Repentance, Thinking Again, Turning (and Spitting)!

 

Sermon. 23 February 2025. St Nicholas', Ashill. 

Lent 3 (Year of Luke)

Gospel: Luke 13:1-9

 

It’s not a secret. If you’ve had any teaching on the Bible, or have come to church a lot, you will know that we don’t really know who wrote the third gospel. We don’t know that Luke wrote Luke. Just like we don’t know that Matthew wrote Matthew, Mark wrote Mark, or John wrote John. The names we give to the four gospels are not plucked out of the air. There are real reasons for them, even if they don’t meet the standard of proof for a court of law.

 

So the tradition is that Luke wrote Luke (and Acts of course). Another tradition is that Luke was a gentile; he wasn’t a Jew. This makes most sense if Luke wrote Luke. I mean: there is a Luke character mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, and he seems to have been a gentile. This means he wasn’t a disciple of Jesus, who followed him on his journeys between Galilee and Jerusalem. He didn’t grow up and live in the Holy Land. He was, as it were, a next-generation disciple, who had lots of contact with the first generation (including, quite possibly, Mary).

 

We can test this. If Luke were a gentile writing with gentiles in mind, he would have to explain Jewish practice. He couldn’t take background knowledge for granted. There are some hint of this.  He explains that Passover is the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for example. No Jewish person needs to be told that. It would be like explaining that Christmas Eve is part of Christmas. What would act to confirm this, is if Luke, when explaining Jewish practice or the practice of that part of the world, occasionally got things wrong. And I have to say: there are some hints of this too. Where? Well, I’ll mention when the paralysed man is lowered through the roof, and what we call the “Presentation of Christ in the Temple”. If you want to know what he seems to have got wrong, ask me later. (I occasionally like to leave some teasers in a sermon.)

 

So what? Well, I want to draw attention to what Luke does not explain today. In reverse order, he has Jesus referring to the collapse of the tower of Siloam, killing 18 people. And he refers to Pilate mingling the blood of some Galileans in the Temple. And he doesn’t give any background. He doesn’t explain what was going on. And so it is that we don’t know what Jesus, or Luke, is talking about. We don’t know of any tower of Siloam. We don’t know of Pilate mingling any human blood with sacrificial animal blood. We do know, by the way, that Pilate was cruel and bloodthirsty, and was not above killing people in the Temple. It may well be that that is all that is being referred to here.

 

Luke does not explain. He doesn’t tell us how the tower fell. He does not tell us what Pilate did. Why not?

 

I suggest it must be deliberate. It must be because he knew his hearers, or his readers, would be able to imagine the sort of thing. All people can imagine a disaster like a tower collapsing. It’s not quite a natural disaster. But it’s an unwilled catastrophe, an accident, even if a fatal one. And, just like that, Luke is assuming that his hearers and readers will be able to imagine a tyrant, a dictator, who, without a moment’s thought, openly and publicly, kills off trouble-makers.  Who seems to be in love with violence, and the threat of violence. What do we make of that?

 

There have been times in my life when the idea has been in the air that the days of murderous dictators were coming to an end. That democracy and civilisation and the rule of law were taking over the world, and once they had taken over, they would be unchallengeable. If like me, you remember that sort of thing being “common sense”, then, like me, you’ll be sad and distressed that those days are gone. We can be blunt. We don’t need to imagine murderous dictators. We know of them. We see them in our news.

 

It is always good to face up to things, perhaps especially in Lent. We can all imagine buildings collapsing. We can all imagine dictators and states killing people. Luke was, alas, right.

 

So far, so bad. Fortunately, that is the background of Jesus’s message, and not the content. The content itself is bracing. Jesus says this: “unless you repent you will all perish just as they did”. Unless you repent. You have to repent. We have to repent.

 

What is it to repent? It’s one of those religious words we may think is just too convoluted to mean anything real. In fact, it’s not like that. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, means “think again”. It makes sense that, when we do wrong, that we sit ourselves down, and think again. You know the sort of thing. We are angry, and our anger takes over, and we cause harm. Or we are fearful, and we don’t speak out when someone is racist or in other ways cruel. Or we resent someone, and we know that we are actually enjoying our resentment. We feed it. Or – here is a big one – we feel compelled to pray, and we say: “tomorrow I will pray”, and we realise we have been saying that for months. The variations are endless. We need to think again.

 

That is repentance. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, means “turning”, or “turning around”. This is the underlying idea that Jesus is calling us to. When Jesus says “unless you repent you will all perish”, he is saying: “you really have to turn around”.

 

That’s a powerful idea. To be right with Gd, we really have to do something. Gd isn’t going to pour forgiveness over our head by force, whatever attitude we take to our lives. We have to do something; we have to turn. But! But that is all we have to do. All we have to do is turn.

 

In the last couple of weeks, I have had the privilege of preparing some parents for the baptism of their young children. You probably remember that part of the baptism service is called “the Decision”. Parents and godparents have to answer six questions. I always say that these questions have a centre. At the heart of them, there is the question: “Do you turn to Christ?”, the reply is: “I turn to Christ.”

 

In some forms of the service, this turning was literal. People would face the West, and face the devil, they might spit on him (a ritual spit). That’s not very Church of England, I know. But it can be a good thing to do. It can be good to belittle the devil. The devil only ever has the power we choose to give him. If we spit on him, he is nothing. Then we turn. We turn towards the East, towards the light, towards Christ.

 

Now is not the time to renew our baptism vows. The time for that is Easter itself, is Easter (the Easter Vigil, to be precise). But! But we can practise. In particular, let us have that experience of turning, of turning around, which true repentance is.

Face West.

Please don’t spit, or make your spitting a theatrical spit only!

Do you reject the devil and all rebellion against God?

I reject them.

Symbolic spit.

Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil?

I renounce them.

Do you repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour?

I repent of them.

 

Do you turn to Christ as Saviour?

I turn to Christ.

Turn.

Do you [welcome] Christ as Lord?

I [welcome] Christ.

Do you come to Christ, the way, the truth and the life?

I come to Christ.

 

To be right with Gd, you have to do something. You have to turn.

All you have to do is turn, and you will find Christ already turned towards you.

Amen.