He replied, ‘Sir, let [the fig tree] alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ [Luke’s Gospel 13.8-9]

“I have things to do, of value and service. I can’t be worried about when it’s going to happen.”

I was speaking to a splendid friend and colleague recently, who talked about the challenge of a health issue which hovers around their life. The consequences of this particular health issue are terminal, and the choice might well be to shut down, to live a life of complaint or fear, or to renew your mind, as my friend has, and to step into the world as it is. “I have service to offer others. I am not simply going to sit around and wait.”

Jesus’ recent conversations have been about how we read the signs of these times and live faithfully within them. He is confronted suddenly with the punitive and abhorrent actions of the provincial Governor.

Perhaps someone is being punished? Perhaps a deity is having a bad day? There has to be a reason.

Jesus’ cryptic response reminds us that injustices and accidents occur constantly; how will we live in this season, when death and acts of violence are consistently before us? We have plenty of teaching from Jesus about forgiveness and non-violence, and living hopefully and faithfully.

And accidents happen, friends become ill – this has always been true. People suffer and grieve. If we say this too fast, it will sound glib and uncaring, but if we say it with the attention it deserves, we realise that we are living here, and we need to attend to those around us, offering care and hope, and mercy.  

Jesus invites us to be prepared, within ourselves. The word for repent here is “to change one’s mind”; it’s about renewing how we think about, indeed how we understand, our world and our lives. It’s about comprehending that faithfulness involves laying failures and brokenness aside and taking up the life to which Jesus calls us.

How long will Jesus wait? How long will the faithful gardener tend the tree? Has the owner of the vineyard come down and complained before?

A theologian comments that God’s mercy remains in serious conversation with God’s judgment. We are urged to live our lives more faithfully, to turn from the failures – deliberate and otherwise – which hinder our relationships and drag our feet.

We cannot read these stories too lightly, or mathematically. Jesus is addressing suffering and death, and where real life – and hope – are found. This is not about balancing scales, or solving a life equation.

Jesus in on the road to his own, unjust, death. We have no measure for an act of such mercy, or hope.

In a world where vast injustice is enacted each day, where accidents occur despite our best efforts, we follow one who chose suffering and execution, in order that death would never again be the final word spoken.

Our story is held in the nail-scarred hands of Christ. God intends, in Jesus Christ, to save. What can we imagine will hinder God’s intent?

Done with Herod and the glittering robe,
the zinfandel in Pilate’s bowl,
the scarlet thorned together at his breast,
he went, what was left of him, after
the lashed bone and lead toggles were finished
making completely clear who
was who and what was what, out of the city,
a day’s work still to do.

A retrospective piety would have him
gaze down the novel vistas
of Flodden Field, Antietam, Gallipoli
the flaming butter of napalm, the gulf
made in the air when atoms boil, the hiss
of gas to deal with other Jews:
but he may have found it saving grace enough
not to be hating bloody fools.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ” [Luke’s Gospel 13.34-35]

One of the most malevolent sounds in any movie I have seen is in Hotel Rwanda, which tells the horror of the Rwandan genocide in mid-1994. The movie talks from the point of view of the hotel manager, and the violence from which he seeks to flee, with many others.

Through virtually the entire movie, no direct violence is seen, but there are the reports and hints, the growing fear, and once or twice we see the horrific consequences. Thus, we share the impending sense of what will happen to those characters with whom we are in contact.

And there is this sound. It is the sound of pangas (large knives similar to a machete), being drawn along the road; a discordant, scraping sound. It is many more than one, as militant fistfuls of men come hunting. Their presence is frequently off-screen, but the consequence of their violence creates a foreboding from which the movie never relents and the viewer – like the victims – might never escape.

As we enter more deeply into this season of Lent, the journey of Jesus towards Jerusalem and the cross, a shadow grows across the path he walks with his disciples. There are hints and warnings of violence all around, and each event seems dogged by anger, or threats, or implications of harm.

We are privileged to read this story from the other side; we know both the horror of Jesus’ execution and the wonder of him being raised to life. However, the disciples and even Jesus are walking on the shadowed side of the gospel, as the darkness grows. Jesus continues to assert the calling upon his life, but the disciples are following him, unsure of where everything will lead.

The signs and sounds of violence have accompanied Jesus since Herod felt threatened by the infant child of Mary and Joseph. Jesus knows what happens to prophets and dissidents in Jerusalem and, may I say, elsewhere in history. Ask of Romero, or Sophie Sholl, or Pemulwuy.

Jesus is confident that the pangas are being drawn after him on the road he walks towards Jerusalem. The warnings from community leaders and those around him are simply confirmation. Notwithstanding all this, Jesus’ desire is to embrace that community, those people, to gather them in safety and offer them hope.

The image of a mother hen, doing all she can to secure the safety of her brood, and any other chicks within her ambit.  

This is not to be.

The old fox is stalking in the background. We know what happens when foxes and chooks mix it up.

Yet, Jesus, by calling and deliberate choice, continues on his path, with the sounds of malevolence growing in our ears and his.

What does it mean for us that Jesus so deliberately chooses to continue? What courage is declared to us in his choice to say yes to God’s call upon him?

As we journey towards this Easter, let us consider not just the profound depth of Jesus’ embrace of us, but also our willingness to be so embraced. Having welcomed this intimate engagement, we realise that we are on the path with him, with all the implications of following one who elected life for us above his own.

A prayer, written during the United States war with Iraq in 1991.

Lent comes.

We draw a holy comma
in rushed and busy lives.
We follow down
old scripture words
the journey to Jerusalem.
We stumble into prayer again
and whisper soft
the dearest, fearest
of our thoughts.

Lent comes.

Last year’s palms
crumble into ashes.
Last year’s peace
weeps into war.
We sing of Gethsemane
amid new tears, new bleeding.
The screaming bombs
burn crosses in our hearts –
this too is God’s story.

Lent comes,
but also Ramadan’s fast,
Passover’s freedom memory,
Easter’s crazy contradiction.

Faith is born of prayer
and sings with courage,
while all the children
of the earth
shelter in the wings of God
awaiting our embrace.

– Maren C. Tirabassi Gifts of Many Cultures (PIlgrim Press 1995)

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”  [Luke’s Gospel 4.1-3]

A few short breaths after his baptism by John and anointing by the Holy Spirit, that same Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness, where he was tempted and famished for six weeks.

Having been announced to the crowd by a heavenly voice as God’s Son, Jesus spends all this time with a wheedling voice whispering cynicism and doubt in his ear. Murmurings about food, bargains about power and the bastardisation of Scripture are in the playbook.

Are you the real thing, Jesus?

The seeds of misgiving and self-doubt are hidden in every phrase; step after misstep, they have taken root in the lives of leaders and servants, of women and men, monarchs and faith communities.

The twisting of call and faithful intent into self-aggrandisement and corruption are stories we have known only too well.

If you are who you say you are. If you are the Son of God …

Jesus has barely been introduced to us; we have seen nothing but the wonder of his birth and baptism. Suddenly we are confronted with this, watching Jesus subjected to the devil’s insinuations.

Are we, perhaps, the ones who need the miraculous signs? Would it help us to know that Jesus actually appears to fulfil his contract? Would it assist us if, at the call of the ringmaster, the Son of God performs his tricks?

The desire for bread and circuses is not solely the province of the Roman Colosseum, but one of the discomforting marks of the crowd in every age. If Jesus would just show us a sign!

At the very crux of Luke’s account is neither a performer, nor a healer, nor a miracle worker, but one who journeys to the cross, suffers and dies. And is raised. The purpose of the Spirit’s anointing is to bring good news, to offer release and vision and liberty to those who need them most desperately.

Jesus is the one for others, not for himself. His authority exists for the restoration of life, not performance art.

Whenever the Church – our community, any congregation – becomes self-absorbed, whether in pride, in cynicism, or fear, we remove our attention from the God who saves and give our worship to the one who cripples and destroys.

Jesus knows where life is found, and leads us there, in word and action;

Jesus answered him, “It is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”

May this season’s journey to the cross and the life beyond bless you and keep you.

A Collect for Lent Sunday | Janet Morley
Spirit of integrity,
you drive us into the desert
to search out the truth of us.
Give us clarity to know what is right,
and courage to reject what is strategic;
that we may abandon the false innocence
of failing to choose at all,
but may follow the purposes of Jesus Christ. Amen

Receive this cross of ash upon your brow,
Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday’s cross.
The forests of the world are burning now
And you make late repentance for the loss.
But all the trees of God would clap their hands
The very stones themselves would shout and sing
If you could covenant to love these lands
And recognise in Christ their Lord and king.

He sees the slow destruction of those trees,
He weeps to see the ancient places burn,
And still you make what purchases you please,
And still to dust and ashes you return.
But Hope could rise from ashes even now
Beginning with this sign upon your brow.

Gardener, Maker
Only Wise God
who tends the life of the world

You formed us from the dust:
wellspring of life,
beckoner of justice

When we turn from your life-giving way
send us back to dust
to be formed again by your gracious hand

When we disregard creation
send us back to dust
to be rejoined with the wonder of your world

You formed us from the dust:
self-giving sovereign
who whispers mercy into being

When we make of ourselves an idol
send us back to dust
to be filled again with your breath of life

When we disregard the poor
send us back to dust
to be emptied of our selfish indulgence

God of ashes and sackcloth and hope
send us into wild places
to retread your way of liberation

Take us again on the journey of life
that winds its way through deathly valleys

Take us again on the journey of death
that winds its way past tender streams

Gardener, Maker
Only Wise God
and the life of the world

Teach us again the way of your hope
Baptise us again into your fellowship
of loving and serving and suffering and joy

In the name of the beloved One:
Jesus the Anointed,
tender child and pioneer of peace
Amen.

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. [Luke’s Gospel 9.34-36]

What are we able to offer, how might we respond, in the presence of mystery?

We are stepping into the season which leads us to the death of Jesus, to the cross. Jesus’ execution is perhaps the most tangible story we have of Jesus; his humanness, his suffering and death are all entirely on display, and we begin this tragic – and finally hopeful – season with this extraordinary moment.

The story of the transfiguration is something beyond the encounter of almost all of us, and we are asked to hold it in our hands, as we enter this journey. As appalling as crucifixion is, we can understand suffering and death; perhaps, too easily, the wondrous images of cloud and light might slip through our fingers, as they did for Peter and John and James.

The attraction for us is to transfigure (and lessen) the wonder, earthing the splendour into moments of dream, or confusion, or enhanced memories of something far simpler. In our lives of explanation, when mystery is managed, we can move more simply onto the next story, where less is asked of us.

Edwin Muir, in his poem The Transfiguration, speaks of how we might attend to glory, and its implications.  

Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed
Till earth and light and water entering there
Gave back to us the clear unfallen world.

What if the encounter is more than wonder, but is vital, and not solely for Jesus? What if we require the mystery, in order to comprehend the journey to which Jesus has set his face?

We will talk, purposefully and hopefully, in the weeks ahead, about how Jesus identifies with humanity in suffering and death. We will talk of God’s solidarity with all who are broken, and lament the world’s woundedness, knowing that our hands are not strong enough to hold each injury.   

However, what if this transfiguration asserts and proclaims that we need, each time, to have our vision cleansed, and our hands strengthened to hold what God in Christ might say?

There is no doubt that our discipleship continues in our world where children are bombed and innocents trampled, and we need to bear Christ’s witness here.

Notwithstanding all, we will sing the song of resurrection, as we must, as Easter’s dawn is proclaimed again. We learn how to sing and hope, not from suffering alone, but from attending to the wonder of Christ’s transfiguration.

As we sit with the mystery, in the fragments of a broken world, the restoration of Christ in God is where we find our most complete hope.  

Blessings for this journey!

#astrainedfence https://talbragar.net/

So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists
As fresh and pure as water from a well,
Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed
Till earth and light and water entering there
Gave back to us the clear unfallen world.
We would have thrown our clothes away for lightness,
But that even they, though sour and travel stained,
Seemed, like our flesh, made of immortal substance,
And the soiled flax and wool lay light upon us
Like friendly wonders, flower and flock entwined
As in a morning field. Was it a vision?
Or did we see that day the unseeable
One glory of the everlasting world
Perpetually at work, though never seen
Since Eden locked the gate that’s everywhere
And nowhere? Was the change in us alone,
And the enormous earth still left forlorn,
An exile or a prisoner? Yet the world
We saw that day made this unreal, for all
Was in its place. The painted animals
Assembled there in gentle congregations,
Or sought apart their leafy oratories,
Or walked in peace, the wild and tame together,
As if, also for them, the day had come.
The shepherds’ hovels shone, for underneath
The soot we saw the stone clean at the heart
As on the starting-day. The refuse heaps
Were grained with that fine dust that made the world;
For he had said, ‘To the pure all things are pure.’
And when we went into the town, he with us,
The lurkers under doorways, murderers,
With rags tied round their feet for silence, came
Out of themselves to us and were with us,
And those who hide within the labyrinth
Of their own loneliness and greatness came,
And those entangled in their own devices,
The silent and the garrulous liars, all
Stepped out of their dungeons and were free.
Reality or vision, this we have seen.
If it had lasted but another moment
It might have held forever! But the world
Rolled back into its place, and we are here,
And all that radiant kingdom lies forlorn,
As if it had never stirred; no human voice
Is heard among its meadows, but it speaks
To itself alone, alone it flowers and shines
And blossoms for itself while time runs on.

But he will come again, it’s said, though not
Unwanted, unsummoned; for all things,
Beasts of the field, and woods, and rocks, and seas,
And all mankind from end to end of the earth
Will call him with one voice. In our own time,
Some say, or at a time when time is ripe.
Then he will come, Christ the uncrucified,
Christ the discrucified, his death undone,
His agony unmade, his cross dismantled –
Glad to be so – and the tormented wood
Will cure its hurt and grow into a tree
In a green springing corner or young Eden,
And Judas damned take his long journey backward
From darkness into light and be a child
Beside his mother’s knee, and the betrayal
Be quite undone and never more be done.

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt… Do to others as you would have them do to you. [Luke’s Gospel 6.27-31]

There is a voice growing in the life of the Church, which has been almost silent, or perhaps silenced, for some time.

Some of the fault lies with us, as we have sought to regain credibility with the community around us and sought to understand how to live – and speak – the Gospel in a changing world.

We have also been cautious about comparing politicians and other leaders with the miscreants of the past; the argument is already lost when you invoke the tyrants from days gone by. So, we have learnt either to speak in whispers, or not all. As always, some church leaders have simply fallen into line, finding black and white answers appealing, or laying blame at the door of those who are most easily attacked.

The growing voice is evident in the United States, as punishment after punishment falls upon those least able to bear them. Most recently, the Roman Catholic Bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, called the treatment of undocumented immigrants a “calumny”, as they can no longer seek sanctuary in hospitals and churches.

People of faith in Australia have acknowledged the increasing anti-Semitic attacks, while, at the same time opposing the violence directed against the Arab and Muslim community. The church has found the capacity to articulate nuanced support for all those in need, not neglecting to challenge the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the West Bank over the last several years, while opposing the political violence of Hamas.

An essential rule is that if someone tells you the answer is simple, be suspicious.

When Jesus offers the Sermon on the Plain, this is not spoken in a churchified bubble, but in the midst of a community under an empire’s heel and the recreant monarchy of Herod. The enemies who strike, hate and curse are most commonly the soldiers of Rome, rather than the person who votes differently, or blames others for the way the world is.

These words of Jesus have as much resonance now as they did two millennia ago, calling us to live in such a way that our community is confronted and, hopefully, blessed. Many of these commands have echoes in other parts of scripture, and other faith communities; there is one, however. which stands out.

“Love your enemies”. How, on earth, is this possible? And yet, Jesus commands the community into this place.

This is not a command to stay with an abusive partner, neither does it ever seek to diminish the suffering some people endure, nor does it see forgiveness as avoiding accountability and justice. People need to be safe.

It does call us – as a community, supporting each other – to so radically understand what it means to be followers of Jesus, that everything turns upside down.

We love our neighbour and our enemy, while offering a voice for those who cannot speak for themselves. We love those who seek to harm us and provide refuge for those who have already been abused. We give to those who take from us, ensuring that food and clothing are already in the hands of those who are hungry for justice and bread.

What will mark us as followers of Jesus? Falling into line with community and government, or offering mercy and love to those who may never love us back?