Join us today as we celebrate Holy Communion for the third Sunday of Lent, 3/20/22. To follow along at home, click here and print the Holy Communion Program. Text of today’s homily below.
CLICK HERE TO GET AN EMAIL OF EACH SUNDAY’S SERVICE IN YOUR EMAIL BOX and to receive email updates about the mission of St. Barachiel Chapel.
If you would like to have prayers offered for you, a loved one, a friend, for someone who is suffering, ill or who has departed, please email Archdeacon Mitch at mitch@heritageartsinc.com and we will pray for you. Please click here to schedule a chat with archdeacon Mitch if you are in need of pastoral counseling. And if you’d like to assist in the beautification, improvement and maintenance of St. Barachiel Chapel, or support our educational mission, please click here to make a donation.
Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent -- Sunday 3/20/22
Readings: Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15, Ps 103: 1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 11, 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12, Lk 13:1-9
Luke 13:1-9 American Standard Version
13 Now there were some present at that very season who told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered and said unto them, Think ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they have suffered these things? 3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all in like manner perish. 4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and killed them, think ye that they were [a]offenders above all the men that dwell in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
6 And he spake this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. 7 And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? 8 And he answering saith unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: 9 and if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou shalt cut it down.
Friends, my great-grandmother Evelyn Koch was a very Christian woman who read her Bible daily, lived each day as it came, and never lost her childlike faith or sense of wonder. But she wasn’t very educated. She was prone to misspelling and mispronouncing words. And so, when she wanted to convey the idea that someone was stuck on a small detail but missing the larger issue, she would say they were “heaving at gnats and swallowing camels.” She had misread the word strain in Matthew 23:24 as meaning choke or heave instead of as sift or sieve. But her homespun phrase still makes sense, and I use it myself to this day, warts and all. Thanks Nanny!
“Heaving at gnats and swallowing camels” sums up exactly what’s going on in and around today’s Gospel reading. The people of Jesus’ time asked him to comment on the Galilean people Pilate executed while performing sacrifices and the eighteen people who were killed when the Tower of Siloam fell upon them. Their presumption was that these victims of tragedy must have been very sinful indeed to have been struck down during sacred rites or killed in the Holy City.
But Jesus says no, bad things happen to good people. These victims are no more or less sinful than anyone else. He tells them to take instead another lesson from these events, which is that time is short – repent and start bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit now, before it’s too late, lest they perish in the final judgement.
The people standing before Jesus, you see, are choking on the gnat of random misfortune – the things they can’t control – and swallowing the camels of their own sins which are completely within their power to change. And too often, despite being separated from those folks by two thousand years of history, people of today focus on the repentance and the judgement part and walk right by the larger lesson.
That larger lesson is the so-called “problem of evil.” You hear it expressed many ways, but usually it goes something like, “In a universe created by a good God, why is there evil?” or, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Entire books have been written on this topic, such as Alvin Plantinga’s God, Freedom and Evil and Jung’s Answer to Job. Many people get stuck on this problem and lose their faith, or can’t come to faith because of it. I know because I assisted a young man named Brandon in his return to faith in part by helping answer this question.
Brothers and sisters, God wants us to love, trust and obey him voluntarily, therefore he gave us free will. Wicked and misguided people, the Pontius Pilates of the world, have the freedom to commit acts of evil on both the evil and the good. Wind, rain, deterioration and decay affect all material things, animate and inanimate, the evil and the good. Storms, fires, earthquakes, and building collapses like the falling Tower of Siloam, can claim the lives of anyone at any time.
What philosophers have taken books to debate, Jesus has fully answered in a paragraph. Don’t blame God for human frailty or the physical realities of meteorology and physics. Folly and superstition of this kind could cost you your faith.
Focus instead on what you can control – cultivating the fruits of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 5, St. Paul lists those fruits as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – but rest assured that those are the tip of iceberg. Time is short. Repent and believe in the Gospel!