Lent is nothing if not up front about death. The season itself begins with the reality of death literally being in, and marked on, our faces: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
We are all dust; we are all finite; we are all mortal. Our time on this earth is limited – it has had a beginning and it will have an end. We know this, we all know this…but knowing it doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to live with. The moment we’re born, the meter starts running; and our very first breath brings us that much closer to our last.
Even so, it’s still a shock when we hear our mortality articulated. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” is bad enough. “You have a week; you have a month; you have a year to live”; this is something else altogether – and it’s something some among us already know.
Some here have had these or similar words said to us, others have heard them said to people we love. These words turn our world and our stomachs upside down, and they suddenly cast us into a surrealistic landscape where nothing is familiar, and nothing is safe. Life itself mocks us here; our friends and loved ones become strangers; and for a time at least, even God seems to turn God’s face away.
“You have a year to live; you have only a year to live…but you do have a year to live.”
We do, all of us, we pray, have (at least) a year to live…even though the limited nature of that year becomes apparent in today’s Gospel reading. The first warning that time is short was sounded to us back in Advent when we heard John the Baptist crying out, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
“Get your act together,” John said then, “for [e]ven now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” The root that ax is lying against is ours, and according to John, we have a limited amount of time left before it strikes.
Immediately after the Feast of the Epiphany, Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth and he proclaimed that the centuries of waiting on God’s promises are over, that the year of the Lord’s favor, a year of liberation and pardon and healing, that this year is here, and that the kingdom of God has even now come among us.
And yet, at the same time, today on this third Sunday in Lent we have the still-barren fig tree and the householder’s exasperated order, “Cut this thing down! Why should it be taking up space that a fruitful tree can use?”
We also have the gardener’s plea, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” If there’s still no fruit next year; if there’s still no fruit after one more year, he says, you can cut it down.
Today, Jesus says, today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
This, here and now, for you and for me, this is the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of the Lord’s digging and fertilizing; this, here, now, for all of us is God’s gracious gift of one more year. We have a year to live; what will we do with it? What does God want us to do with this year?
As clergy in this pulpit have probably mentioned before, back in the first century, in those earliest years of the Church, Jesus’ followers expected his return, expected what we call the Second Coming, at any moment; and when it didn’t happen, when Jesus didn’t come again in that time, there were a lot of questions and doubts, and there was a lot of distress among the believers.
Peter himself had to deal with this crisis of disillusionment in his own community, and what he said about Jesus’ delay in returning then, is still worth hanging on to today. To the naysayers and to the faint of heart, Peter said, “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)
The Lord doesn’t want anyone to perish, the Lord wants everyone to come to repentance. According to Peter, the Risen Jesus is intentionally delaying his return for our sake, to give all of us time to catch up; and so the real question is, what does each of us need to do in this year? What aeration and fertilization do we need to become aware of so that we can all come to the repentance that Jesus wants for us?
“To repent” means to turn around, and to come back to God. It’s an action, not a feeling. In one sense, it means to lay before God all the things we’ve done and left undone while we were turned away; all of the things we’ve said or should have said; all of the things that deny the image of God in which we’re made. When we repent, we turn around. We come back and we lay these things before God so that we can be free of them, so that we can be released from the power of regret and of shame that they have over us.
One author writes, “Without being forgiven, [without being] released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever.”
And yet this is the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of restoration through repentance and forgiveness, the year of a whole new beginning for the future and a whole new meaning for the past…if we take the gift of this one more year seriously, embracing the grace of God that is part of the dynamic of our coming back. “Repentance,” one pastor writes, “acknowledges that God can redeem, God can set right, God can make whole…. Repentance is not a trade we make with God. It is a leap of faith that our deepest hopes will not leave our lips unheeded.” (Christian Century, 2/27/19, Reflections, p. 19, Eric D. Barreto). Repentance is a leap of faith that our deepest hopes will not leave our lips unheeded.
Jesus knows our deepest hopes. Jesus has come as the fulfillment of our deepest hopes, that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly, in this year and for all time; and now is the time to accept his offer and his invitation. Jesus has invited us to abide in him just as he wants to abide in, rest in, be intimate with, us…so why are we still making him reschedule his return?
Author, poet, and Roman Catholic nun Macrina Wiederkehr has suggested, “Perhaps we don’t spend enough time dwelling in God to fall in love with God.” Perhaps we don’t spend enough time dwelling in God, don’t spend enough time being with God, to fall in love with God.
From out of a bush that burned but wasn’t consumed, a little bit of God-planned bait in the wilderness that enticed Moses to turn aside and come closer, from out of this living heat and light, God spoke: “I have observed the misery of my people; I have heard their cry; I know their sufferings; and I have come down to deliver them.” I am intimately involved with my people, says God; I know their deepest hopes; and I have entered history to bring them to wholeness and new life.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and lived among us…God fell in love with us, came to dwell with us a long, long time ago…and I wonder how much time we need to spend with God before we fall in love with God in return.
Our time is limited; how much will be left when we finally take that leap of faith and start to trust God with who we are? How long will it take us to understand that in this year of grace our focus needs to be on God, and on the quality of our relationship with God?
“[C]ome, I will send you,” I AM said to Moses; “Come, follow me,” Jesus says to each one of us. Follow me; spend time with me; come, get to know me better.
Thinking of his childhood in Greece, author Nikos Kazantzakis wrote, “I remember frequently sitting on the doorstep of our home when the sun was blazing, the air on fire, grapes being trodden in a large house in the neighborhood, the world fragrant with must. Shutting my eyes contentedly, I used to hold out my palms and wait. God always came – as long as I remained a child, He never deceived me – He always came, a child just like myself, and deposited his toys in my hands: sun, moon, wind. ‘They’re gifts,’ He said, ‘they’re gifts. Play with them. I have lots more.’ I would open my eyes. God would vanish, but His toys would remain in my hands.”
The toys of God, the gifts of God, the blessings of God, the presence of God, are all around us. They’re here with me in the pulpit and with you in the congregation. They’re shining, glooming, blowing through the windows, and coming in from Sunday School. They’re messages on the phone, emails in the inbox, obligations at the office, and opportunities for mission and for ministry every day. The gifts of God are for the people of God…every single day of our lives.
We have a year to live, a year to fall in love with God; a year to turn back and prepare for life in the midst of death.
Back in 1985, at the age of 35, a woman named Amy Harwell was diagnosed with cervical cancer and given a 0% chance of surviving five years. After extensive surgery, radiation, and chemo, her primary tumor disappeared, but then reappeared in one of her lungs in 1987.
More treatments and surgery, serious involvement in a leg, and then in 1995, ten years after her original diagnosis, Amy wrote, “With cancer in my recent past and likely to reappear in the near future, I had planned accordingly. I had been so ready to die. It was as if I had picked a destination, packed my bags, hurried down the terminal corridor, looked up at the departure monitor, and saw flashing ‘Trip Delayed.’ Now what do I do? Stay put and wait? Go home and come back again? Rebook another route?... But I couldn’t stay in the terminal forever. Nor could I idle away. I needed to renew my commitment to life.” (online, and in her book Ready to Live, Prepared to Die)
In the midst of death, Amy needed to renew her commitment to life. We have a year to live…and we also need to renew our commitment to life, to life in God’s kingdom. We need to dwell with God, to spend time with God, to abide in God, so that we can fall in love with God as God has fallen in love with us.
Repent, come back; for the kingdom of God is at hand and even now the ax is lying at the root of the tree. If in this year of life we turn again and bear fruit in mission and ministry, in baptism and grace; if we turn again and fall in love with God, confident that our deepest hopes are not leaving our lips unheeded; if we take that leap of faith that is repentance, then this last year will be the first year of the best years of our lives. Amen.