Good Church People

A sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
March 20, 2022

“Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Jesus is not beating around the bush here. He’s really telling us like it is. Repent. Turn around. Turn to God. It’s the call of this penitential season. In Lent we acknowledge we don’t have it all figured out. We are sinners in need of God’s grace. Perhaps, though, I am preaching to the choir, as they say. After all, we good people are in church, where we confess our sins all the time, not just during Lent. The truth is, though, we good church people need this message desperately. 

The people Jesus is talking to today considered themselves good church people, like us; they were righteous, trying to follow God, concerned with the ways of God. They come to Jesus today and tell him about two tragedies. The first is an apparent massacre by Pilate, and we know he was a brutal ruler. So brutal, in fact, that Rome would eventually recall and remove him from his post. He went too far, even for Rome. The second is an accident where a tower fell on people. We don’t know the details of either of these events; they have been lost to the historical record. But based on Jesus’s response, we can surmise that the people coming to Jesus must have thought that those who died were somehow deserving because they were sinful. “Hey Jesus,” they must have said, “Did you hear about those Galileans that were killed, and about those people who were killed when that tower fell. They must have been sinners, huh? I’m glad we’re not like that. We’re church good people. We go to church every Sunday. We give a pledge. We volunteer. We sing the hymns and pray the prayers. Yes, we’re good church people–not like them.” 

Jesus hears what they’re saying, and then says something startling, something that must have shocked them. He warns those good church people to look out: “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” He’s saying, you may be in church every Sunday; you may give a pledge; you may give your time and talent; you may sing and pray; but you’re a sinner. Repent. 

His warning is for us, too, the good church people today. If we’re not careful, we can fall into the same trap of self-righteousness. We can think, oh we’re so good and we have it all figured out. That’s exactly the moment when we push our savior out of the picture. That’s exactly the moment when we know we’re not living by God’s grace and mercy. Because the truth is, yes, we try to do right. We try to do good. We come to church. We pledge. We give of our time and talent to worthy and holy causes. We sing the hymns and say the prayers. And all of that pleases God. But we’re still sinners. And we still need Jesus. We’re not all good by ourselves; we need our savior.  

A favorite theologian of mine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said something along these lines. He is comparing the church–the real church with real people–to what he calls the pious community. So often, instead of encountering the real church with real people, we encounter this pious community. Said another way, instead of meeting sinners in the pews, we meet good church people who have it all figured out. Here’s what Bonhoeffer said: 

The pious community permits no one to be a sinner. We are not allowed to be sinners. Many Christians would be unimaginably horrified if a real sinner were suddenly to turn up among the pious. So we remain alone with our sin, trapped in lies and hypocrisy, for we are in fact sinners.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together

I hope we Episcopalians on the Prairie have enough grace to fess up to who we are: we’re not good church people; we’re sinners. Sure, we try. We try to do good. We give our time, talent, and treasure. We sing the hymns and say the prayers. And we know that all of that pleases God! But we don’t have it all figured out. We can’t save ourselves. This is not a pious community, full of perfect, good church people. This is the church. And that means we are a community of sinners, and we need Jesus. We need his grace, his forgiveness, his love, his life. And if one of those sinners, out there, walks through our doors, I hope we will see them for who they are: Just like us. 

At the end of today’s gospel, Jesus tells this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ The Gardener replied, ‘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.'” Often, when we think about what this parable means, we think God is the one who comes up to the tree and tells us to cut it down. You and I, the gardener, we ask for another year. We dig around to see if we can make it better. 

I want to suggest that there is a better way of seeing this parable. That little fig tree does represent us. It’s our spiritual lives. And sometimes, our spiritual lives need some work. We’re not very impressive. But it’s not God who walks up to it and says, cut it down. No, it’s those good church people. The people who have it all figured out. They come up to our spiritual life, and they say, oh this is worthless. We can’t have this kind of pitiful tree here. What would the neighborhood association say? This is a sinful tree. It’s not worth having around. We only keep good company with good church people, with respectable trees in respectable, well-manicured gardens, no weeds at all, perfectly pruned and always looking exactly right. And if this tree wants to be with us, it’s going to have to be like that. 

Maybe, in some backwards way, we are the ones who walk up to that tree, to our own spiritual lives. After all, we have heard all of this talk of what we are supposed to look like, be like. Those expectations of those good church people can become our expectations of ourselves. We can get caught up in their way of seeing, and we can begin to evaluate ourselves through the eyes of others. And we feel worthless, less-than, out of place, shameful. 

We walk up to our own little tree. We look down on our own spiritual life. We see the truth of it all, the stuff not everyone can see. We see our shame, our guilt, our missteps, our failings. We look down on our prayers, on our faithfulness. We consider all of those expectations of the good people who have it all together, or so they say. Even though we have tried so hard, we find that we come up short of those expectations. Cut it down, we say. It’s not worth it. I have worked so hard myself, and I haven’t been able to make that tree look like I want it to. This spiritual life of mine isn’t pretty enough, isn’t good enough. What’s the use? Cut it down. Give up. 

But then we hear that voice. The gardener. He’s filthy. He’s been working hard. He says, Wait! ‘Sir, Madam, 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.’ Give me some time, he says. I will do the work. I will help the struggling tree. I know what to do. 

We don’t recognize the gardener. He is almost a nuisance. We would rather just be done with it and wipe our hands clean. No, we don’t recognize the gardener. But hey, Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize him either. We don’t see that it’s Jesus. Jesus, our savior, who wants to work on us. Who wants to dig around. Who wants to help us. If only we will let him. If only we will turn to him and allow his grace, his work, to change us. 

Lent is calling us to give in to what the gardener wants to do in our lives. Lent is calling us to give up trying to do it ourselves–give up trying to be those good, perfect church people. The world has enough of those. No, Lent is calling us to confess to who we really are: we’re sinners in need of God’s grace. And God in Christ is right here. Christ the Gardener is digging around, trying to help us grow, making us healthy and fruitful. 

But we, that little tree, we have to stop fighting. We have to let the Gardener work, and stop trying to work it out ourselves. We have to let the grace in. We have to turn to the Gardener–that’s what repentance is. We admit that we don’t know how to do it on our own. We need the Gardener to work on us. We turn from our own way and turn to him. We trust that he knows what to do. And then we really start living and growing and bearing good fruit. And just maybe, we can stop looking down on that little tree. Maybe we can learn to see that little tree of our spiritual lives through the loving, gracious, and caring eyes of Christ. 

I imagine The Trinity gets together at Jesus’s place. It’s a standing meeting for coffee and cookies. The Father and the Holy Spirit ask the Son, “Well, Jesus, what’s new in your garden?” His eyes light up. He puts his hat and gloves on, grabs his shears. “Let’s go see,” he says. They walk out into a big garden. In the middle of it is a big apple tree: the tree that started it all, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A chunk of it is missing, just enough wood to put a cross together. Around it are other trees: the St Alban boxwood hedge, the St Peter giant oak, the St Mary Magdalene rose bush as big as a redwood. But Jesus leads them all past all those, and he takes them to a small fig tree. There’s a small stone at the base of the tree, and your name is on it. He bends down, touches the branches. He points with excitement to the smallest blossom—fruit is starting to come in. He says, “I’ve been working on this one. I think it’s the most beautiful thing in the whole garden.”