A sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, March 23, 2025. The scriptures are Exodus 3:1-15, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9, and Psalm 63:1-8.

The first church I served had a garden, and it sometimes provoked arguments about how the space should be tended. There were basically two groups with differing approaches. One liked things to be natural and overgrown, wild and lush. The other group liked things neat and tidy and in their place. This group liked to be proactive in pruning, weeding, cutting back, and preparing for the next season. Sometimes I was called in to arbitrate, but when the wild and wooly group realized my natural instincts were to cut back and prune, they stopped asking for my input.

One year, just after a long Saturday of volunteers gardening and several discussions around pruning, we heard today’s Gospel from Luke 13 in church. I could see people glaring at each other across the aisles, as if to say, “See? I told you so. Let it grow and wait.”

In the Gospel, the owner is impatient with the fig tree that’s been taking up space for three years and producing nothing. He orders it to be cut down. But the gardener is smart and suggests that they give it a chance. ‘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.’

These images are meant to show us that God looks at us like a patient gardener. God is not some dark form from forgotten scripture who is out to get us. Sometimes such a god is preached by people who have a lot of self-hatred and anger that gets projected onto God. But God is eager to work with us, to do the spiritual equivalent of fertilize and strengthen, encourage and wait for us to grow into something better, into something useful, into something beautiful.

The idea of repentance runs through the scriptures for today, just as it runs especially deep through the season of Lent.

In the Gospel there’s anxiety about a number of things, but in the face of each instance, surprisingly, Jesus calls for repentance in each case.

First, there’s a report that Pilate has murdered some people from Galilee for offering sacrifices. People are wondering if perhaps God allowed the massacre, somehow choosing some religious people over others. Jesus says not to worry so much about trying to figure out why some suffer, and others do not. Somewhat oddly, he says, “We need to repent.”

Another concern has to do with a tragedy in which other people are killed—a tower has fallen, and innocent people died. But again, Jesus says those who died were no worse or better than others. And Jesus adds, “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

This part of the Gospel can perhaps speak to some of us as we’re rightly outraged by so many things in our country and outraged by the behavior of some people. But Jesus’s words are warning for us not get so consumed with feeling about what other people are doing that we fall into losing our own sense of right and wrong.

A little more about the word “repentance.” The church often reminds us that the word “repent” comes loaded with meaning. When Jesus uses the word, it often has to do with changing one’s attitude, and behavior, and mind. Next week’s story of the Prodigal will use describe the Prodigal Son as repenting, as “coming back to himself.”  It has to do with turning and re-turning and carries with it the idea of being sorry for something and the desire to put things right.

“Repent,” Jesus says. As with most of his teaching, Jesus is urging us to stop judging other people, to stop trying to figure where we are in the pecking order of God’s favor, and to stop living for ourselves alone. We are asked to turn and to re-turn. Turn to God and follow in the way that Jesus leads.

In the first Lesson today, Moses has to come back to himself. He has to turn around and make a kind of U-turn. If you know the story, you’ll remember that Moses had killed an Egyptian. His own people see him as a bully and know-it-all, so Moses runs away. When God speaks to him in today’s reading, God is asking Moses not only to turn to God, but to return to his people, to the place where he was rejected, to the place where he had been enslaved. For Moses, there’s tremendous risk in repenting, in turning to face and follow God. Moses is afraid. He is confused. He feels unworthy of leading this people, especially in that the people he is to lead have already rejected him once before. But Moses repents. He faces what he needs to face. 

The season of the Lent and the sprouting energy in our church garden draw me back to the gardening images in today’s Gospel. It’s significant that Luke puts the words of wisdom in the mouth of a gardener. In a few more weeks, we’ll remember how in John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for the gardener on Easter morning. In each of these, Jesus is trying to show us that God is like a patient (but persistent and active) gardener with the way God works with us to fight sin.

To help the fig tree in the Gospel, the gardener suggests manure, fertilizer. Repentance also needs some groundwork. Sometimes we begin by simply being grounded, by remembering who we are, and who we most want to be. Prayer, scripture, spending time with people who contribute positive energy all move us toward turning towards God and God’s intentions for us. Fertilizer helps us be healthier in order to do the right thing. Like the gardener who prunes the fig tree, God sometimes prunes or helps us prune in our lives—to cut out the excess and the baggage. Pruning gets rid of the diseased parts and allows the stronger parts to develop even more strength, and so we’re stronger to fight evil and to withstand the storms of life. In our second reading today, St. Paul counsels the Corinthians, “… [I]f you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

Finally, the gardener in the Gospel will probably work with the fig tree to cut out the longer, gangly limbs that are growing out of pace with the rest. When we repent, we ask God to take away the weight of resentments that slow us down. We ask God to dispel the anger that takes energy away from growth and development. This also allows for more light to get to the heart of things.

As a Choral Postlude, our guest choir, The New Amsterdam Boys and Girls Choir will signa wonderful song in English and Swahili, Amani Utupe (Grand Us Peace, Give Us Courage). It acknowledges that the roads of life are sometimes rocky, tiresome, and dark, and there are lots of decisions to make. But when we ask for it, when we repent, and turn to God, God always gives us the wisdom and courage we need.

This season and always, may we turn and return to God.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.