There’s Always Next Sunday

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 11, 2007
Third Sunday in Lent

There’s Always Next Sunday
Luke 13:1-9
Isaiah 55:1-9

Everybody got out their brooms this past week, right?
You have been sweeping, cleaning,
scrubbing, washing;
Layers of dirt gone,
junk and clutter tossed out.
Fresh air infused with the Holy Spirit blowing through you.
Right?

Or perhaps not.
Perhaps you thought it about, but then things got in the way:
demands at work, from family, from school,
things kept popping up, the telephone kept ringing,
life kept interrupting.
Your intentions were good,
but you just ran out of week,
And of course, we had one less hour this week,
and that unexpected snow day.
This coming week probably looks better anyway;
the calendar is not so full;
Not as many places to be, not as many things to do.
We will be back to the full complement of 168 hours,
and we have probably closed the door on winter.

It was Scarlet O’Hara who said of her problems
at the end of “Gone with the Wind”:
“I won’t think about them today.
I’ll think about them tomorrow,
for tomorrow is another day.”
There’s always tomorrow, isn’t there?
Always another Sunday
when we can begin our spiritual housecleaning.

Or is there?
Can we be sure about tomorrow?
Can we be sure that there will always be next Sunday?
Uh oh: the preacher’s walking onto thin ice:
Guilt must be waiting in the wings about to make
its annual Lenten appearance.
We might even be about to talk about end times;
“Repent, sinners, for the end is near!”

You won’t hear me say,
“repent, for the end is near”,
But eschatologically speaking,
-- and you remember that word: eschatology,
it refers to the end times --
the one thing we know for sure
is that the end will come… sometime,
it will come whenever God determines it will come.
But we don’t need eschatology to remind us
of the reality that tomorrow might not be another day.
Next Sunday may simply not come.

The reality of life is that
things happen in life we don’t plan on.
A call comes from the personnel office
and thirty minutes later you struggle with the news
that your job has been eliminated.
A routine physical at the doctor leads to the ominous words,
“I think we need to run a few more tests.”
A car runs a red light, or crosses the double-yellow line.

None of us wants to think about things like that,
which is probably why Presbyterian churches,
including our own, are so thinly attended
on Ash Wednesday,
that day when we talk about our mortality:
“from dust we came, and to dust we shall return.”

Don’t worry: I won’t ask you to think of such things.
No, I will leave that to our Lord Jesus Christ,
because that is just what he is doing in our gospel lesson.
Even as he preached a message of grace, mercy,
forgiveness and love
he also tried to bring a sense of urgency to his message:
that the time for repentance was not, is not, next Sunday,
not even tomorrow, but here, now.

Jesus is the one who reminds us that we don’t know for sure
what tomorrow will bring.
How often does he say that no one knows
when the Son of Man will come again,
that he will come like a thief in the night?
In our lesson, he reminds us that even if we put aside eschatology,
the ugly reality of life has a nasty habit of showing up
when least expected,
as it did for the Galileans who were victims
of Pilate’s psychotic bloodthirstiness.

Most of us have had the awful experience of standardized tests,
the tests that require a half-dozen number 2 pencils,
the tests that always seem to have more questions to answer
than time permits.
Most of us have known how frustrating it is
when the proctor calls time and we are not yet done:
“Put your pencils down and close your book.”
The time is up; the responses you have given
are the responses that will determine your grade.
There are no further options for changes.
No one will hear your plea for more time.
There is no grace to go back to change an answer that
you realized was wrong
as soon as you put your pencil down.

Our Mediator, our Savior, our redeemer,
wants us to have no illusions about time;
Every one of us will be told at some point,
“time’s up,
put your pencils down,
and close your book.”
Our Savior, our Teacher wants us to be prepared and ready
for that day, whenever it comes.
Our Savior wants us not to wait until next week,
not to think that there will always be next Sunday;
He wants us to start now, preparing for that day.

Our Savior asks each of us: why we would wait until Spring
to do our spiritual housecleaning?
Why wouldn’t we be actively engaged
in spiritual housecleaning all year round?
Always ready.

The question Jesus puts squarely before each of us:
“Are you ready to stand before the Lord?”
Right now, before we leave here,
before we sing the next hymn,
before I even finish this sermon.
Are you ready to stand before the Lord?
Now, this very moment?

Jesus reminds us that we may not have the time that
we want to think we are going to have.
Jesus calls us to live our lives as if
there will not be a next Sunday,
not even a tomorrow.
Jesus calls us to bear fruit,
to bear fruit today, not next week; NOW.
And Jesus isn’t subtle about the fate that awaits us
if we don’t bear fruit.
Off in the distance is the sound of a grinding wheel,
the blade of an axe held tightly against it,
sparks flying as the edge is honed.

Now wait a minute.
Isn’t this all too dreary, all too weighty,
even for Lent?
After all, can’t we rely on “grace”?
Isn’t that what Reformed Theology is all about?
And if we have grace, then do we really need to talk
about sin, repentance,
penitence, guilt, or any of those dreadful subjects?

In his letter to the Romans, Paul asks just this question.
If the grace of God is evident in sin,
doesn’t that mean that grace abounds all the more
when we sin all the more?
Paul answers with his signature phrase,
“By no means!” (Romans 6:1-2)
Or put another way,
“don’t be ridiculous. Of course not!”

Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest and gifted writer,
encourages us to confront our sin, talk about sin,
not run from the word, but embrace it.
“Sin is our only hope,” she writes,
“because the recognition that something is wrong
is the first step toward setting it right again.
There is no help for those who admit no need of help.”
(Speaking of Sin, 59)

In her book, "Speaking of Sin", she helps us
to reflect on the reality that there is a gap
between each of us and God,
a yawning distance that we make,
a yawning distance we add to by our sins,
each time we do something,
each time we say something
that turns us from God,
each time we don’t do something that God
commands us to do,
each time we do something
Jesus teaches us not to do.
We expand the distance.
We stretch it, adding a bit here, a bit there.

And then in our self-absorption
when troubles come we cry out,
“God, why are you so far away?”
overlooking the fact that God is not the one who moved;
it’s each of us, each time we sin.

When we recognize our sins,
recognize those things that add to the distance,
we can begin to close the gap,
and draw closer to God.
Taylor writes that sin is a wake-up call,
sin is what opens our eyes:
“When we see how we have turned away from God,
then and only then do we have what we need
to begin turning back” (Taylor, 67)
Then and only then can we live the lives Christ calls us to:
transformational lives.

This is not easy to do; it’s hard work.
It is much easier to think that
the grace of God through Jesus Christ
puts us in a no-fault place,
where coming to church is like going through the car wash,
the week’s dirt washed clean from us,
so we are each good to go for another week.

But do you recall what Jesus said to the adulterous woman
even as he forgave her sin?
“Sin no more”.
In other words: “change;
Don’t do it again;
take a different path learn, grow,
be transformed.”
Stop treating grace as a free pass,
a coupon good for another run through the wash.

Lent encourages us to look at our lives,
to be reflective, introspective;
Look at the gap you have created between you and God.
Acknowledge it; don’t deny it.
Measure its distance.
Then ask yourself,
How can you live with it?
That’s the beginning of repentance.
(Taylor, 62)

It is easier to live with guilt.
Easier to say, “‘I feel really, really awful
about what I have done,’
than actually start doing things differently.”
(Taylor, 66)
But don’t you see what you are doing
when you take that approach?
You are setting yourself up for the axe,
for what John the Baptist warned:
“Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees;
every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:10)

Jesus used strong language from time to time,
but when he used such language
it was not to frighten us;
he spoke strongly and urgently
to move us from our apathy
because what God wants for us
is to know the truly rich and abundant life that can be ours
by living as his faithful children.

That’s what God was teaching through the prophet Isaiah:
“Come, you who have no money,
come buy and eat,
come buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Incline your ear, and listen to me;
listen so that you will live”
(Isaiah 55:1ff)

This is God’s invitation that comes to us
through the love of God that is Jesus Christ,
through the grace of God that is Jesus Christ.
But: it is an offer with an expiration date on it,
which is why Jesus is so passionate about our taking it now.

Tomorrow may not be another day.
There may not be another Sunday.
Repent now,
bear fruit, now.
Don’t wait. Not another minute.
Not my words to you,
but the word of the Lord to us,
his beloved children.
Amen