Lent 3: Don't wait for the right time

I’ll never forget my first real wake up call about not being immortal. Before I started seminary I worked for a year as an analyst at an environmental engineering firm in Brampton. I lived, however, in Cambridge. So at 5am on a Monday morning, I left the house as usual. I was just getting into the little downtown Galt area, starting to accelerate because the light ahead went green. 

I shifted from first to second and just as I was heading through the light out of the corner of my eye, I saw an object move toward me. BOOM. I was T-boned so hard that my car launched forward, denting a light pole in front of me. In that moment and every moment of my life afterward, I remember that no matter how much I plan, or try to be careful, or look after my health, my life could be over in a second, without any logic or reason or plan.

In this morning’s Gospel, we hear about two tragedies: the first is a rather disgusting event that must have been the talk of the town, where Pilate mingles the blood of Galileans with their sacrifices, likely referring to a massacre of some sort, for which Pilate was famous. The second refers to a tower that collapsed without warning, randomly crushing Jerusalmites.

Jesus, anticipating the question most of us probably ask when such events occur: why do bad things happen to good people - replies, “were they worse sinners than anyone else in these places,” implying that the victims did nothing wrong and were not deserving more than anyone else. It just happened. Life, as Thomas Hobbes puts it, “is often nasty, brutish, and short.”

Jesus uses these calamities to press home a point to people “unless you repent you will all perish” like the others did. We should not equate tragedies with God’s punishment, nor should we equate a lack of punishment of long life with his blessings. Instead, we need to be constantly aware of how fragile life actually is, and so we should not wait for ‘the right time’ to repent of those things that blind us or deafen us from seeing God and allowing ourselves to be transformed from what we are, into what he made us to be. 

What he’s doing here is emphasizing the suddenness with which death can come, out of the blue when you least expect it - it’s a shake up call not unlike my car accident simply going about my daily routine of going to work one morning. The warning is this: the unrepentant will suddenly find they have delayed too long and lost themselves.

We can’t prevent disasters; we can’t prevent unpredicted dangers or even death. And so we need to guard ourselves against false assurances. Life is fragile and unpredictable, so do not wait! Seize God’s graciousness by first repenting of your sins: stop building the wall around your heart and mind out of your sense of self righteousness, the clamour to for control and power to ease your fear, anxiety, or despair. Let God in so that you can be opened to each moment we have the gift of life - even the hard ones - as a potential for experiencing the joy of having life at all. 

So I ask you today to consider before God in prayer, what it is that you have built your life upon? Is it built on the basis that the blessings you have are deserved and so markers that you are righteous before God, more righteous than those suffering illness or calamity? Or have you built your life around the knowledge that God comes to us offering mercy, but a mercy received only when we acknowledge and open ourselves to his judgment of our sin? It is the latter that will allow us to step into the new life he offers us, and live now, in the moments we have remaining, in that light and holiness. AMEN