Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Third Sunday of Lent 2025

I was a curate, fresh from college. The parish, on the edge of Cambridge, was a vast housing Estate, tacked on to a few streets occupied by Cambridge dons and their GPs. Afternoons were spent visiting the sick and the sad, the bereaved, and the lonely. I helped some people a little, some of them certainly helped me, and some I could not help at all. Their distress was absolute, concrete. There was one particular, old lady in a nursing home. She was bedridden, on a high bed in a tight, narrow room. She did not want to talk about her life, or faith, or old age. She spoke of one thing only. Her conversation always turned to the death of her only son. He was an RAF officer and he was killed in the Battle of Britain. She had been grieving for forty years. The grief was set in stone. She asked me over and again ‘Why?’ why had this happened. No answer I offered gave her any satisfaction or any comfort. She used to turn away from me. I am still haunted by the memory of standing at her bedside, helpless. Both of us deep in dismay. Stuck, silent, hopeless.

Why does it have to be like this? Why? It is the question that never goes away. The question you cannot answer. And this morning this is the question that comes right up close.

We have just heard a tense and cryptic reading—Luke Chapter 13.

There were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. (Luke 13: 1)

Blood and sacrifice and quite a back story here. Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea has just built an aqueduct. It is impressive, twenty miles long. It brings water to Solomon’s Pools near Bethlehem. The kind of project to make a Caesar proud, and Pilate has written to the emperor, gloating over the success. The Jews though are not at all impressed. Pilate had paid for the project with Temple money, money set aside for holy things. It is, as the Jews put it, corban. They are outraged. When they next get a chance, they surround Pilate and his tribunal screaming abuse. It is the sort of scene that painters paint. Pilate sitting alone, impassive in the midst of a mob. Pilate staring down the abuse and the shaking fists. Pilate had thought this through, he was showing them Romanitas, dignity, the imperial way, it was a kind of theatre. Pilate loved display he adored an orchestrated event. The truth was that he was not, in fact, alone. At the back of the crowd there were legionaries disguised in Jewish dress. There is a bit of disagreement about what they had been told to do. The story afterwards was that they were supposed to be carrying cudgels. In fact, they had swords and when Pilate either lost his temper, or finally got frightened, they attacked with lethal force. It seems they chased the Jews as far as the Temple courtyard and blood flowed even there—mingling with the religious sacrifices. The Jews remember were already outraged, already frustrated, already at odds with government and power. Now the emotion is off the scale, it is horror, it is desecration. Suddenly there are no words to say, and a subject people know they are powerless. The only question is left is ‘Why?’

Jews come and tell Jesus this story. They don’t ask him to do anything about it. Did they hope that the Messiah would suddenly lead an army and deliver Israel? Did they hope for fire from heaven? Did they hope he would explain? We don’t know, perhaps they hoped for all of that. The gospel just has them standing there, looking for explanation.

The answer Jesus gives is bizarre. He asks them, ‘Do you think those Jews in Jerusalem were hacked to death because they were sinners?’ He turns it into a religious question. Did God do this? And Jesus has not finished, he tells a story about a tower in Jerusalem—the tower of Siloam that suddenly fell and killed eighteen people. How do you explain that he wonders? Was that sin? Was that God? And then he tells another story about a fig tree that is given one more chance to bear fruit. If it fails for another year then, he says, cut it down.

‘Cut it down’. That is how our reading ended. It’s tough stuff today, swords and blood, a building that collapses and kills people, then taking an axe to a tree. It is crisis, what are you going to think, what are you going to do? And it is now a religious question. Is this God? Luke does not record any answer from the crowd. I picture them before Christ, they were already baffled, now they are baffled and sitting a theological examination. Silence. Stuck.

I meet people who tell me that the bible is always the answer. I am not sure about that. The gospels are good news certainly, but they pose questions, tug at our sleeve—Who do you think Jesus is, and what difference does it make? What are you going to do? Disciples go to Jesus saying it is difficult. ‘Yes, it is’, he says, ‘and it is more urgent than you know’.

We started with an old lady grieving for her son. ‘Why? Why must it be like this?’ I have been asked that question so many times. Two years late I was a college chaplain and an undergraduate died. His mother asked me why. I had been thinking hard. This time I talked to her about Jesus, the Son of God who died cruelly, died young.

That is part of the answer. In this world, where people like Pilate make cruel and bad decisions, in this world where buildings are not always safe, in this world where wars are fought in Ukraine and Gaza. In this world where politics suddenly seems rooted in hate not respect, in this world where the news is bad, in this world we suffer. And, in this world, when Christ comes amongst us, he suffers too. That is part of the answer. A rather brilliant friend explained to me once that one way of thinking of Christ is to imagine him as the image of God projected into the world. Project an image onto a screen and it is instantly recognisable, project it onto a rubbish dump though and the image is still perfect but we see the distortions of the place. In this world, real life is like this and even Christ suffers the consequence. That is why Jesus tells the story of the fig tree not fruiting. You do your best. You carry on.

That is part of the answer, but it is only part of the answer. In the crisis of our times, gazing out over the rubble in Gaza and the horror of a Hamas attack, seeing the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine, hearing the shifting rhetoric of politics on either side of the Atlantic we struggle. We struggle and ask the question Why. We also urgently want to explain and apportion blame. We divide the world unto us and them. We simplify our problems until we can blame it on the boats, on the last government or the last President, blame it on the markets, blame it on the bureaucrats, blame it on anything, blame it on the boogie. Us and them, the pointing finger the tribe, the desperate loyalties. And Pilate smiles in his theatre of imperial dreams. We let the tyrants in because anything is better than living with uncertainty or the terrible possibility that it might be something wrong with me.

Our odd, troubling, angular gospel reading nails our weakness, our longing to name some enemy who has done this, our desire to have the explanation that ends all mystery. Jesus will have none of it. Twice in our reading he says,

Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. (Luke 13: 3)

Unless you repent… The bible is not a book of answers; it is a challenge. Christ’s teaching is urgent, the bridegroom is coming do you have oil for your torch? The master of the house demands a reckoning are you ready? The sickle is put to the harvest, Christ comes to bring fire to the earth. The pressing question is not ‘Whose fault is this?’ ‘Who do I blame?’ The question is ‘Which way am I facing?’ The question is can I change that way of thinking: can I turn my gaze on myself? Can I change? Can I repent?

Can I repent? Can I really repent? Not just feel a bit sorry, but can I step out of this world of blame. Repentance requires that I stop explaining and throw myself on God’s mercy in trust and hope. Repentance means that I abandon my endless calculus of judgement before God who is my only judge. Repentance is the moment I suddenly realise that all my effort and ambition has brought me to the point that I know I am the Prodigal Son, living in a pig pen and it is time I set out on the long walk back to my father. The question is not ‘Why?’ The question is: Can I repent?