Remembering Life

 February 28 2021

Luke 13:1-30

         As many people know, I grew up on farm. I also farmed myself for twenty years raising pigs until they no longer smelled like money and instead they just smelled. I say all this, to try and provide some context when I tell you that this past week, the old barn that had been the constant throughout has been taken down. It had lived a good long life but it just had become too expensive to keep it up and maintain it. Now, its no shock that I am saddened by its departure but as I thought about it what made that old barn precious to me was not the structure itself but it was instead the memories that were made in that place. I have memories of building forts with hay bales up in the mow and of learning the lesson that if you got yourself up there you’re going to have to get yourself down. That old barn was where I learned to care for animals.  Before I was able to walk, my Mom would take me with her to tend to the turkey chicks that lived in the barn that would eventually grow to be somebodies Thanksgiving dinner. As I got older, the barn housed a little bit of everything, beef cattle and pigs. The barn was where I used to milk a cow after school and where I got to help my sister’s horse to birth her foal. I could go on, and tell of more unpleasant memories such as hauling manure too many times to count but even so, good and bad, I have memories, memories which become stories that are who I am. So, even though the barn is now gone, the memories that happened in that place remain and I realize that these memories are the real treasure that I hold on to.

         So, when you learn that in scripture, the way that God’s people were to act and live is directly tied to memory, I can empathize with this idea. Memories are precious to all of us and God in his infinite wisdom has directly tied how we act and live on this act of remembrance because God knew that when we treasure our memories we will also treasure the way that God desires us to act.

         This way that God desires us to act is at the forefront of what this season of Lent is all about. This is our second week in the season of Lent and as we learned last week, Lent is the season where we follow Jesus all the way to Calvary. But not just Calvary, not just the cross but to go further to witness the empty tomb, the victory of Jesus over sin and death. Yet, to experience the joy of Easter we must also endure the suffering, pain and death of Good Friday; it is impossible to experience one without the other. As Jesus carried his cross, as he laid down his life as the greatest act of love, so too to follow him means that we must also carry our cross and be willing to endure the suffering and persecution that comes with being a follower of Christ. The question is this then, are we ready to go the distance with Jesus? This is why this Lenten season is so important because this is when we once again examine ourselves and see if we are indeed battle ready.  Jesus spoke to the dangers of this season when in his most famous parable, the parable of the sower, Jesus compared some of those who had received his word as seeds that had fallen on rocky ground that quickly sprouted but because they had no roots they  withered and died. These Jesus tells us are people who receive the word with joy yet because they have no root in themselves when suffering and persecution happen on account of the word they stumble and become a scandal. Jesus tells this parable not to point fingers at those who those who falter but rather he tells us this as a warning that it is not enough for us to receive his word with joy we also need to have a faith that is deeply rooted, to have an udder confidence in God so that when we suffer, when we are persecuted, when following Christ results in the losing of our life we can do so without hesitation because we know all be well with this God we believe in. So, this season of Lent is the season where we put our roots deep, to know more and more that God is our source of life and to develop a closer more confident relationship with him.

         In the first week of Lent, we heard the story of how, one night,  Jesus went up on the mountain with three of his disciples to pray. As Jesus was praying we are told of how he began to glow with the glory of God, and Jesus was transfigured, changed his face became like that of the Other. Then there were beside Jesus, Moses and Elijah who were talking with him about the journey Jesus was going to undertake, his exodus to Jerusalem. And if all this was not enough, there came a voice from heaven, the voice of the Heavenly Father, declaring that Jesus was his beloved chosen Son; listen to him. This word,”listen” is the first part of the great command found in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy. There, listen is followed by the commands that we are to love God with all of our hearts, all of our souls and all of our minds. But here in the story of the transfiguration, the word “listen” is followed “to him” In other words, to love God is now equal with listening to Jesus. What Jesus was saying was that we must love one another, even our enemies, to be even willing to lay down our lives if necessary. So, what we learned in the first week of Lent is that in order for us to love God we must love each other, even our enemies, to treat all we meet in the same manner we would want to be treated. There can be no separation of our love of God and our love of each other. When faced with loving the next person we meet we can have confidence that in doing so we are loving God.

         Today, in our second week of Lent I believe as I stated earlier that the lesson to be learned has to do very much with memory yet I am also aware that this is not readily evident. No, what is evident when you look over this section of scripture is the theme that ties them together is death, judgment and life. Did you come to that conclusion as we read what Luke has recorded for us? I mean death is pretty evident in the first set of stories in this thirteenth chapter as we hear about how some men from Galilee had come to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices and how Pilate had them killed at approximately the same time as their sacrifices were slain. Now, we have to read between the lines to understand that these men from Galilee were most likely zealots, men who wanted to overthrow the Roman Empire. They had come to Jerusalem to plan and plot their insurrection and Pilate had caught wind of what they were up to. They had offered their sacrifices in hopes God would look favorable on their actions but instead they found themselves sacrificed as well. The people who had gathered around Jesus told Jesus about this story to which Jesus replied, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? Right here Jesus tears open the real reason as to why they told this story which was to tell a tale about some really bad sinners. I mean, if they hadn’t sinned in some way would they have died like they did? To this Jesus answers an absolute,”No”. The suffering of these Galileans at the hand of Pilate was no indication that they were anymore sinful than anyone else. Then Jesus adds words that should have caught his audiences attention and ours as well when he says, “But unless you repent, you will all like wise perish.” Jesus goes on to tell them his own story about eighteen people who had been killed constructed a tower in Jerusalem. Jesus asked the crowd around him, “Were these people worse offenders than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? Jesus asks this question because he knew that this was the mindset of those who had gathered around him. To those who had this mindset he had a word, “Repent”. In other words, this mindset that thought the manner in which people died indicated whether or not just how sinful people were is not of God. No, it is not how people died that indicated their sinfulness but rather how they lived, this was the real issue, the real indicator of a person’s sinfulness. This is why Jesus told them they had to repent because as long as they continued to look for sinfulness in the dead they were going to miss their own sinfulness in their living. Are you beginning to see the themes of death, judgment and life?

         Well, if you didn’t see it in this first story I hope you catch it in the next story, a parable Jesus tells the crowd concerning a fig tree. A man had planted a fig tree and he had high hopes of eating some sweet delicious figs off of that tree but alas for three straight years he had been disappointed. So, he ordered his gardener to fire up the chainsaw and cut it down. Now, the gardener must have been a fairly optimistic fellow because he pleads with the owner to let him work on this tree another year, put some manure around it, give it some TLC then if it bears fruit then great but if it doesn’t bear fruit then bye bye tree. So, what was the criteria as to what made the tree a good tree or a bad tree? The criteria was whether or not the tree bore fruit.How the tree lived, whether or not during its lifetime it bore the fruit that was expected this is what was important. Judgment and the following death only came if and when the tree was found to not have any fruit.  Now, if anyone in the crowd had any sense at all to them they would hav figured out that God expected their life to bear fruit otherwise at some point there would come a time when a judgment call would have to be made because just like with trees unless we bear fruit we are as good as dead. As Jesus himself tells us in the fifteenth chapter of John’ gospel, every branch that does not bear fruit the vinedresser, our Heavenly Father, takes away. So, again what is important is how we live not the manner in which we die, just as Jesus had earlier said, this is what is important.

         Now, it is here in Luke’s account that Luke places a story about Jesus healing a woman on the Sabbath while he was in the middle of teaching in the synagogue.  It wouldn’t seem so strange that Luke has written it like he did if he hadn’t at the end of this miracle story continued with the same theme that we need to live a life that bears fruit. So, it seems as if Luke has sandwiched this miracle on the Sabbath right in the middle of teachings about life, death and judgment. Naturally, it has to make us curious just why Luke would do something like this? With this in mind then we are going to look for clues as to what Luke is trying to point us to as we study this miracle performed by Jesus on the Sabbath.

         The story tells us that while Jesus was teaching on the Sabbath he was interrupted by a woman who had a disabling, weak, spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. Now, I want to pause the story here and ask just how did Jesus know and how is it that Luke records that this woman had a weak, disabling, spirit for eighteen years? The only way of knowing such personal information is that Jesus, in the midst of his teaching stops and approaches this woman and begins to have a conversation with her. The implication of her having as what is described as a weak, disabling, spirit is that even though she has the will to stand erect her body will not cooperate. Once again this is very interesting because this is the very way that Paul describes our sinful situation, that we may will to do good but our flesh, out bodies just don’t get it done. So, Jesus says to this women who is unable to stand erect “Woman you are freed from your disability.” Further, Jesus touches her, placing his hands upon her, perhaps to steady her as she begins to straighten her back after such a long time looking down. When at last she stood tall once again she, of course began to praise and glorify God. Now, you would think that the people in the synagogue would have gotten into this holy wonderful moment but no, as Luke records it they were indignant.The leader of the synagogue scolded Jesus, “ There are six days on which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed not on the Sabbath day,”It is right here that you realize that something has been forgotten.  First, what was forgotten was that loving God and loving others is the first and greatest command. All other commands are given to create and develop the mindset whereby the greatest command will get done. We begin to see this in what Jesus teaches us next when he tells the leader of the synagogue and all those who support him, that they are are nothing more than mere actors putting on a good holy face when they are nothing at all like that. Didn’t they even remember that on the Sabbath they were allowed to untie their oxen and their donkeys and lead them to water? So, why would there be anything wrong with with allowing this daughter of Abraham who had been bound by Satan for eighteen years to be set free on the Sabbath? So, what Jesus is emphasizing about the Sabbath is this element of freedom and rightfully so. In the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy, we hear Moses recite the Ten Commandments. What is interesting is that the reason for observing the Sabbath has been changed from what was given at Mt. Sinai. In the twentieth chapter of Exodus we first hear of the Ten Commandments. There the reason given for keeping the Sabbath is that in six days the Lord created heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy. But when the people of God prepared themselves to enter the Promised Land, the reason they were told to observe the Sabbath was that the people were to remember that they had once been slaves  in the Land of Egypt and the Lord had brought them out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord God commanded them to keep the Sabbath day. Now, it is uncertain why there was this change from the time when the Ten Commandments were first received until this reading in the book of Deuteronomy but it may have something to do with the great emphasis in Deuteronomy on justice and righteousness. This way of rightly dealing with people had was to be born out of a memory, the memory of being a slave, the memory of a God who had heard their cry, a memory of being set free. This was a memory of the gift of God’s deliverance, his grace.God in his grace had set them free so that they could be responsible, not seeing themselves any longer as victims but rather as people able to choose life.They were also to remember that in their dealings with strangers they had once been strangers down in Egypt. They were to use their memories of living in a strange country, what it felt to be the outsider there in order for them to empathize with others and to begin relationships. This is what they were to remember every Sabbath day. This is what the leader of the Sabbath had forgotten, that this holy day was about freedom and that there was no better day to have a woman set free from her enslavement than right there on that Sabbath day.

         I think this is what Luke was attempting to do, is to let his audience know that God had given them a wonderful gift in this special day called the Sabbath. This was their day to stop and remember that God in his grace had set them free from slavery, the slavery of sin where they blamed everyone else for the reason for their lack of love.  God had set them free, just as he had very visibly set this woman free so that they could love without any concern for themselves. This is what the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven are all about. In order for the tiny mustard seed to become a great plant it had to die. Only by dying to what it was, a seed, could it become what God created it to be, a great plant. In the same way, the leaven had to be lost within a large measure of flour so that by not remaining what it was, a small lump, it could become what it was meant to be, a great loaf of bread. This is the beauty of the freedom that God has given to us, the freedom to give our whole self, even unto what looks like death in order to become the greatness that God has designed us to be.

         So, knowing this then Luke brings us once again back to the themes that he has began with death, judgment and life by having someone ask Jesus, “Will those who are saved be few? Jesus answers by saying that we are to strive and enter by the narrow door. It is not easy to understand what Jesus means by this saying but in Matthews version of the same teaching it is easy to understand that to enter the narrow door is to love our enemies, to love others in the same way that God loves, caring even for the just and the unjust.Again, we can only love like this when we remember what it feels like to be a stranger, to be unwanted, unloved, and misunderstood. When we remember these feelings then we will be able to place ourselves in their shoes and seek to understand and love those who are different than us, even those who are opposite of who we are. Only when we love like this can Jesus state that we are people that he knows, people who may enter in and eat at the great banquet at the end of time. So let us remember that it is not how we die but rather it is how we live; this is what truly matters. Amen!