This is a sermon preached at St Leonard's, Aston-le-Walls, on Sunday 20 March 2022

The occasion was the Third Sunday of Lent.

Scriptures relating are:

1 CORINTHIANS 10:1-13

LUKE 13:1-9

You can listen to a recording of the sermon here.

Story from Gospel…

Jesus recalling talk about Galilean massacre in Jerusalem and fall of Tower of Siloam – flesh out these events (highly written about by Josephus, since subject of political foment re. Herod and occupation)

Our Lord is a Galilean going up to Jerusalem – not safe from Herod in Galilee, & certainly not here

By the time Luke’s Gospel written, all of 2nd Temple torn down and ransacked by Romans (AD70), not just little Tower of Siloam

Luke’s readers could now read that and weep…

Lesson – Jesus was saying, events happen.  The crucial question is, “Are you ready to repent, go the better way, and be transformed and transformative, within God’s love?”

…but for the moment they are making one or both of two crucial mistakes

1) thinking that their own political posturing was any less complicit in evil than the actions of either the Galileans or Herod, in his response – they thought that the way to get rid of the Romans and their puppet king, Herod, was through armed revolution…what distinctions do we make between our own actions and thoughts and even low-level gossip and the actions of those who are most visible in political and other struggles for justice?  Do we have clear categories of blame, which carefully avoid us ever blaming ourselves, but which stigmatise key people or social groups or actions, in order to keep the focus off ourselves?

2) thinking that ‘some people deserve it and God destroys them in anger’…who do we assign to that ‘damned’ category?  Repeat, possibly those we casually-labelled, rather than properly encountered?...  And when we see events unfold, are we tempted to think, “Well, they must have deserved that, then, ‘cos they are more sinful than us”

Jesus says, “No!”  It is the same all over.  Each of us has been given responsibility and is called to the selfless, loving life in imitation of Jesus.  Jesus, the Galilean, is being told by his friends the disciples, “You shouldn’t be going up to Jerusalem, as a Galilean man, in these dangerous times.  The Romans and their henchmen will tar you with the same brush as those rebels.”

“I will go,” says Jesus.  “But I will go the Way of the Cross.”

Others say to him, “If something horrible happens to you in Jerusalem, that will show that God has abandoned you and despises you.”

Jesus says, “No.  God loves me, as he loves you, as he loves each.  He will not have abandoned me, whatever happens next.”

“Now,” says Jesus, “Stop trying to shift the focus, stop trying to blame someone else – including God, who is your Father – and start recognising your need to repent, to turn around, to go a different way.  We are in this together, and God’s goodness will reach through in this way.”

Now, in the middle of the Church’s season of Lent, we are reminded of Our Lord setting his face to go up to Jerusalem.  Once there, he will confront the powers of injustice, but will refuse to return like for like, will refuse to keep playing the stupid, deadly game of blame, of scapegoating, or of imagining that God has abandoned anybody when circumstances change.

He will go to identify with all the suffering, all the oppressed – to demonstrate what God’s enormous love looks like in action.  He will go, and will suffer humiliation, torture and a brutal death at the hands of merciless people.  But he will hold to mercy.  And God, his Father, will be with him through it all, and will show what this love looks like in a fully human life.

Not blame and avoidance, but a heartfelt and acted response to God’s loving call.

It is good message to hear in the middle of Lent, or at any time.  Even, at our own time of new geopolitics and aggression in Europe, and of the larger political and trust breakdown which characterises much of our social discourse….  And Jesus speaks this message afresh to us all, today.

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