Third Sunday in
Lent (C)
March 20, 2022
Text: Luke 13:1-9
It
was a common belief in the ancient world, and frankly, among us, as well, that
when tragedy strikes, it must be because the victims somehow had it coming. When the towers fell, and so many lost their
lives on 9/11, many said it was God’s punishment on our nation’s sin and
unbelief. When Hurricane Katrina struck
New Orleans and flooded the city, televangelist Pat Robertson declared that it
was divine retribution over the godlessness of the people. Whether it is an act of violence perpetrated
by men, as when Pilate mingled the blood of the Galileans with their
sacrifices, or a nature-made or accidental catastrophe, as when the tower in
Siloam collapsed and killed eighteen, we are tempted to think that those who
suffer must be worse sinners than all the others. And if we suffer some tragedy, we are
tempted to think that it must be because of something we’ve done, that
God is punishing us for some particular sin.
But that is not how Jesus would have us understand such events. Rather, He would have us view all such
tragedies, though they are very evil, nevertheless as gracious reminders from
God to examine ourselves, repent of all our sins, and return to God and His
merciful redemption. That is what He
means when He says, “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish”
(Luke 13:3, 5; ESV). There is no safe
place apart from God. Tragedy could
strike at any moment in this fallen world.
So be ready for it by daily repenting of your sin and rebellion against
God. Be ready by daily fleeing to Christ
for mercy and salvation, taking refuge under the wings of His cross, and under
His outstretched arms.
What
is repentance? We should be clear on
this, because this is the first part of Christian preaching, as Jesus gives it
to us: “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Well, first, here is what repentance is not. It is not works of penance you do
to make satisfaction for your sins. God
is not looking for you to punish yourself by self-chosen works of purgation,
nor does He want you to engage in acts of piety for the purpose of gaining His
attention and meriting His favor. Those
are pagan notions, and they have no place in the heart of a Christian. You cannot earn the forgiveness of
your sins.
Nor
is it feeling really bad about your sins. This is all-too-often the Lutheran version of
doing penance. Good old-fashioned
Lutheran guilt, as David Letterman calls it.
If I’m poor and miserable enough of a sinner, God will forgive me. But God does not base His mercy on your low
self-esteem. And anyway, it so easily
becomes a mark of pride. I’m a poorer
and more miserable sinner than you’ll ever be, and you couldn’t possibly feel
as bad about yourself as I’m able to feel about myself. So there.
I win.
Nor
is it bargaining with God. “God,
if you forgive me, I will do better next time.
Forgive me just this once more, and I’ll never do that sin again.” As though God is moved by your “really
meaning it this time,” and as though He doesn’t know you’ll fall
again. Honestly, you’re just deluding
yourself. Though you should
battle against habitual sin and resist it, do you actually think you have the
strength of will to pull yourself out of the muck and filth of sin by your own
bootstraps?
Nor
is repentance presuming upon God’s grace, continuing in sin, that grace
may abound. “God will forgive me, so I
may as well do what I want.” St. Paul
had something to say about that in Romans Chapter 6. This is actually the opposite of
repentance. It is giving yourself up
into the old slavery to sin. That way
leads only to death.
Least
of all is it despair of God’s mercy and forgiveness, as though your
sins were too bad for God to forgive, as though Christ’s sacrifice were insufficient. That is not repentance. That is unbelief.
So
what is repentance? Repentance
has two parts. The first part is
contrition. The second is faith.
Contrition
is sorrow over sin, though we’d be mistaken to think of it simply as an
emotion. To be honest, what grieves me
the most about my sin is that I’m not all that grieved over some of my
sins. I’m not all that heartily
sorry, and sometimes I question the sincerity of my sincerely repenting
of them. What contrition really is,
is the Law holding my sins before my eyes as in a mirror, forcing me to
look at the horrifying reality. It’s not
a pretty picture. Every last blemish
is starkly portrayed, no matter my efforts to cover it up cosmetically. It reveals that my problem is not just the
wicked and despicable things I’ve done, but my very nature, which has
been corrupted to its core by the disease of sin. That produces true terrors of
conscience.
But
when the Law has done its work, God immediately adds the consoling Promise of
the Gospel. That is that Christ has died
precisely for sinners like me, for the forgiveness of my sins, and even
for my insufficient contrition. Even for
my false repentance, my attempts to earn His divine pardon and favor, my
presuming upon His grace, my despair of His mercy. He does all of that to death on the cross. And He is risen from the dead for my justification. That is, God declares me righteous for
Jesus’ sake, by virtue of Christ’s own righteousness credited to my
account. And not only that, but baptized
into the risen Christ, I am raised to new life in Him. He gives me His Spirit. I am given a new heart. New desires.
A new disposition toward God and His holy Word. I want to do what He commands. I do not want to do what He
forbids. I want to love and serve
Him. I want to love and serve my
neighbor. And I begin,
imperfectly, to be sure, to actually do it. This is what we may call the third part of
repentance, that is, fruit worthy of repentance.
This
is how our Confessions define repentance, and this is very helpful to our
Christian life. “To deliver godly
consciences from these mazes of the learned persons, we have attributed these
two parts to repentance: contrition and faith.
If anyone desires to add a third—fruit worthy of repentance, that is, a
change of the entire life and character for the better—we will not oppose it.”[1] That is Menachthon in The Apology of the
Augsburg Confession.
But
as always, Luther is even more entertaining, and here he is in The Smalcald
Articles (and he’s worth quoting at length): “This is God’s
thunderbolt. By the Law He strikes down
both obvious sinners and false saints.
He declares no one to be in the right, but drives them all together to
terror and despair. This is the hammer. As Jeremiah says, ‘Is not My word like… a
hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?’ (23:29).
This is not active contrition or manufactured repentance. It is passive contrition, true sorrow of
heart, suffering, and the sensation of death.
This is what true repentance means.
Here a person needs to hear something like this, ‘You are all of no
account, whether you are obvious sinners or saints <in your own
opinions>. You have to become
different from what you are now. You
have to act differently than you are now acting, whether you are as great,
wise, powerful, and holy as you can be.
Here no one is godly.’ But to
this office of the Law, the New Testament immediately adds the consoling
promise of grace through the Gospel.
This must be believed. As Christ
declares, ‘Repent and believe in the gospel’ (Mark 1:15). That is, become different, act differently,
and believe My promise.”[2]
Or
perhaps we should stick with Luther’s pithy and memorable definition of
repentance in the Small Catechism: Repentance is a daily return to
Baptism, which “indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition
and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a
new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and
purity forever,” as “St. Paul writes in Romans chapter six: ‘We were therefore
buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new
life’ (Rom. 6:4).”[3]
Now,
tragedy and suffering, though certainly evil in and of itself, God nevertheless
works for our good (Rom. 8:28) as an exercise in this very repentance. That is, He lays upon us the blessed and holy
cross, to slay Old Adam, to bring us to the end of ourselves and kill us, that
He may raise us up from the dead. He
digs around us and piles on the manure.
It hurts, and it’s messy. It
stinks to high heaven. But it’s just
what an otherwise dead tree needs from the Vinedresser if there is to be life
and fruit for God.
God
comes looking for fruit worthy of repentance.
Jesus says to His Father, “Be patient.
Wait awhile, as I apply the Law and Gospel Medicine, My Word and the
Holy Sacraments, and just the right sufferings.
You’ll see. There will be
fruit. And if not, You can cut it down.” You may certainly refuse the ministrations of
Christ, and so go on in your death. In
that case, there is nothing left but to chop down the tree and make room for
others. But when Christ administers His
saving medicine, there is nothing short of a resurrection from the dead. He brings forth repentance. He repents you. He does it. He brings forth faith. He enlivens you. By His Spirit. In His Word.
And behold, there is fruit. A
living sacrifice, pleasing and acceptable to God the Father, through Jesus
Christ, our Lord.
Those
who suffer great tragedy, are they worse sinners than all the rest? No. We
all deserve worse than we get. We
all deserve worse yet. But
in Christ, in spite of all tragedy and suffering, and even through it, what do
we get? We get the very best. Forgiveness of sins. Eternal life and salvation. Resurrection from the dead. Christ may pile it on. But He does all things well. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Apol. XIIA (V):28, McCain, p. 161.
[2] SA III:III:2-4, McCain, p. 272.
[3] Luther’s Small Catechism (St. Louis: Concordia, 1986).
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