I preached this sermon last night with stuff hanging out of my nose — another Great Moment In Preaching.  Hopefully it wasn’t visible from too far away.

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’  Then he told 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?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’  Luke 13.1-9 NRSV

Kae Evensen is a Lutheran pastor in Minneapolis. She grew up in a church that talked a lot about an angry God. God was always angry with us and our sins. As a teen she rebelled against this negative imagery and left the church. She said, “If I was going to go to hell, I was going to do it on my one terms.  I knew I could never be good enough to go to heaven anyway.”  It took her many years to return to church. Along the way she discovered the grace of the gospel, the great Yes behind the No. Her experiences are mirrored in the lives of many people. Maybe some of you here today grew up in churches that emphasized an angry God. So for you, Jesus’ words today may be hard to hear. “Repent or Perish” sounds so negative.

News was spreading quickly through the city of Jerusalem. Pilate, the Roman governor, had done a terrible thing. Some people from Galilee had been worshiping at the Temple. Pilate had them killed – for reasons we don’t know – and then mixed their blood in with the blood of animals in the Temple sacrifices. An awful atrocity. The news made it to Jesus, and they wanted to know his opinion on it. As I imagine the scene, Jesus is sitting near the marketplace then, and the afternoon sun is casting long shadows on the stone pavement. People around him are wondering how he will respond.

Jesus thinks for a minute, then speaks. He doesn’t condemn Pilate or the Romans. He doesn’t seem outraged at all. He uses the incident to make a theological point. “Do you think those people were worse sinners than anyone else?” he asks. (This was a common assumption of the day. Those people were punished for their sins.) “No,” he says. “But unless you repent, you will perish too.” Then Jesus mentions another recent tragedy, when the Siloam Tower fell and killed 18 people. It was part of the water system of the city. Jesus said the same thing. Those people weren’t worse than anyone else. “Unless you repent and turn to God, you too will die, just like them.” Then to anchor things, he tells a little story about an unproductive fruit tree. It takes up valuable space in the garden, but it produces no fruit year after year. Management decides to give the tree one more year before they pull it up and plant another. It’s the same message. The tree must repent – bear fruit – or it will die. Repent or perish… a stern warning from Jesus.

This message runs against the current of how we imagine Jesus, if that image is kind and never harsh. Philip Yancey is a Christian journalist. He grew up imagining Jesus was always kind and gentle, like Mr Rogers, only with a beard. Only as an adult did Yancey realize that Mr Rogers would never have gotten himself crucified. You have to offend people to do that. Now Fred Rogers was a wonderful Christian man, but he was also not the kind of man who would say, “Repent or perish.” Jesus was. So how do we hear this warning from Jesus?

A couple of things. First, “change your ways or suffer the consequences” is not an uncommon message. It’s something your physician might say, for instance. Or for someone who has just gotten out of jail, it’s something a parole officer might say. We hear “repent or perish” more than we know. Second, we can invert the negative language to positive. If you’ve ever developed film the old fashioned way in a dark room, you are familiar with the negative of a photo, where all the lights are dark. “Repent or perish” is a negative. The positive image is “repent and live.” Choose life so that you may live. Jesus is giving an invitation to live here. He is offering abundant life. But the gateway, the doorway, is repentance. The question for us now is, What does repentance look like?

In the 18th century a Prussian king was visiting inmates in a Berlin prison. They crowded around the king and protested their innocence. They had all been unjustly condemned and put in prison. There was one man, though, would sat quietly by himself and said nothing. The king was curious about him and called him over. “Why are you here?” the king asked. “Armed robbery, your Majesty,” the man replied. “Were you guilty?” “Yes, I deserve my punishment.” Then the king said to the guards, “Release this man. I don’t want him corrupting all these other innocent people.” The man was set free that day.

This is an image of repentance. It means to rethink things. It begins with admitting our guilt. We are all guilty sinners, stuck in the prison of our own sin. But we resist the idea that we are guilty, like all those prisoners did in Berlin. The guilty are all those we hear about in the news, people who have committed crimes. “I’ve broken no laws,” we say. “I’m an exemplary citizen. I volunteer at the soup kitchen. And above all, I’m nice.” It’s good to be nice, of course, but it’s not the same as being holy. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, we can compare ourselves to God. God of absolute holiness, infinite purity and boundless love. That’s the standard. If we compare ourselves to that standard, we realize how far short we fall. God expects us to be like him – holy, pure and loving.

Out at a desert monastery, an old monk was found weeping one day. A young brother asked him, “Father, why are you weeping.” “I am weeping for my sins,” the old man said. “But Father, you lead a pure and blameless life.” The old man was indeed known for his holiness. “If I were allowed to see my sins,” he said, “There would not be enough men to weep for them.” Perhaps God in his mercy shields our eyes from our own sins. But then the day comes when the crack appears and widens. Something happens, and we see our sins… maybe for the first time. That’s when repentance begins, and we set out on the new life Jesus offers us.

But the key thing to know is that we don’t repent to avoid hell. Kae Evenson, the Lutheran pastor, had to learn this. We don’t repent to avoid hell. We repent to seek health and healing. Sin is a sickness deep within us. We have a Great Physician, Jesus, who wants to heal us. But for that to happen, we must GO TO THE DOCTOR. We admit our infection, our disease, and we acknowledge we cannot cure ourselves. Our doctor has the right medicine, the right treatment, to make us well and set us on the road to health. The road begins with repentance.

Dear friends, it’s Lent. This is what we do in Lent. Lent begins with ashes, a sign of our mortality. Ashes remind us to repent while there is still time. We turn from our sins. We turn to God for healing. Amen.