A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent, Year C (Exodus 3:1-15; I Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9)

It is a weekly ritual at Rutgers for a group of us (students, faculty, and local clergy) to sit down over lunch and look at the lectionary passages appointed for the coming Sunday. We always have a good discussion. We call it “Lectionary Lunch”. For local clergy, it is a chance to get a jump start on sermon preparation. For students it is a weekly opportunity for lively discussion over a good meal. This past week, however, was Spring Break, and when I looked at the passages, I swallowed hard. Oh boy, I could sure have used their help!

Sitting down to write a sermon with passages like these would cause any sane preacher to opt for a quaint homily on Lent Madness, or the history of Lenten fasts, but I’m not one to back down from a challenge, so here goes.

Whenever I look at a coming Sunday’s lessons, I almost always start by looking at the Gospel lesson. Ouch! Moving on. Well, the lesson from Corinthians is actually WORSE. So, let’s try Exodus. Sigh. There’s no way around it – these passages are among what some call the “difficult sayings” of Jesus, and in this case the difficult sayings attributed to Moses and Paul as well. The Psalm, however, is very nice.

But let’s dive into to these difficult readings. In Exodus we are present at the call of Moses, a voice coming out of a burning bush. God calls Moses to confront Pharaoh and for Moses to tell the Israelites that “I AM” sent him. It’s easy to see the special effects and hear the ominous voice telling Moses “come closer” and “take off your shoes.” But if you’ve read the book or at least seen the movie, you’ll know there’s trouble ahead. Confronting Pharaoh will lead Moses into the fight of a lifetime.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is basically a commentary on the story of Moses and the Children of Israel. Paul suggests God destroyed various members of the Children of Israel as an example of their sinfulness. These are difficult words, indeed, a passage full of God smiting disobedient children. Paul seems to say, “They had it coming.”

Death is prominent in the Gospel lesson as well. In what to our ears might sound like a fire and brimstone tirade, Jesus warns his listeners that unless they repent, a horrible death awaits them all! These are not listed among the comfortable words of Jesus. These are passages that street preachers and apocalyptic doom-sayers LOVE! Turn or burn!

So, when preparing a sermon based on passages like these, I think it is helpful to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and also look for any commonality or connection between these passages. Are they just randomly assigned on the same Sunday, or do they speak to each other? Is there a conversation between them happening here?

Each lesson deals with God’s relationship to God’s people. Certainly, on the surface these are episodes in the relationship that could be described as stormy at best. At times God does seem vengeful and authoritarian. But I also hear mercy in these stories.

It is the cries of the people that drive God to act in the story from Exodus. God is not distant and unmoved by their suffering. God intervenes through the person of Moses. The Children of Israel have suffered long in slavery and bondage, and God is sending Moses as his personal ambassador to lead the people to freedom, to a land of milk and honey. By this point in their history as a people, for many of the Israelites captive in Egypt, the story of God and even the name of God must have seemed like an ancient memory, a story told to them by their grandparents, let alone the idea that God actually cared or heard their cries. But now Moses goes to the Israelites with the name of God on his lips – I AM! The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has a name. God is not unmoved or unmoving. God has heard them! Mercy has come at last. A pleasant image – some hopeful words!

But then, what can we make of the passage from Corinthians? Paul conjures up a litany of those Children of Israel who died, it would seem at God’s hand, because they were disobedient. These were the same Israelites who were just liberated from Egypt. We know the scene well. Moses is up on Mt Sinai, conversing with God. Meanwhile, the people are down below building a golden calf. How quickly they turned away from God, and God was literally right there!

These same people would go on to drink water God brought forth from a rock in the desert. They ate manna and quail that God sent them in the wilderness. And yet, rebellion was always a close possibility. How soon they would forget what God had done for them. But as much as God loved them God still held them accountable for their actions, just like God had punished Pharaoh.

Paul addresses his readers by reminding them that they are facing similar trials and temptations, much like those tests that the Children of Israel failed. Turn to Christ, Paul tells them. In the face of testing, trust God. In the wake of these violent deaths, Paul tells us to hold even more tightly to God. Following our own way can lead only to death.

And finally, Jesus in the Gospel lesson recounts more tales of tragic death. First Jesus reacts to the story of some Galilean rebels who were slaughtered for their uprising, their blood mingled with the sacrificial animals in the ultimate sacrilege. In what might seem to contradict Paul’s assertion that God had caused the deaths of the unrighteous, Jesus turns the tables as he always did. Do you think these who died were more sinful than you? If they had it coming, what’s coming your way?

Jesus then cites the accidental deaths caused by a tower collapse. Everybody was talking about it. Was this a ‘sign from God’ that these people were more sinful than everyone else?

Jesus came to call the people back to God, to show them the way. Here they are mourning the deaths of their freedom fighters and fretting over the deaths of seemingly innocent people in an accident. Jesus stops them cold and warns them that must turn back to God.

Just like the children of Israel worshipping a golden calf in God’s very face, Jesus was there, right there in their midst, and they still didn’t get it. The people of God are the fig tree that God will give one more season to produce fruit. God has been patient, but time is running out. The fig tree must produce fruit or be cut down. These ARE hard words. But hey…it’s Lent.

Should we as Christians commit the same mistakes as the Children of Israel in Moses’ day or Jesus’ day, doing our own thing, charting our own course with no thought for God? Should we worship money, and power, and the uber-rich, building a new golden calf? Should we take matters into our own hands, choosing violence to solve our problems, ignoring the way of peace? Should we assume that we have a “get out of jail free card”? When we don’t walk in the way of love, there can be consequences.

The reminder is the same as on Ash Wednesday, we are but dust. We are mortal. No one gets out of here alive. I have gotten your parish emails for several years now, and I have watched the news come so often lately that someone in the parish has died. There have been many. Too many. Last weekend I attended the memorial for Fr. Walt Zelley. Yesterday, I led the liturgy for Kathy Dean. And Mother Barbara will lead the liturgy for Cecilia Roberts later this week. I won’t list all those who have passed in the last year, but suffice it to say, the St. Luke’s community has been well-acquainted with grief of late.

The pain of death wakes us all up. It gets our attention. Death stings. Our only hope in this uncertain world is to look to God and God’s way instead of our own way.

Difficult passages though these may be, we remember the times that God’s hand extended mercy. God heard the cries of the children in Egypt. God’s hand moved to set them free. When they were hungry and thirsty, God sent them water and food in the wilderness. And though God’s people continually stop following God’s way, God’s hand still scooped one more layer of fertilizer around the unfruitful tree before it would be cut down.

We see both judgment and mercy. Let us live, then, not in fear of God’s judgment, but in thanksgiving of God’s mercy. It is a curious irony indeed that as we fast and meditate on our mortality this Lent, signs of Spring are appearing. In addition to the crocuses in my front yard, we’ve got daffodils and hyacinths appearing. Bird song is growing louder. Winter and death have done their worst, as they always do, but the struggle is a futile one – Spring and Easter and new life await us on the other side of Lent.

God’s property is always to have mercy, and we have to come to celebrate that fact in the Eucharist. As we offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, let us remember how God has been faithful in the past and increase our faith that God will be faithful in the future. Amen.