3-7-10

                                                                          Year C

                                                                          Good Shepherd, Richmond

                                                                          Herman Hollerith

    Good Morning Christians!  It is a real pleasure to be with you this morning at the Church of the Good Shepherd.  I was here not long ago for a very special occasion - the Celebration of the New Ministry of your rector - and had a wonderful time.  From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank all of you for the ministries you do here in God’s name.

     And I especially want to thank Ross for his ministry.  Ross is one of our true scholarly priests in Southern Virginia.  But he is as warm-hearted and pastorally conscientious as he is smart.  Ross, I appreciate your clear leadership, pastoral dedication and deep personal spiritual commitment to this community.  Your presence here is providential and a blessing to all of us. 

     Congregation, please make sure you express your gratitude to Ross, Lynda and their family, regularly.        

     I also want to thank those of you who have chosen to make an important commitment to our Lord today – through confirmation or reception.  This is for me the really fun part of being a bishop – seeing you begin new legs of your spiritual journeys , being part of the celebration, and inviting the Holy Spirit to be part of it too.  God calls each and every one of you to a ministry, a ministry to serve.  My hope is that you will embrace that call time and time again, throughout your life.

    Now, as I am sure you know, I am still a pretty new Bishop, having been consecrated barely a year ago.  So I’m still in the process of getting my “sea legs” about me.  But, these are very exciting times for me and I feel so privileged and blessed to have this opportunity to serve you in this manner.  And I’ll tell you, God is teaching me something new every day.

     For instance, since my election as Bishop, God has been teaching me about humility.  Apparently God seems to prescribe to new bishops occasional doses of reality, lest we lose perspective and think our selves more important than we are.  God wants to make sure that all the new fancy cloths and the new authority doesn’t go to our heads. 

     One dose came shortly after I left Bruton and began my work at Talbot Hall.  On Christmas Eve, I had the pleasure of attending services with my entire family – something I had never, ever done in 25 years of ministry.  There I was sitting in a boxed pew at the 9PM service wearing a red Christmas bow tie.  Three weeks before I was the rector – but then suddenly just a person in the congregation.  And frankly, I just didn’t know what to do with myself.  It was all so odd and I began to fidget.  It was Christmas Eve at Bruton and I was supposed to be leading the service.  Lizzie, my wife leaned over and said that I was embarrassing her and to sit still.  Finally, my then twelve year old daughter, Elizabeth, handed me a Prayer Book and whispered with all seriousness, “Don’t worry Daddy, just relax, I’ll show you what to do”.  And she did!

     Just to show you the difference between a 12 year old girl and a 13 year old one, this past Christmas Eve I was again sitting in the pew with my daughter.  She saw my name written on the back of the parish bulletin, like many parishes do.  She pointed to the title “Right Reverend” before my name and said “Now you know Dad, this does not mean that you are always right!

     So, sometimes one must be encouraged to give up an old role before one can receive a new role and be corrected from time to time.

     Another dose – and the only other one I’ll mention this morning – occurred last spring.  One Sunday I was visiting one of our largest parishes in the diocese – one that has given my predecessors some trouble in the past.  About an hour before the service I pulled into the parish hall parking lot – which was quite full – to look for a place to park.  Suddenly I spied a space that was open.  At the back of the space was a big green, industrial trash receptacle – a dumpster.  Someone had taped a sign to the front of the dumpster and in huge red letters had written, “Reserved specially for Bishop Hollerith”.  Needless to say, that one worried me a bit all day.

     So God, my daughter and the people of Southern Virginia have been helping me keep things in perspective.

     But, enough about me.  I want to talk about today’s Gospel reading from Luke. 

     The situation is this:  Jesus is teaching the crowds about judgment and redemption.  Some people, it doesn’t say exactly who – possibly the Pharisees - ask Jesus about an incident in Jerusalem in which a crowd of worshipping Galileans were unjustly murdered.  The question is essentially asking if bad things usually only happen to bad people.  In modern terms, it’s like asking Jesus if those who died in Haiti last month deserved their fate or were responsible in some way for their own demise – a la Pat Robertson.  The question behind the question is one of asking if human suffering is God’s way of punishing us for our sins.   

     In response, Jesus answers the question in two parts.

      First, he says, “I tell you no”.  Now this is a very important and powerful “no”.  I think he said it quite emphatically, “No!”  Jesus wants his listeners to be certain that God does not operate in a vindictive or punitive manner.  Bad things really do happen to good people and this is a tragic, yet, inevitable fact of human life.  Suffering is not God’s will.    God is in the business of giving life not taking it.  God can be trusted as the one who always wants the very best for us.  Even more than that, God is always seeking ways to redeem the tragedies that befall us – to resurrect new life out of the ashes of death and defeat that we experience. 

     And just to make sure that his audience understands the point, Jesus sites a second example in which some innocent people are killed by a falling tower.  Again, in modern terms, it would be like answering the question of whether those who died in 9-11 deserved their fate as punishment for sin.  “No”, Jesus says, God doesn’t work that way. 

      But, then, there is a part “B” to Jesus’ answer.  In what sounds almost like a contradiction he adds, “But unless you repent, you will likewise perish”.    

      I believe that there are two spiritual issues that Jesus means to address simultaneously – the first is the suffering of the innocent.  The second is the self-righteous arrogance of the fortunate.  Remember, Jesus is speaking to the crowd.  Symbolically he is addressing the people huddled behind the yellow police tape trying to find out why the ambulance is parked down the street, the ones who hear about tragedy on the evening new or during a bridge game – those who are, by in large, unaffected by the tragedy of others and privileged to speculate as detached observers.  In other words, Jesus wants his listeners to know that they too are subject to divine judgment.  Good fortune in life does not signify righteousness before God and more than suffering signifies unrighteousness.   All are subject to judgment and all fall short.

     My father-in-law, who was a native of Charleston, South Carolina, once told a story about a certain old judge there by the name of Waites Waring, who was causing a stir amongst the prim and the proper.  Apparently everyone was up-in-arms because Judge Waring had taken up with a voluptuous young actress half his age.  He was also, to make matters worse, a liberal.  And in old Charleston, it was bad enough to be scandalous, but to be liberal and scandalous was nothing short of evil itself.  So, the whole town was abuzz about His Honor’s behavior. 

     The story goes that in the house next door to the judge there loved a nice, quiet, little old Jewish man who kept to himself.  One summer downtown Charleston was besieged by terrible, terrible electrical storms and on three different occasions the nice Jewish man’s home suffered extensive damage, while the judge’s home went unscathed.  Finally, after have his rood blown off for the third time, the Jewish man, feeling rather victimized, went out and put a big sign in his front yard with an arrow on it pointing at the judge’s place.  It said in big bold letters, “Not me Lord.  You’ve got the wrong house, you want next door”.

     Jesus reminds us that the real sin worth examining is not what is happening next door,  but the way our preoccupation with next door prevents us from keeping our own house in order or, or from recognizing how fortunate we are.   This brings to mind what Karl Barth once claimed that “all sin is basically ingratitude”. 

     Now, in many renderings of this portion of Luke in Church, the lesson is often concluded here with the warning about repentance.  But, in our lectionary a few more lines are added and the passage ends with Jesus telling a curious, little parable about a fruitless fig tree.  The parable is about a gardener who intervenes on behalf of the tree when the land owner is just about to give up and cut it down.  The gardener asks permission to nurture the tree for another season.  He describes a plan, which in ancient horticultural terms, is a rather extreme and generous attempt to ensure the trees survival.  And so the upshot of the parable is to emphasize not the fruitlessness of the tree, but the incredible, almost unbelievable mercy and nurturing love of the one who tends the garden.  The entire reading therefore ends on a word of hope. 

     Maybe, more than anything else what we learn from today’s challenging Gospel lesson is that if we want to turn Christianity into a religion based on works and merit and to understand our own lives in relation to God accordingly, then we are in very serious trouble.  There is no way any of us can assure our own security from either God’s judgment or from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (to quote Mr. Shakespeare.)  Our hope is to be found in the love of the gardener, the one who will sacrifice himself on the altar of our shortcomings – over and over again – in an endless effort to redeem you and me for one more season.