Lent Landscapes - 3 - Patience with Purpose

Scripture: Luke 13:1-9

Luke 13:1–9 NIV

1 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” 6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ 8 “ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’ ”

3/23/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Mission Moment

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 2: Mission Moment

Cheryl sharing about Lighthouse Ministry

Opening Prayer:

God of infinite goodness,

throughout the ages you have persevered

in claiming and reclaiming your people.

Renew for us your call to repentance,

surround us with witnesses to aid us in our journey,

and grant us the time to fashion our lives anew,

through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Patience with Purpose

Suffering

Why does it seem like patience and pain become increasingly connected the older we get?

When we are young and struggling with patience, our biggest impediment is boredom, often because we are stuck somewhere we don’t want to be and cannot do anything we want. As we grow, we learn to ride bikes and drive cars and are freer to go where and when we want, provided we do the work to pay for that freedom. As we grow older, we lose a little bit of the wanderlust and learn to nap through the boring parts of life. We remember that we’ve been there and survived it the last dozen times. One more trip up that hill won’t kill us.

Sometimes, we tell ourselves that we get better, wiser, and have less of a tendency toward sin as we get older… I suppose some sins take more effort and energy, and we eventually become too tired to entertain them. But I’ve not met a person who grew old enough that they became a patient person. We may tell stories about walking to school back in the good old days, uphill both ways, in the snow — but our travels today still involve hills that try our patience. As we grow older, we may just trade one set of sins for another.

It would be wonderful if we could all gather together and say all you need is Jesus, and your life will be smooth sailing. If we could say follow Jesus, and you won’t have to climb any hills anymore, we could fill all our churches to overflowing. That’s the kind of good news we really wanna hear. But it wouldn’t be true. And it wouldn’t be Jesus we would be talking about. Jesus picked up his pain, his suffering, his cross, and he climbed that hill one patient step at a time. As he climbed that hill, he looked back at us and said, “If you want to be my disciple, pick up your cross and follow me.“

Our journey through this life involves climbing hills no matter where we go. While we want to think that living right means fewer hills to climb, it may be that climbing those hills helps us repent and let go of the sin that holds us back from following Jesus. As Jesus leads us up and over those hills, he shows us in His example that Repentance grows where patience nurtures and makes room for it.

Punishment

In today's passage, Jesus refers to two events we know little about. We know there are two tragic events that the people of Jerusalem were familiar with during his ministry, but most of the exact details have been lost to the ages.

The first event was brought up by the Jewish leaders trying to find a weakness in Jesus and his teaching. They asked him to explain why the Romans killed a group of Galileans while they offered up sacrifices at the temple during Passover. We have heard about gunmen entering worship services in our lifetime, but this was a government-sanctioned execution that took place during their most important worship service. These people from northern Israel were cut down while they were worshiping and asking God for forgiveness. So the southerners from Jerusalem and Judah, who were very suspicious of those northerners who intermingled with the Gentiles too often, wondered if God refused to forgive those Jews who had wandered too far from the capital and true holy city of Jerusalem. The question was pointed right at Jesus with extra venom because Jesus and most of his disciples were all from Galilee themselves.

Roman law prevented soldiers from executing people without reason, so even Jesus does not deny that these Galileans may have been guilty of something. However, we can only speculate on what that crime might have been. We have no way of knowing. And Jesus seemed not to care. Instead, he focuses on their need for repentance and reminds those Jewish leaders that all who sin are guilty and deserve punishment. Only repentance allowed us to receive mercy and be saved by God.

There is another story from the gospels where the Jews seek to trap Jesus with this issue of sin and punishment. In John’s gospel, we read about a woman caught in adultery and thrown before Jesus for judgment. In this event, Jesus challenges the Jewish leaders to judge the sin in their own lives before judging the sin in the lives of others. Then, he offers forgiveness but warns the woman to sin no more, inviting her to walk in the way of repentance.

Accidents

Jesus moved on from their question about what kind of people were worse centers than others and brought up another local tragedy. In this example, one of the local towers had fallen and killed many people, probably even more people than were executed by the Romans at that Passover sacrifice they mentioned. But these weren’t specifically Galileans from northern Israel. These were local people. These were innocent bystanders.

In his way, Jesus is taking their question about guilt even deeper. Do you think that’s bad when people suffer and everyone knows they’re guilty? What do you do when you can’t blame the Romans? What do you do about those times when people suffer from seemingly random accidents?

One of the things I deeply appreciate about Jesus is that he’s not afraid to go there. It doesn’t matter where there is. He’s not scared. I am. We are. But Jesus always has such sure footing on the truth that he can reach out and touch anyone anywhere and not lose his balance.

We’ve often been told that people do not suffer because they’re bad. Everybody suffers sometimes. Bad things happen to good people every day. Our minds accept that. Why don’t our hearts?

I think we keep coming back to this question of suffering and guilt because we experience suffering on a very personal level. When we see those hills in front of us, when we feel the burning sensation in our legs, and our chests feel tight and out of breath, we want to know if we’ve done something wrong. And we want to know how to fix the situation.

We read through the book of Job last fall and learned that, ultimately, God is in control. Sometimes, we suffer and have to trust God through it. Once again, Jesus digs a little deeper for us. He points out that there are many things we don’t have control over that cause us to suffer. But there are some things we do. We have the choice to take control of ourselves and choose how we respond.

Patience and Repentance

And he keeps digging. Unlike the worldly wisdom that tells us to push away and ignore those questions about guilt and sam Jesus isn’t afraid to touch that either. Instead, he uses those questions and feelings of guilt we struggle with for God‘s glory and our good — telling us if there’s something we are feeling guilty about or questioning, then repent. Turn away from whatever we think might not be from God, and turn towards Jesus and follow him. Don’t let the guilt fester, causing you to wonder every time something goes wrong if it is God punishing you. God doesn’t want to punish you. Let me say that again. God doesn’t want to punish you. He wants you to live for and with him.

And Jesus knows we need to hear that again, so he tells them a parable to hit at home one more time. There was a fig tree with no fruit. It was not living to its purpose and was taking up space and nutrients for other trees trying to do what they were made to do. Everyone knew there was only one right answer to this problem. You cut the tree down so you can make room for another tree that will live right.

But in this story, the Gardener, the one that actually tends to the trees, says to the landowner, give it one more year. I’ll loosen up the soil, fertilize it, and make sure it’s well watered. I’ll do everything in my ability to give it the best chance that it has to be successful in life. If we do all that, and it still will not bear fruit for us, then next year, I’ll cut it down.

This is generosity at its best. You and I are just like that fig tree. We are made to bear fruit for God. Some years, the weather cooperates. Some years, the weather is awful when we suffer. But it doesn’t matter what the weather is; our job remains the same: to bear good fruit for God. The problem is that we don’t always know how to do it. And sometimes, we don’t want to do the parts we know we are supposed to do. So when God looks down on us, we know we are not getting an A+ at living for him. Much of the time, we are not even getting a passing grade.

At this point of panic, I have often counseled people to do something different. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as it is not the same thing you have been doing to get to this point of fruitless living. Anything different has to be better. Isn’t that what repentance means? Do something different?

That is not the story Jesus tells us, though. Jesus intentionally added a gardener who cares for the trees to this story. We are not alone as fig trees trying to produce apples, oranges, bananas, pine cones, and everything but figs on our own and not knowing any better. We have a gardener who is working our soil, filling it with good nutrients, keeping us well watered, fighting for us, and cheering us on for every fig that appears on our branches. He will prune our branches to make us more fruitful, and if we refuse to bear fruit, with all the help Jesus offers us, it will be him, our personal gardener, the one who wanted nothing more than to be our savior, who will come with the axe in the end. If we perish because we chose not to repent and let Jesus transform us, we will know without a doubt that He did everything He could to reach us, but we chose to go our own way.

As we encounter others climbing those hills in our lives — especially those who make those hills harder to climb, we need to remember Jesus, our gardener, and the patience he shows us as we struggle to follow him and live the way he calls us to live. He is our example of what living that life of repentance looks like. Not because he sinned and needed to repent but because he did not sin. That’s why he can be an example for us to follow. Because he did it right, we treat others with the love, mercy, and patience that Jesus treats us with.

But there is one other person we need to practice patience with, someone who often hides out of sight but can frequently cause us the most frustration. We must treat ourselves with the same love, mercy, and patience that Jesus treats us. We may twist that around and make it sound selfish and sinful. But when we treat ourselves without love, mercy, and patience, it doesn’t matter how much we punish or redirect our behavior. We are telling Jesus we know better than him. We judge ourselves for our fruitless behavior and ignore the patient love of our gardener, who is there to help us succeed.

There are hills in front of us, some of which are pretty steep. We won’t get over them without going through some pain and suffering. But there is new life along the way. Their fields of blessing and streams of living water are on the other side of this hill. And there are more hills beyond that and more blessings beyond them. Jesus knows the way and is leading us, leading you, one patient step at a time.

Do you trust him today?

Will you turn away from the things that pull you away from him?

Will you embrace the lives of those around you with the same patient grace and mercy he gives you each day?

Closing Prayer

Lord, we come to you today and confess our brokenness to you. We are scared, frustrated, and sometimes angered by the hills you call us to climb. We keep wondering when it will all be over. We struggle with patience with others. We struggle to have patience with ourselves. And some days, we struggle to be patient with you. We know you deserve far better than what we have to offer you. And we believe you can mold and make us into the people you deserve. Send us your spirit to give us the patience and the strength to repent from our worldly ways, seek your love, and follow where you lead. In Jesus’s name, Amen.