Death Threats

Sermon preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Evansville, IN on the third Sunday in Lent (March 20, 2022)

“Jesus asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galilieans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” In the name of the one holy and living God. Amen.

I don’t know if you noticed, but it seems to me that this morning’s readings contain a bunch of death threats. And that makes me, for one, a little uncomfortable.

In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul lingers on the death of thousands of Israelites at God’s hand, as punishment for disobedience, and for rejecting God’s providence in rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, sustaining them in the wilderness with manna and water from the rock. He uses these examples as a warning to the Corinthians to be steadfast in their faith in Christ, or else.

Jesus describes the deaths of a group of Galileans at the hands of a bloodthirsty tyrant, and eighteen people crushed in a building collapse, concluding with a similar threat: “unless you repent, you will perish just as they did.”

So what are we going to do with these death threats, friends? They’re hard to square with the suffering servant so deeply acquainted with our sorrows. How on earth are they proclamations of good news?

A few weeks ago at the start of this season, Ash Wednesday, many of us were here, or at another church, or on a streetcorner somewhere, receiving ashes on our foreheads, delivered with the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The fact that we are going to die may not be good news, exactly. Indeed it isn’t news at all. But that reminder might cause us to look at what Jesus is saying here a little differently.

When he says, “unless you repent, you’ll perish just as they did,” he isn’t saying that if you repent you won’t die. He’s saying you won’t die “as they did.” But he also doesn’t seem to be saying that repentance is the ticket to a painless death, old and full of days. For he raises the point that those killed at the hand of Pilate or when the Tower of Siloam came crashing down, did not deserve their fate. They were sinners no worse than anyone else. Just as rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous alike, so can tragedy befall both, without apparent reason.

That’s a lesson that applies as much today as it ever did. Surely the people of Mariupol do not deserve the terror that besieges their city, and yet there it is. Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, wars, mass shootings, car crashes, COVID, and cancer – any one of these or countless somethings else, or maybe even a peaceful death, await us and all those we love, one day. And Jesus tells us that righteousness, sinlessness, will not save us.

So what exactly is the point of repentance?

This Ash Wednesday, I worshiped at Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis, and their Dean, Gray Lesesne, preached a sermon I’ve been thinking about ever since. “Every Ash Wednesday,” he said, “A priest and I text messages back and forth in the morning, and I got my traditional text from her [today]…‘Blessed Ash Wednesday… remember you’re going to die!😀’” But he went on to say, “There’s one more phrase I would add…‘Remember you’re going to live. You’re going to live from this day forward as a beloved child of God.’”

When Jesus tells us, “repent or perish as they did,” I think that’s what he’s talking about. If he’s not saying we get to, you know, not die, then what he is saying is that repentance is the path to a different kind of life from the moment we reorient our life toward what God wants for us, until the hour of our death.

As a vocabulary term, repentance isn’t winning any popularity contests. An analysis done by Google Books shows it to be used roughly 80% less frequently today than it was 200 years ago. My guess is that it has a fire-and-brimstone association that just doesn’t win friends and influence people the way maybe it used to.

Setting aside its reputation, and looking at its actual meaning, repent is a verb with a twofold action. The first is to express contrition for past wrongdoing or sin. If its meaning stopped there it could just be a synonym for regret or a cousin of shame. But the second action is to commit to a better way, possibly under one’s own power, but more likely to flourish, our faith teaches, if we acknowledge our need for, and seek, God’s help.

Because if we ask faithfully, if we allow our souls to cling to the Lord, the right hand of God who is also faithful  will hold us fast and will help us to live lives characterized by love, gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, and freedom from the lie that money, might, and empire have any claim on or power over our selves and souls.

It was the longing for that kind of life for God’s beloved people, that led God one night to a bush in the Egyptian desert, filling it with holy fire and catching Moses’ eye, yet leaving its branches unsinged. And the reason: “The Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people…I have heard their cry…I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.’” When Israel sought God’s help, God did not stay distant. With a pillar of cloud and flame and a parted sea, God delivered Israel into freedom, and with manna, and water from a rock split open, sustained them in the desert for 40 years.

God desires the same good for us, if we would only look for it. Paul describes the journey through the Red Sea as the “baptism of Moses;” a precursor to our baptism in Jesus Christ. As the Israelites had manna and water in the desert, the spiritual food of bread and wine sustains our souls in our earthly journey.

God is not elsewhere, but is here right now, ready to reignite your heart with an awakening fire that will illuminate the glorious path of life God has prepared for you and for me, that is infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Repent of all that keeps you from that life, and return to the Lord, that you may not pass into the next life without living this one first.

Readings: Exodus 3:1-15, Psalm 63:1-8, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9