"Thirsting and Longing"

Rev. Cathlin Baker

“Thirsting and Longing”

The Rev. Cathlin Baker

March 7, 2010

Isaiah 55:1-9; Luke 13:1-9

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke takes us right to the heart of a discussion Jesus is having with a group of Galileans, his fellow countrymen. It appears they’ve been talking about a terrible event in which Pilate has slaughtered some Galileans. The text tells us that Pilate had mingled their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. While there is no historical recording of such an event, it reads as if some Galileans may have been offering a blood sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem when they were killed, leaving them bleeding and dying among their sacrifices.

They recall a horrific scene and seem to be turning it over and over in their minds, struggling with the theological questions surrounding this tragic event. Why do people do such vicious things to each other?  Was this divine judgment because these Galilean men had sinned?  And the more heartbreaking question, where was God? How could God let such horrible things happen?

Jesus then tells another story of more random suffering. We know who the bad guy was in the case of the slaughtered Galileans, but how about those eighteen men who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think they were more sinful than the wild city folk of Jerusalem? Did they deserve that?  Throughout this conversation Jesus unequivocally says, No.  No, this is not about divine judgment. No, God does not work this way.

How many of you in recent weeks have found yourselves in theological discussions about the earthquakes in Haiti or Chile? I have had people ask me, why does God let this happen? Why do bad things happen to innocent people? Many of us have found ourselves mired in questions of why. Why this dreaded diagnosis for me or for him or for her?  Why do we continue to lose young lives in tragic car accidents? But Jesus turns our questions in another direction.

Jesus seems to be saying, since these things happen, since life is so fragile, fleeting, brief and exquisite, then how are we going to live now? Yes, tragedies should not happen. My son should not become a drug addict. A tsunami should not sweep away innocent people. But these things do happen and will happen. Tragedy is likely to shadow all of our doorsteps.

Barbara Brown Taylor imagines that Jesus is saying, “Don’t worry about Pilate and all the other things that can come crashing down on your heads. Terrible things happen, and you are not always to blame. But don’t let that stop you from doing what you are doing. That torn place your fear has opened up inside of you is a holy place. Look around while you are there. Pay attention to what you feel. It may hurt you to stay there and it may hurt you to see, but it is not the kind of hurt that leads to death. It is the kind that leads to life.”

Repent Jesus tells us, so you do not perish. Unfortunately, perish is such a harsh word, carrying the weight of gloomy judgment. And I think such gloom can cloud our ability to truly hear this text. Our minds wander to the hereafter and what exactly a judging and angry God might want from us. But perhaps we can hear Jesus better if we put it like this: Now is the time to get a new mindset, to turn in a new direction, so that you do not suffer. Turn in a new direction so that you find life, life beyond fear and judgment.

Last year, quite a few of us read The Last Week by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. This is the season to read this book again or for the first time. Borg and Crossan tell us more about what Jesus meant by repentance. They explain that our Christian understanding of repentance as contrition for sin is a later interpretation, “The roots of the Greek word for ‘repent’ mean ‘to go beyond the mind that you have.’  To repent is to embark upon a way that goes beyond the mind that you have.”  Jesus calls upon those Galilean men to repent, to get a new mindset. Do not be trapped by the old ways of understanding God. And then Jesus concludes by telling the story of the fruitless fig tree, telling them much about a generous and merciful God.

Today’s text from Isaiah tells us more about repentance and the daily practice of remembering God, especially when we are attracted to so many other promises of comfort or success. Isaiah warns us that we spend too much time and money trying to comfort ourselves, on things that do not truly nourish us. Instead, we need to come to the God that is nearby and waiting for us, ready to offer us spiritual food and drink to meet our deep thirsting and longing.  Repentance is a continual process of identifying those things that get in between us and God – our quest for success or riches, our anxieties and fears, our lack of connection to our suffering or the suffering of our neighbors near and far. Repentance is a way of life, it is the primary task of discipleship, and it asks us to live in the tension between a merciful God and a tragic world.

Isaiah promises that if we draw near to God and listen, God will offer us an everlasting covenant. And Jesus also invites us to the feast. He reaches out to us, saying, take and eat. Jesus also asks us to remember, to remember the whole of his ministry – the teachings, the feedings, the healings; the courage, the pain, the death and the eternal life. Remember it all, for the work was hard and grueling, but God was always near.  So the Christian message is work hard and celebrate; feast and remember.  And so let us remember that night, when Jesus was gathered with his disciples in that upper room, when he summoned them to one last meal with him.