Last Thursday, after I don’t even know how long, I received the sacrament of reconciliation. This is the Anglican version of the rite of confession (yes, we have it!) It’s different from how it looks in the Catholic Church, though – less formal, more conversational, with a bit of ritual at either end. If you’re interested in exploring it during Lent, I can offer it to you, or you can ask any of the other priests here at the Cathedral or in the wider diocese.
The first
couple of times I did reconciliation, it was with random clergy I happened to
connect with. This time, I managed to find someone outside the diocese who was
willing to be a regular confessor. He’s a beautiful soul.
I sat in my
office on the Zoom call and he guided me through the rite. When we’d read the
first few prescribed lines, we got to the part where I have the opportunity to
name my sins, and the confessor may offer “words of comfort and counsel.”
My confessor
asked, “Do you recognize any patterns in the sins you named?”
I had, in a
sense. The first couple of times I did this rite, my sins had mostly been
directed toward myself. Lack of self-compassion, impatience, anger, shame. I
did still have a bit of that, but after hard work my inner monologue has become
more compassionate over the years. The sins that came up this time were things
I don’t think I had the courage to name before: the spitefulness, impatience,
and anger I’d felt toward others.
When my
confessor asked me what had changed, I said I was maturing in my
self-awareness. He agreed this was likely true, but added that it is only when
we are able to feel compassion toward ourselves that we truly feel compassion
and love toward others.
As humans,
we’re story-makers, and we get into a groove, don’t we? We slip into a habit,
and the habit becomes a narrative, and the groove gets deeper. The more we buy
into the narrative, the more it reinforces itself. The wheels keep sinking into
the ruts that are already there.
The work of
choosing a new narrative takes time. It’s one thing to watch your wheels
carefully and make sure they only roll outside the ruts. That takes real skill
and concentration. And it’s a whole other thing to decide to just pick a
different road altogether!
Jesus is
speaking to a crowd. Just before the passage we heard, he says, “And why do you
not judge for yourselves what is right?” He goes on to make a rather radical
statement: that instead of participating in their current justice system, those
listening should work out their problems among themselves before ever getting
to court. Judging on the context of the previous chapter, this is not merely an
encouragement to be nice to one another. It’s a deeply prophetic posture he’s
encouraging. Don’t depend on the mechanisms of this world for justice or
wholeness. You won’t find them in those systems. Work it out together.
Choose a new
narrative.
The very strange
verses that follow make a bit more sense in that light. The people start to ask
questions about divine justice. But Jesus heads them off at the pass. He
doesn’t want them to accept that narrative either: the narrative of just-world
theory, the notion that everything that happens is part of some divine plan and
that all suffering is deserved. He pretty clearly shuts down that narrative.
But then he
goes on to say, “You still have to repent, or the same thing will happen to
you.”
That word
repent has a lot of baggage – talk about a narrative! But even that word
deserves the new story treatment. The Greek word for ‘repent’ is metaoneo, and
it means changing one’s mind or purpose.
Change your
mind – or you’ll die like them.
So…stuck in a
narrative? You will make it happen, you will create it around you,
because the more committed you are to it, the more you will interpret the world
around you as fitting into it, and the more stubbornly you will cling to it.
Anyone who drives into the same ruts as you will look normal. Anyone who drives
outside of them will look like a complete weirdo.
It’s not a
sin to be a story-maker. Not all ruts are bad! But some ruts just clog up your
wheels and grind you down. If your narrative is poisoning you, making you
question your beloved-ness and the beloved-ness of the world around you, change
the damned narrative – literally, change the damned narrative.
Then Jesus
tells a parable. The classic understanding would be that the owner of the
vineyard is God, and Jesus is the gardener, and God comes over and says, “Oh
this cheeky vine never produces fruit! It’s been three whole years and not a
one! I’ma cut the whole thing down!” And Jesus saves us from that mean old
vineyard owner. Isn’t it always the case that our buddy Jesus saves us from
mean old God who only wants us to get what we deserve?
You’re smart
folks. We can tell just from hearing it that that’s a simplistic understanding.
How does
that narrative hold up when we learn the fact that fig trees don’t produce
fruit until three to five years after being planted? And how does it hold
up when the text is murky about who planted the tree? Both the English and the
Greek suggest that the owner had the tree planted, and didn’t do it
himself.
It’s
therefore presumptuous to suggest that this owner, who may not have planted the
tree and certainly doesn’t seem to understand how fig trees work,
symbolizes God. And indeed, it’s presumptuous to think that the more patient
gardener only stands in for Jesus. After all, humans were created in Genesis as
gardeners.
So maybe
Jesus is giving all of us a chance to disrupt this narrative. To drive out of
the ruts, or even choose a whole different road.
And maybe
I’ll make use of some wisdom Omid Safi, one of my Sufi teachers, taught me, and
invite us to see each of these characters as different aspects of ourselves.
Image description: My hands opening a small yellowish-brown pod to display tiny yellow seeds. Taken by a friend in El Salvador, 2014.
So…who is
the owner: the part of us who oversees the earth of our hearts and judges the
fruit and flowering of what is planted there; the part of us that parachutes in
and criticizes, without having contributed to the planting and nurturing; the
part of us that’s impatient even when what’s planted is behaving as it should,
and wants to enjoy the fruit without the labour and the waiting; the part of us
that wants to get the best use out of that heart-earth, and urges us to only
make space for the most productive plants?
Who is the
gardener: the part of us skilled in the art of planting and nurturing; who has
seen many growing seasons and knows the language of earth and crop; who
encourages patience and is willing to get their hands dirty; who still recognizes
the futility of the sunk cost fallacy and understands that things which do not
produce good fruit despite hard work should sometimes be cleared for more
productive things?
And what is
the tree: the part of us which needs time and nourishment from human and divine
sources; which might be cared for deeply and skillfully but might be struggling
in a dry season, or flooded, or beset by pests – none of which is our fault; the
part of us that needs time to ripen; the part of us that, if the circumstances
are right, will go from merely receiving nourishment to giving it back?
Take the
time to think deep. Fill the ruts with soil and plant some stuff in there!
Then, when you
and your trees are ready, in the words of Debie Thomas:
“Go fight
for the justice you long to see. Go confront evil where it needs
confronting. Go learn the art of patient, hope-filled tending. Go
cultivate beautiful things. Go look your own sin in the eye and repent of
it while you can.
In short: imagine a deeper story. Ask a better question. Live a better answer. Time is running short. The season to bear fruit has come. Repent. Do it now.”
When I was a little kid, my mum’s friend had a pile of comic strip compilations, and one of them was Garfield at Large.
In one
strip, Garfield has pulled himself up onto the dining table and is playing with
Jon’s soup – batting at it at first, but eventually putting his paws fully into
it and splashing it around. When Jon sees the mess and shouts, Garfield
responds, “The Devil made me do it.”
I was
intrigued by the concept. I was only four or five years old and I was from a
mainline Anglican home. We didn’t talk about the Devil much outside of reading
about him in children’s Bible stories. It’s kind of amazing considering I grew
up during the Satanic Panic.
Come to
think of it, that joke might have been the first time I considered that the
Devil could make you do something. Even at that age, I knew it was just
an excuse. Garfield had already spent multiple pages scratching the furniture,
beating up the hapless Odie, and stealing Jon’s lasagna. Garfield clearly liked
doing these things. He didn’t need the Devil to make him do anything
bad. That’s the joke!
And that was
comedian Flip Wilson’s point when he invented it. I watched one of his old routines
on the Ed Sullivan show. It was pretty funny – he tells a story about a minister
and his wife, who claims that the Devil forced her to buy a new dress that they
can’t afford, despite her best efforts. Actually, three new dresses in a week.
Also, the Devil is the one who made her drive the car into the outer wall of
the church by grabbing the steering wheel. When the minister asks her why she
didn’t put her foot on the brake, well, she couldn’t because she was too busy
trying to kick the Devil.
Not her
fault. Not Garfield’s fault.
The Devil
made them do it.
I think a
lot of people still see the Devil this way, as a tempter who convinces us to do
things we shouldn’t but really, secretly, want to do. For those of us who
are uncreative in the work of malice, it’s little things, like taking the last
cupcake or stealing a parking spot.
For the
rest, though, it might be bigger things. Embezzlement. Abuse. War crimes.
The Devil
made me do it.
This year, I
set myself a goal of preaching more on the Hebrew Bible, what’s sometimes
called the Old Testament, with help from a Jewish study Bible. And it’s
especially interesting to take a look at Luke’s temptation account in light of
who the ancient Jews thought Satan was.
Some of you
might know that “Satan” is not a personal name but a title. In Hebrew, ha-satan
means “the Accuser.” OG Satan was an angelic figure in the heavenly court,
acting under God’s instructions. He’s, without irony, God’s prosecuting
attorney. We might remember him from the story of poor Job. Please note that he
is not named as the serpent in the actual text of Genesis. That is a much later
addition.
Satan has a
very specific duty in ancient Jewish tradition, which is not only to act as
prosecuting attorney, but, in the words of Jewish biblical scholar Amy-Jill
Levine, “to test the righteous.” It makes perfect sense that he would show up
in this story, as Jesus prepares for his Galilean ministry.
And what
does he do? Well, there’s a standard laundry list of temptations he offers,
ones we might be familiar with enough at this point that they lose some of
their potency.
Here’s where
it’s helpful to read the Deuteronomy passage alongside Luke. Now, if you’re
anything like me, you were scratching your head hardcore when you heard that.
What the heck do instructions about how to handle the first fruits of the land
have to do with Satan or temptation OR LENT FOR THAT MATTER? (Happy Lent, by
the way). But there’s some good stuff in here! Let’s dive in.
The
Deuteronomy passage is part of a much longer list of legal requirements for the
Israelites, and in fact is the linchpin for a pretty significant turning point
in the text. Up until this point, the instructions have been rules for the
people to follow in order to be in covenant with God. And we have this
beautiful passage that begins with the command for the Israelites to remember
where they came from, not just by naming themselves as former refugees and
slaves, but by offering their bounty to the Levites and the “aliens” or
“strangers” that reside among them. Offering first fruits is an act of
humility, and humility is to be followed by an act of solidarity. This is
underlined in the following verses which require a third-year tithing of one’s
produce to the Levites, the aliens, the orphans, and the widows – not so that
they can just scrape by but so that “they may eat their fill,” says the text –
as well as making a verbal promise to God, a sacred vow, that nothing has been
held back.
Again,
solidarity.
So here we
learn that the covenant between God and Their people, which is what Deuteronomy
is concerned with laying out in exhaustive and transparent detail, involves a
sort of reorientation. The former refugees and slaves have been given the land
of promise. It is a gift. They did not earn it. They must therefore act in
solidarity with the marginalized. The fact that the writers of Deuteronomy
sometimes seem to get mixed up about this does not negate the power of this act
of worship for us today. To paraphrase Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, “With the
freedom and privilege offered in the Promised Land come obligations.”
If this
connection with the Luke story seems fanciful, note that the biblical quotes Jesus
gives here are mostly from Deuteronomy.
So while
Satan’s status as a tester of the righteous means he might offer Jesus things
Jesus might want, from basic needs like food to more complex desires like
political or supernatural power, that’s not all he’s offering Jesus.
Satan’s
offering a different orientation, one that’s in line with what the world
expects of us, one counter to the more radical and honest story Jesus wants to
live – I’m sure none of us knows what that feels like – one that
encourages Jesus to look out for Number One rather than practicing solidarity
with the poor working people among whom he has ‘pitched his tent,’ as John the
Evangelist so lyrically puts it.
Here, at the
pinnacle of the Temple, Satan even employs Scripture to his purposes, as the
saying goes. And yet in quoting it he undermines the real truth of that
passage, which is supposed to offer comfort during times of sorrow and
oppression, the polar opposite of what he encourages here: reckless misuse of
trust and privilege, in a sense.
Jesus
doesn’t fall for it. He accomplishes the task and goes on to begin his ministry,
and Satan departs until “an opportune time.” Insert spooky string section
interlude here.
Okay but
what does that mean for us, just inside the threshold of Lent 2022?
Well, maybe
Satan was never the voice that told us to indulge in one more cupcake or put
off calling Aunt Gertrude or insert whatever kindergarten sins here. Maybe
Satan is that prosecutorial mindset – the one that assumes the worst of us,
that tells us to say, “F you, I got mine,” that says, “There is no covenant so
you better hustle or you’ll be in the gutter by Thursday,” that says, “God
can’t stand the sight of you and none of those holy promises of love and
salvation are for you.”
Maybe
sometimes Satan says, “Why don’t you try being God?” And maybe sometimes
he says, “You’re too despicable to even speak God’s name.”
And if
that’s the case, maybe Lent isn’t about saying, “Dang, Satan, you’re right,”
and crawling into a dung hill of sorrow.
Maybe Lent
is about saying, “I am not God, but I am a beloved child of God, and there
is a covenant, and it is for me, and the only terms are love and solidarity.”
