius Pilate had executed while they were at worship, so that their blood was mixed in with the blood of their sacrifices. To be killed while at worship would have seemed doubly disastrous to Jews of Jesus' time, so they ask him whether these Galileans were particularly bad sinners to have met with such a particularly bad end. I mean, it stands to reason, doesn't it: if God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, then if someone has bad things happen to them it means ipso facto that they're a bad person, right? If those Galileans had been repentant, good people, like us (the questioners imply) that never would have happened to them, right? That's the question the crowd puts to Jesus; and in response Jesus asks a question of his own: what about those eighteen people who died when part of the Jerusalem city wall collapsed on them near Siloam? Do you think they were worse sinners than everyone else in the city because this bad thing happened to them? Does that stand to your reason, too?, Jesus asks.

And then Jesus throws a curve: "Do you think these people who came to a bad end were worse sinners? No, I tell you, they were not." In one sentence Jesus cuts the connection the crowd is making between bad fortune and bad behavior. It is not the case that a person's inner moral life is reflected in their outer accidental happenstance, Jesus says. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. You cannot draw moral conclusions from mere chance, Jesus says. Perishing is not God's punishment for the unrepentant.

But then immediately Jesus says, "Unless you repent, you will all perish." Why? Why does Jesus say that? If Jesus has just cut the connection between bad behavior and bad ends, why does he now appear to connect them again? If it is not the case that God sends bad deaths to bad people, then why does Jesus now appear to threaten the unrepentant with perishing? Or is Jesus really saying something else?

I think the key to what Jesus is really saying is in the word itself, repent, and in the parable Jesus tells to illustrate repentance. The original Greek word we here translate as "repent" is μετανοητε, which literally means "change your mind, transform your way of thinking." What Jesus calls for here is not just feeling sorry for our sins, not just promising God we'll never do bad things again if God just gets us out of this jam — what Jesus calls for here is a deep change in the way we think, the way we assess what's really important to us, the way we make our choices about how to act and what to do, the way we direct our energies in life.

And what it means to change our thinking in this way is illustrated in the parable. There is a tree that bears no fruit. The landowner wants to cut it down: it's taking up the soil and the water and the space and giving nothing back: how can it continue? But the gardener really wants the tree to be fruitful: it is in the tree's nature to bear fruit, and the gardener wants the tree to live up to its nature: so the gardener offers to dig around the tree, aerate the soil, put on fertilizer, feed the roots — basically to do everything possible to give the tree what it needs to bear its fruit. And if it still isn't fruitful, if it still takes and takes and takes and never gives, if it still will not participate in the flow of life that makes the vineyard, well, then, it isn't fully alive anyway, and it cannot continue to live.

In this parable, repentance, metanoia, is illustrated as the change from being barren to being fruitful, the change from taking and taking and taking to participating in the exchange, in the give-and-take that makes for life. And Jesus' call to repentance is revealed to be not so much about placating the God who would strike us down, as it is about embracing the God who wants us to be fruitful, who longs to give us everything we need to grow and flourish and be co-creative with God in bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit and the works of love.

In fact, I think this little parable is a wonderful capsule summary of the whole Christian doctrine of sin and redemption. According to our teaching, God creates us for love, God brings us into being so that God can love us and we can love God and the neighbors God gives us. We are meant to live out that love by giving and receiving, by taking into ourselves what others generously offer and by offering out from ourselves what we have generated; and we are meant to do this giving and receiving in generosity and freedom and right-relationship and mutual well-being. That is God's ideal for us. But we get selfish: instead of receiving, we take; instead of giving, we keep; instead of being generous and free, we manipulate and bargain and connive and quid-pro-quo and do everything we can with strings attached for our own benefit. That is the root meaning of sin: the disorder of love that takes and keeps rather than giving and receiving in freedom and grace. That is the tree that bears no fruit. That is the way that perishes, because if you only take and keep, if you only turn in on yourself, if you refuse to participate in the flow of right-relationships and mutual well-being for too long, eventually you use yourself up, eventually there is nothing left, eventually you fade away into your own self-centered emptiness — and that is a terrible way to perish.

But God doesn't want us to perish like that. God doesn't want us to fade away into self-centered nothingness. God wants us to be fruitful in giving and receiving in generosity and freedom and love. So God sends us Jesus, who shows us what it means to live a fully human life in perfect fulfilment of the divine ideal of giving and receiving; and who not only shows us, but also calls us into relationships — relationships as disciples, relationships as brothers and sisters in Christ in Baptism — relationships where we ourselves learn how to love as Jesus loves, where we become less self-centered and more love-centered, where we are transformed in our way of thinking and choosing and acting, so that we spend less and less of our time and energy taking and keeping with strings attached, and more and more of our time and energy giving and receiving in freedom and grace. That transformation is how we are saved.

And that, I think, is the positive meaning of repentance that is the real heart of our Gospel today. When Jesus says "Unless you repent, you will perish," I really don't think he is threatening that God will execute us or make a tower fall on us or cut us down unless we say we're sorry. What I think Jesus means is the simple statement that the way of self-centeredness leads to becoming empty and trivial and perished; but if we will let God's love transform us, if we will change our thinking with God at the center, then we will grow and flourish and bear fruit of love and joy. We repent not because we are afraid of the punishment, but we repent because we long so much for the good of God.

So what does that say to you? If you think that repenting means not just telling God you're sorry, but being actively transformed for love, then where in your life might you repent right now? Is there some relationship, some habit, some pattern of behavior, some repeating loop of emotion where you feel stuck, we you are aware of taking and taking and taking, where you would like to give and receive in freedom and mutual joy instead? Is there some place where you long to be transformed in your mind so that you can be freed to love? That is where Jesus speaks to you in this Gospel today and says "Do not perish, but repent and live."

In this Lenten season of repentance, may we each hear Jesus calling to us, and may God give us each grace to respond. Amen.