Third Sunday of Lent

Dec 13 2024

Scripture Study for

The mountain upon which God speaks to Moses is a holy mountain (“Remove your sandals”), because it is a place of divine revelation. The God who speaks is the God worshiped by the ancestors. This same God promises to release the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. The name that God reveals is similar in sound and appearance to a form of the verb “to be.” It denotes continuing action and may mean “I AM always.” This new name implies God’s continuing active involvement. The promise of deliverance identifies the way that God will be with the people: always present to rescue.

Paul warns the Corinthians about over-confidence in their status as Christians. Although Baptism and Eucharist are means of union with God, they do not work automatically. Paul turns to the wilderness events to illustrate this. The miraculous events in the wilderness were of no avail for most of the people of that generation. Likewise, the Corinthians’ own calling and initiation into its mysteries was, in itself, no guarantee of salvation. They would have to demonstrate their fidelity again and again. Christian life requires persistent Christian living.

Jesus speaks of the suddenness of recent tragedies and the possible unpreparedness of their victims. He exhorts his hearers to repent lest they suffer the same fate—not that they might be spared such calamity, but that they should be prepared for it. They should be reconciled with God before disaster strikes. He then tells a parable to demonstrate the mercy of God. In it, God is like both the owner and the diligent worker, willing to give time to repent. However, final condemnation is still a real possibility. Jesus teaches that we should always be prepared for sudden death by being reconciled with God at all times. While God might be patient with us, this patience requires that we participate with the opportunities that God provides for our maturing in righteousness. We risk God’s judgment if we disregard God’s grace.

Dec 10 2024

The Mercy of Manure

In the story of the burning bush, the great and majestic “I AM” hears the cry of the Israelites in bondage and devises a plan to deliver them. In today’s Gospel, God the Gardener hears the cry of the little fig tree and conceives a plan to rescue it. What do these two stories have in common? God is the One who wants to save. Does it matter whether it is an entire nation or an insignificant little fig tree? No, it doesn’t. God is, by nature, Deliverer, Rescuer, Redeemer.

I have a cherry tree that I’d like to rescue. It has a split in the bark that seems to be stunting its growth. I don’t want it to die. I want it to flourish. Maybe I should spread manure around it? Organic fertilizers seep nutrients into the soil slowly. The roots then can absorb what they need to make the tree grow and (hopefully) bear fruit. Manure is mercy to a sick tree.

God wants us to flourish, too. God doesn’t want us to die. Yet one of the first things that a gardener learns is that there are no guarantees in gardening. Will the manure work? Maybe. Maybe the tree will still perish. (If it dies, I’ll cut it down and replace it with a couple of blackberry bushes.)

There are no guarantees in holy rescuing either. God works to redeem the nation of Israel. They resist. God sends prophets to bring them back. They resist. God sends a Son to rescue us. We resist. The Holy Spirit continually comes to direct us. We resist.

The season of Lent is another of God’s “tries.” But there are no guarantees that what God wants to happen will actually happen. We have the free will to respond or not. Will we allow God’s manure of mercy to seep into us, to rescue us so that we flourish and bear fruit?

Consider/Discuss

There are no guarantees in gardening. There are no guarantees in relationships. There are no guarantees in parenting. There seems to be a continual tension between what we try to make happen and what actually happens. Life’s difficulties cannot be solved like a math or engineering problem that has a definitive answer. Some things cannot be resolved for certain. How do we deal with that? How do we carry on? How do we plunge ahead day by day in a spirit of courage and patience until the surety of heaven finally rescues us?
Sometimes we run into situations in which we may be tempted to think, “I cannot do any more.” As a gardener, I can chop down a dead cherry tree. As a Christian, only God can make that judgment about a human being. Who might we feel like giving up on? What mercy can God extend through us to that person?

Living and Praying with the Word

God, you are the Diligent Gardener, the one who never gives up. You always keep trying. You extend mercy to the most diseased, the most broken, and the most wounded. Sometimes we are tempted to give up. You know the situations and the unresolved tensions that discourage us. We hand those over to you now.

Lord of valor, do not let cowardice overtake us. Fill us with the courage of persistence. keep us going, keep us trying, keep us spreading mercy as you spread mercy. Help us to flourish as fertilizers for on this earth until that day when we meet you in heaven.

Dec 10 2024

Scripture Study for

As time has gone on, the promise made earlier to Abram that his descendants would inherit the land remains unfulfilled, with Israel now languishing, enslaved, in Egypt. Moses has fled to Midian to escape punishment for killing an Egyptian (Exodus 2:11–15). There he encounters the God of Israel, who affirms that he has not forgotten Israel or divine promises. God remains the “God of the fathers,” and faithful to them and their descendants. Now Moses has been charged with being God’s instrument for fulfilling those promises. Two names of God are given here: I AM, which comes to represent the infinite being of God, and “Lord,” a euphemistic rendering of the divine name that is forever to be remembered in connection with the ancestors: this God is a faithful God.

Paul is warning his Corinthian audience to be wary of falling into a spiritual complacency, in which they presume they have attained salvation simply because they have been baptized. Paul points to the example of Israel, all of whom were delivered from Egypt and thus “baptized.” They all received the same gifts from God in the wilderness, manna and water (here he refers to a rabbinic tradition that the rock from which water sprung “followed” them around so that they always had water). Just as many of that generation nevertheless despised God’s gifts or failed to trust in him, so Christians must be careful not to make the same mistake and reject or deny the gifts God has given to them and fall back into their former ways.

The Gospel reading for this week takes place in the context of Jesus warning his disciples to observe the signs of the times, beginning with his own advent. Now is the time to repent and turn back to God (Luke 12:54–59). In response, some mention certain Galileans who died a terrible death, which Jesus takes as a suggestion that the Galileans were a special kind of sinner more deserving of their death than his audience. Using the story of the tower of Siloam, he points out that no one is sinless and all theoretically deserve to die in the same way. There is no room for complacency. Yet God is patient, albeit not infinitely so. Each of us is like a fig tree that refuses to bear good fruit. Although we deserve to be cut down, God allows Christ (or his ministers) to help the tree to bear fruit. But if it still fails to do so, judgment does await.