Sermon for Third Sunday in Lent 2025

MAY the words of my mouth and the meditations in our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. <Amen>

Welcome friends. Peace be with you.

Just like so often today, some 2000 years ago, bad news leads the headlines! Imagine it - “Imperial troops senselessly murder innocent Galileans”, “Tower collapses killing eighteen.

“What do you think about that?" Jesus asks. "Do you think that those poor folks who ended up dead were worse sinners than everybody else?" There is an uneasy silence. "No," Jesus answers his own rhetorical question. "No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did."

How about the Ukrainians and Russians who have been killed during the current conflict -- were they worse sinners than people living conflict-free? How about the Americans who have just lost everything in tornadoes -- are they worse sinners than those who live in countries with a milder climate? "No, I tell you," says Jesus, "but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did."

What an astounding response! Wouldn't you expect Jesus to condemn the brutality of the oppressors? After all, those Galileans that Pilate slaughtered were Jesus' countrymen, and such cruelty was not unusual in the Roman Empire. Surely such tyranny demands an outcry of protest and liberation, perhaps even a call for revolutionary counter-violence <PAUSE>

Don’t be fooled by catastrophe and tragedy. Those terrible things that happen to people, like having a tower fall on you, being bombed in Kyiv, your livelihood wiped out by a storm – things like that can make you question where God is in the midst of suffering … and it’s easy to lash out at God and blame our Creator for allowing these bad things to happen. <PAUSE>

In our gospel today, Luke 13:1-9, Jesus makes it crystal clear that catastrophic events are NOT some way in which God punishes people. Those people weren’t any worse sinners than you or me.

American pastor, David Lose writes, “These events – whether in the first or twenty-first century – aren’t ultimately about guilt or punishment or the origin and cause of evil. They are just events, some of which we can’t do much about, while others we can, but what remains is that no amount of discussing or debating helps us set about the things we CAN influence. When bad things happen, it’s a wake-up call to repent, to turn our eyes toward Jesus.” <PAUSE>

Repent. Luke mentions repentance more often than any other book in the Bible. Repentance is a major theme during our Lent journeys.

We talk about repentance as an act of turning around - 180 degrees, to leave our sin behind us.

Repentance is being sorry, it’s about changing … BUT I think we probably don’t consider ourselves as great sinners in need of a 180 degree turnaround. We’re not that kind of a sinner. We probably don’t think our sins are very dramatic.

So, maybe it’s time to flip our idea of repentance. As we journey through Lent and draw nearer to Jerusalem, perhaps we should think of repentance in terms of who we are running towards more than what we are trying to turn away from.

So instead of blaming God for all the bad things that happen to us, or offering hollow apologies, or thinking of repentance as some sort of self-help program to improve our behaviour, we need to focus with deep intensity on the voice of Jesus.

Our repentance needs to become a deep desire to listen to Jesus ….. especially when tragedy strikes.

This gospel isn’t about sinners being punished or why tragedies happen. It’s about repentance.

So please “flip” repentance, and think of it as turning toward Jesus, instead of just turning away from sin. Instead of repentance being all about what we do to make ourselves acceptable to God, we suddenly find ourselves basking in God’s grace and the hope and positivity that He offers through His only Son, Jesus Christ.

Christ calls us to the kind of repentance that turns our attention away from ourselves and points our attention toward God.

Instead of trying to improve ourselves in order to merit God’s love, Christ offers that love, hope, and positivity to us freely and says,

“Here, receive this gift. Let me enrich your soil with some manure. Let your repentance become the compost that fertilises new life and bears fruit.”

Whatever tragedies we may experience, or witness in our lives, the answer is “repentance”, turning toward God NOT pointing the finger AT God. When bad things happen, Jesus encourages us to turn to God instead of blaming God.

Those poor souls, that Luke tells us about today, who died violent deaths didn’t deserve to die like that because of some evil they had done. Bad things happen - some we can control, some we cannot.

How we respond, in times of tragedy, determines whether or not our lives will be as pointless as those deaths.

We can play the point-the-finger game, or we can repent, turn toward God, and live, grow, and bear fruit.

I runga e te Ingoa o te Atua, te Matua, te Tama me te Wairua Tapu. AMINE.