Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, March 7, 2010
Solemn Mass
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth
Year C: Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 103:1-11; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

From time to time I mention the formation program for children called the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. It’s called that because the women who first took this particular approach with young children realized that the gospel that means the most to a young child is Jesus identifying himself as the Good Shepherd.

They also unexpectedly discovered this particular proclamation is a child centered and a time sensitive gospel. If a child were too young to think metaphorically of himself as a sheep, it didn’t mean much. If a child was much older than six, the parable would be taken primarily as information. The key to its impact, its truth, is the child figuring it out for himself or herself somewhere between the age of five and six that he or she is one of Jesus’ sheep.

I didn’t grow up with anything like the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. I grew up in a biblical environment much more like today’s gospel lesson – where one was taught to be afraid of God, to be afraid of the “shortness and uncertainty of life” – to use the Prayer Book phrase.[1] But I got enough of the other part of the gospel, God’s love, God’s acceptance, God’s power, so that when my life moved from childhood to adulthood, and continues, there is a center shaped by faith in God, by belief in life after death, by love.

In today’s gospel lesson, some Galileans – remember Jesus himself was a Galilean – are killed by an unjust Pilate at the Temple. Other people are killed by the collapse of a building, again in Jerusalem. Then, Luke’s Jesus, who continues on his journey to Jerusalem, takes fear to another level, he speaks of a tree that does not bear fruit. It’s given some time to bear, but if it doesn’t bear, it will be cut down.

Of all the gospels, Luke is the most careful in his account of Jesus’ arrest, trial and condemnation, to distinguish between the acts of his people’s leaders and the people themselves.[2] It’s one of the particular ways he lets God’s mercy flow through his narrative. Yet the theme of individual response to God is all around in Luke too. The psalmist says, “You speak in my heart and say, ‘Seek my face.’” He responds to God, “Your face, Lord, will I seek.”[3] My former teacher Rabbi Edwin Friedman put it this way in a baccalaureate address to high school class in 1960 that was published last year. He asked simply, “What are you going to do with your life?”[4]

Part of his work was, very creatively I think, to get the kids thinking about how others saw them and their potential. He wanted to suggest to them that they had not thought of everything they needed to know or to do. He was less worried about anyone having answers, than he was about people having questions.[5]  From this perspective, today’s gospel is not about being afraid, but about being alive, about listening to God’s life in our lives and responding to it.

Last fall I gave an informal Sunday morning class on the history of our American Prayer Books. And then in January, I gave a more formal lecture on the same subject at a parish in Florida. Some of the stuff is pretty boring and technical. But a lot is really interesting – and perhaps it is interesting to me in part because when I got out of seminary I worked first in a large parish that was having a huge congregational fight over the introduction of what was then the new Prayer Book. Looking back, I can say, with the benefit of reading books that were not yet written, neither the rector who was introducing the Prayer Book nor the congregational leaders who were fighting him every step of the way knew very much about Prayer Book history or the history of worship in the Episcopal Church.

The rector was sure his congregation should be using the Church’s new book and celebrating the Eucharist at all of the main Sunday services. The lay leaders wanted things the way they were, or at least they way people thought they were. Paul Pritchartt was no radical rector; the lay leaders were not bad people. In the end, some people left and started a small, independent Anglican congregation – and I don’t even know if it’s still there. At the time, as a young priest, I mostly kept my mouth shut, and I was certain that the rector was right. But even at the time, one sensed that the intensity of the argument was really over something else.

Today’s gospel lesson is paired with the call of Moses – where God does more than speak in Moses’ heart. He speaks from the burning bush. It’s a surprising choice in a way, since it’s paired with a gospel from Luke, not one of the really obvious choices from John where Jesus over and over again uses God’s name “I AM” as he addresses people. But it goes well with the image of the fruit tree, that has been planted, tended, but borne no fruit.

There is so much over which none of us has a great deal of control in our lives. There is uncertainty, shortness, and evil. Perhaps it’s fair to say that Moses’ problem with God is not fear of God himself as much as it is fear of what other people are going to think of what he says and does. Those who first heard Jesus and his disciples were often afraid of what friends and family would think about any movement to a new life in the one who was known as the Christ, the Messiah – more afraid of losing what they knew than meeting what lay ahead. I believe it is possible for us bear the fruit of faith in the present and in the future. That’s where we’re going. That’s the journey of humankind.

In today’s gospel, Jesus and his disciples are a few days away from Jerusalem. He’s not flinching; he’s not afraid of his future or ours.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen