A WORD FOR TODAY, March 19, 2025
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, March 19, 2025
Lectionary Scriptures for March 23, 2025, Third Sunday in Lent: Ezekiel 33:7-20; Psalm 85; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
“Tell them, “‘As I live,’ says the Lord Yahweh, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why will you die, house of Israel?’”” Ezekiel 33:11, WEB
The passage from Ezekiel is confusing and frightening. It seems to say that you will live or die based on the most current actions of your flesh. If the wicked repent and then die, they will live, but if the righteous commit iniquity and die, their righteous deeds will be forgotten, and they will truly die. This is confusing because we know that it is not by our works that we live or die, and it is frightening because we know that we are sinners and that we fail on a daily basis. What chance do we have to die at that exact moment when we are being righteous?
Verse 13 offers a bit of help with this problem. Ezekiel writes, “...if he trusts in his righteousness...” then he will die if he commits sin. It isn’t the sin that will kill him, but the reliance on a righteousness that is fallible. When we trust in the good deeds that we have done to save us, we’ll find that they are never enough to cover the bad deeds that we continue to do. Our works will never make us righteous. Repentance is not simply making things right after we have done wrong; there is no hope in that sort of faith. We can never know if we will truly be in the right state the moment that we die. Repentance is turning to God and trusting in Him. Faith is trusting that we are in a state of God’s grace so that no matter when we die, we’ll be saved by His righteousness.
It is so easy to get caught up in the belief that we can save ourselves. And if we believe that, then we just as easily see the disasters of others as a punishment from God, or at the very least the possibility that they have gotten what they deserve. That’s what is happening in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus responded to a question from the crowd about a group of people who died at the hand of Pilate by asking if they deserved to be killed in that way. Then He asked if a group of people who died when a tower fell if they deserved to die in that way.
The incidents in today’s Gospel lesson are not reported anywhere except in the book of Luke. None of the contemporary historians mention this story about Pilate, although it was generally agreed that Pilate was a cruel ruler. According to Philo of Alexandria he was a man of “inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition” and is on record for killing suspects without trial. He stole money from the Jewish Temple to build an aqueduct. He ordered his troops to kill and beat people, perhaps to quell rebellion. He was eventually tried in Rome for excessive cruelty. It is thought that there had been an outbreak of zealous fanaticism near Galilee. The Galileans were perhaps killed as they were offering their sacrifices in the courts of the Temple to stop rebellion before it could begin. Whether they were rebels or simply worshippers is beyond our knowledge, but Pilate killed people who were in the Temple and their blood mingled with the blood of the sacrifice. The crowd wanted to know if it was the fault of those worshippers that they had received justice for their sin by the hands of Pilate.
It helps to put this story into context. When Jesus came down from the mountain where He was transfigured in the presence of His closest apostles, He set out on a journey toward Jerusalem. Nothing was going to stop Him from reaching His goal. As they traveled, Jesus taught the disciples the things they would have to know to continue His work in this world. He healed the sick and He gave hope to the poor. Crowds were following Him, gathering to hear Him speak. He was calling people to a deep and intimate relationship with God. This was a message people wanted to hear. Even the Pharisees wanted to hear what Jesus had to say.
Jesus was invited to dinner where He made quite an impression. He offended the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law by the things He said and the things He did. The Pharisees understood righteousness and faithfulness from the perspective of the Law, and they were determined to stop Jesus. The Pharisees questioned Him because they wanted to catch Him in a mistake that would halt His ministry.
Jesus must have known about the Galileans and the purpose of their question. They wanted Him to say they deserved to be killed because they did wrong, but He answered by bringing up a second incident that is not recorded in history. The people who were killed by the Tower of Siloam were innocent victims of a horrific disaster. Jesus turned the question around by showing them that whether the dead in either story were guilty or not, all God’s people have reason to repent. We are all guilty. God does not send suffering through persecution or disaster because we have done something wrong. We live in a broken and fallen world and bad things will happen.
They did not die because of their sin; they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. As we hear their story, we are reminded that we could be in the wrong place at the wrong time, too. We could fall prey to a power wielding ruler whose cruelty knows no bounds. We could be standing under a tower about to collapse. We could be in a car accident. We could get sick. We could lose everything because the world around us is falling apart. We don’t know what tomorrow might hold.
Jesus Christ calls us to turn to Him because tomorrow might be too late. He calls us, like Ezekiel, to speak the Gospel to our neighbors so that they will trust in God’s righteousness. Honestly, I don’t want to follow in Ezekiel’s footsteps. He was a prophet that was called to deliver a message of judgment and hope, whether the people wanted to hear it or not.
Ezekiel is warned that if he will be responsible for their death if he refuses to speak God’s word to them. God gave Ezekiel the responsibility to tell them the truth, to tell them about God s wrath and His promise. If Ezekiel failed to do so, their blood would be on his head. If we fail to tell our brothers and sisters the truth about their failure, we will also share responsibility and the consequences. God does not want any to die, so He sends us to help them to turn to Him and live.
“Tell them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord Yahweh, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why will you die, house of Israel?’” God does not want any to perish. We may suffer the consequences of our failures, experience the cost of our mistakes, but our life in God’s kingdom is built on forgiveness. We may be the one called to give that word to a brother or sister. The call for repentance is the beginning of hope, a revelation of the mercy and grace of God. We might be afraid to speak those words, but God calls us to this ministry so that none will die. He calls us to share in the life-giving promise of forgiveness in His word.
Ezekiel was called to a hard task: to tell the people of Israel about their sin against God. The truly prophetic voice is not something that anyone would choose by their own will because God’s Word is not something the world wants to hear. We’d rather let things go, ignore the failures of our neighbors. We don’t want to talk about sin, correct error, or rebuke willful disobedience. We’d rather ignore the reality of sin to focus on forgiveness, love, and encouragement. But what use is forgiveness if there is nothing to be forgiven? Why seek forgiveness and reconciliation if we are righteous?
Jesus told those questioning Him that the Galileans and victims of the tower collapse were not greater sinners. Jesus turns a question of condemnation into a call to repentance. Jesus says, “I tell you, no, but, unless you repent, you will all perish in the same way.” Repentance is more than changing the way we do things. The Pharisees and teachers of the Law had rejected Jesus. They had rejected the Word of God made flesh. They had rejected the mercy of God which is found in Jesus. Reject Jesus and you will die, because it is in Jesus Christ that we find true life.
Jesus was also not saying that those who suffered death and tragedy were less sinful than the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. We are all sinners in need of a Savior; receive the Savior and you will have life but reject the Savior and you will die.
When Jesus talks about life and death, He isn’t referring to the physical life and death; He is referring to spiritual life and death. The Gospel text is not a lesson about our own righteousness but about trusting in God for true life. We don’t become perfect overnight. As a matter of fact, there’s only one who was able to live a perfect life in this world: Jesus. We aren’t Jesus, but we are covered by His righteousness when we repent and trust in Him.
The hope we have is not that we’ll be righteous at the moment when we die, but that God will be faithful. And thankfully, we worship a God of second chances. Take, for instance, the parable in the second half of today’s Gospel lesson: the story of a fig tree. This tree is not bearing fruit, and the landowner is ready to let it go. We might think that he is unmerciful because the tree is only three years old; however, it was probably more like six years. He would not have even looked for fruit until after the third year. That is when it should have started to bear fruit. At six years the fig tree had been a waste of time, land, and resources. The unfruitful tree was stealing nutrients from the trees that can produce. The gardener begged the landowner for one more year with a promise to work with the tree to try to get it to produce.
Perhaps the perfect sermon title for this text is “Death, Tragedy and all that Crap.” It might sound flippant or even offensive, but it is an honest assessment of how we deal with the troubles in our life. We look at suffering as “crap” without realizing that it might just be the manure that will help us grow in faith and maturity. God does not make us suffer, but He uses the circumstances of our life to help us to bear fruit in this world. We don’t understand. We ask, “Why me?” But we are called to repentance from our self-focus to trust in God who has promised to get us through. We don’t like to travel through the valley of death, because it seems like there is no hope, but there is always hope in Christ.
The key word in today's texts is “repent,” but it is not enough to simply say, “I’ve done this thing and I’m sorry. Forgive me so I can go on my way.” Repentance is more than saying I’m sorry. It is even more than confessing our daily sins. Repentance is turning to God, following Him, keeping Him in our sight, trusting Him to lead us on the right path. Righteousness is not about being good and being obedient to some law. Righteousness is about being in a right relationship with our God. That’s why God calls us to repent. “Turn around. Keep your eyes on me. I can make things right.” God does not want anyone to die. He takes no pleasure in our death. He calls out to us in mercy and grace. “Why will you die?” He asks. “Why will you continue to do those things that will keep you from my love and grace? Why will you turn away and walk your own path, the path that leads to death?”
One of my least favorite classes in school was history. It seemed useless to me to have to learn all those people, places, and dates. What good purpose is there in knowing what someone did a thousand years ago? After all, their culture and circumstances were much different than ours today. It even seemed silly to study history from just a few years ago. After all, what is past is past, and we should not dwell on the things that cannot be changed but look forward to the future.
I had the same opinion of the Old Testament books of the Bible. What good did it do to read those stories of Israel? Their culture and circumstances were very different than ours today. It was a different world, with different people and different circumstances. This is true even more so for those who live in Christ. Jesus restored our relationship to God, offering through His blood the grace and forgiveness that gives us true life. He finished the work that God began thousands of years before in the lives of the patriarchs, the kings, and the prophets. The old stories are fun to read, but of the stories offer a view of God that seems contradictory to the image we have in the story of Christ. This is the view that the Pharisees used to demand strict obedience to the Law.
They say that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. We study the things of the past, what worked and what didn’t work, to help guide our decisions for the future. The Bible tells us there is nothing new under the sun, and this is most certainly true in every aspect of human nature. American culture is not much different than other prosperous civilizations in ages past. Our political system was established based on ancient examples. Military, education, and welfare policies were founded on principles used many times before. If we refuse to recall the lessons learned throughout history, we will continue repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Just as ancient history is important for us to know and understand to keep from falling into the same traps, so too is the Old Testament witness important for Christians. The Israelites had Christ before them, reflections of the promise to come. They were given the manna as a promise of Jesus, who is the Bread of life. Water flowed from the rock, foreseeing the Living water that is Christ. Yet they did not remain faithful to the One who fulfilled their needs. As we look back on those stories, we are reminded that Christ is the solid rock on whom we stand and get our strength. When we are tested, as the Israelites were tested in the desert, we are warned from their example to turn to God.
Paul encourages us to live differently than the people who died in the wilderness. Some died when they lusted, ate, and played as they worshipped the idol. Others died when they tested God and grumbled against Him. All who perished in the desert wanted to go their own way, they wanted to walk their own path. Don’t we do that too? We’d much rather worship the god we choose, have the world (and the god we worship) satisfy the needs we want satisfied. We are more than willing to blame God for our misfortune, to see God as a punisher and a destroyer because then we can claim and create the god of our choosing.
We turn from God in so many ways. Paul used the stories from the Exodus to remind the new Christians that God’s people suffered because they turned from Him. They suffered the consequences of going their own way. They died because they did not keep their eyes on Him.
The Jews in Jesus’ day sought righteousness according to their own terms. They tried to be their own gods. They tried to control the world around them. They tried to be good, righteous, and worthy of whatever it is they wanted. Paul tells us that the ancestors of the Jews did the same thing. Though God delivered them from Egypt and gave them a taste of salvation and the waters of baptism through the cloud and the waters of the Red Sea, they forgot God. They became idolaters, eating, drinking and indulging in the pagan traditions of Egypt. They tested God and suffered the consequences of turning away from Him. They did not trust God so turned to find comfort, hope, and peace through other means. We are meant to see in the histories what our ancestors did wrong so that we’ll walk more closely with our God.
Paul reminds us that we are no different. We think we are better, more faithful than those who wandered the desert and those who lived in Jesus’ day, but we aren’t. Paul shares the stories of our forefathers as a warning that we naturally tend to go in the wrong way.
The story of the fig tree shows us that God is willing to work with us, to help us to be fruitful. But we are warned to be careful: one day will be too late. So, while we can’t do it on our own, we are called to do something. We are called to repent, to turn around and trust God. Paul comforts us with the knowledge that we are no different. “No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
We will be tempted. We will fail. We will break our fast and forget to do what we promised we would do. We’ll get angry with God and blame Him for our troubles. We’ll doubt and fear and go down the wrong path. We deserve to perish. But the vinedresser says, “Give me another year. I’ll feed it and it will produce good fruit.” Jesus is the vinedresser. He gives us another chance. Yet, He also calls us to repentance, lest we perish. We have another chance, but for how long? We could be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We don’t know what tomorrow might hold.
The psalmist wrote, “Mercy and truth meet together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth springs out of the earth. Righteousness has looked down from heaven.” Truth leads us to a right relationship with God. The fullness of all the good things in heaven and earth - mercy, truth, righteousness and peace - come together in Jesus Christ. It is not up to us to be or create or earn these things, we are called to believe in Jesus, and they will be ours.
God does not want us to perish. He wants us to live in His grace in this world and in His glory in eternity. He’s done everything necessary to make it happen. Lent is a time of repentance. It is a time for letting go of control, turning around toward God, and trusting in Him. Our righteousness will never save us, but His will. His righteousness has saved us. He did it so that we would have life, and so that we would bear fruit in a world that desperately needs to repent and trust Him.
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