The Forbearance of God
Third Sunday of Lent Scripture Readings
Third Sunday of Lent Scripture Readings
We’ve often said that, for Jesus, repentance meant much more than just being sorry. He insisted on repentance as a change of mind and heart in order to enter the Kingdom of God. It was popularly thought that God would reward the good and punish evildoers in this life. Jesus never taught that, and it’s against that backdrop that we find the examples from today’s gospel reading. The two disasters Luke mentions are rather obscure and there are few historical facts that can be used to better understand them.
One of my sources suggests that these examples—the Galileans who were killed and those on whom the tower fell—might be related. During Pilate’s tenure as procurator, he ordered the construction of a much-needed aqueduct to bring water into the temple vicinity. According to the historian Josephus [Book 8, Chapter 3, Paragraph 2], Pilate took money from the temple treasury to help defer the cost of his project. Riots ensued because, to the people of Israel, that money had been consecrated to God. In the course of the riot, many were killed or injured when Pilate ordered his soldiers to disperse the crowd.
It’s also possible that the tower being constructed near the pool of Siloam was being built to guard the new aqueduct. We can speculate that the people who came to Jesus to report the incident believed that God was punishing those men who were working on that unholy and blasphemous project. But Jesus refused to endorse their belief that catastrophes were God’s way of punishing sinners. He insisted that, if that were the case, none of his listeners would have escaped God’s wrath. He did, however, warn them that, if they didn’t change their minds, they could get themselves into even worse trouble. It’s possible that they were sympathetic to the cause of those who were killed, and Jesus might have been warning them about the consequences of rebellion which in fact came about in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, temple, and all.
That’s why the parable Jesus tells them right after this now makes sense. Once again, Jesus continues the themes of punishment and repentance. This time, using a tree, Jesus references the relationship between God and the nation of Israel. It’s the nation itself that fails to live up to its promises and potential. Even then, God forbears the destruction. He gives Israel yet another chance to heed the prophetic Word. The three years mentioned in the parable may refer to the three years of Jesus’s public ministry, where apparently his efforts were not showing any great results. Regardless, God gives his people yet another chance to bear fruit. The last sentence in this passage is significant. “…it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.”
At the time Luke wrote his gospel, the fate of the nation of Israel had long been sealed and the consequences were well-known. The words of Jesus as recorded by Luke are clear: tragedies and disasters are not God’s punishment on individuals for their supposed sin. But, despite God’s forbearance, when nations go wrong, he won’t intervene to save them from themselves beyond giving them warning signs for what otherwise will inexorably come—their collapse as a nation. Understanding Jesus’s message in this light should give us pause to contemplate what’s happening and what’s yet to come with regard to our own nation. There’s no Jonah here today to march down the streets calling out, “Three days more and Ninevah will be destroyed.” And there’s no possibility that our own leaders will put on sackcloth and sit in ashes to repent as did the Assyrian king.
Once again, we get to see our God, not as the enforcer he’s been so often made out to be, but just the opposite. Once again, I repeat that God Doesn’t inflict tragedy and disaster on people as a punishment. Such things are at the same time built into the fabric of the universe and the result of the thoughtless or perverse actions of humans themselves. None of that is an expression of God’s will. Why does God allow such things? Because, first of all, many so-called disasters are simply people getting caught up in the natural functioning of the universe. Those people are, in a way, collateral damage as a result of the universe behaving normally. Secondly, God will not mess with human will. If he were to do that, it would eliminate any possibility of love. Pre-programmed love would be no love at all. In order for love to exist, malice must also remain an option.
On the contrary. God strives to create an intimate relationship with each of us. Today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus is one of my very favorite passages from the Scriptures because it shows us who God is and how he operates. Moses is curious and he goes up the mountain to see what’s going on. We mustn’t think that his hike up the mountain was a walk in the park. It took strength, stamina, and perseverance to make that climb. That tells us that his desire to explore the Unknown was strong enough to propel him forward against the odds. At the top of the mountain, he finds a bush in flames but not consumed. Isn’t that an image of the love that God has for us? Isn’t that what he wishes we would have for him?
God, for Moses, wasn’t like the Wizard of Oz for Dorothy and her crew. He didn’t say, “Go away!” and he didn’t use tricks to scare Moses and drive him off. Instead, he had Moses take off his sandals. They were symbolic of all the barriers we put up to insulate ourselves from God and his creation. To Moses, God showed himself as an approachable God. He introduced himself to Moses, telling him that he was the God he’d learned about in the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Like us, Moses learned about God second-hand. But all that changed when God took Moses into his confidence and revealed to him the Name that was tied to his divine nature: Yahweh. It’s a name derived from the Hebrew verb “to be.” It can mean “I am the One who is,” or “I will be who I will be,” or even “I cause to be what is.” In any case, by revealing his Name to Moses, he gave him intimate access to his person and nature. That’s why “Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain.”
The lesson for today could be that God desires nothing less than an intimate connection with us as a people and as individuals. His forbearance is unlimited. He doesn’t punish but he won’t stand in the way of our reaping whatever evil we may sow. All that’s required for us to go beyond the limitations of the God we only learned about and enter into an intimate relationship with him is, like Moses, to seek him boldly and courageously in the unknowns of our own lives. If we do that, we’ll find the God whose love burns for us but is never consumed and who whispers to us in the silence of our hearts saying, “I am Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Take off your shoes, for you stand on holy ground. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the ages.” [cf. Matthew 28:20]
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