Changing the Narrative

Brad Sullivan

3 Lent, Year C

February 28, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Luke 13:1-9

Changing the Narrative

-          Did you hear about those poor Galileans whom Pilate killed?

-          Oh that was awful.  Pilate is a monster isn’t he.

-          I hear he mixed their blood in with their sacrifices.

-          What?  That’s sacrilege! 

-          How would that even work?

-          I don’t know.  They must have been awful people though.

-          That’s true, for God to have something like that happen to them.  Oh hey Jesus, did you hear about those awful Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices?

We don’t know exactly what the conversation was, but Jesus responded by asking them if they thought the Galileans whom Pilate killed were worse sinners than anyone else.  By Jesus’ response and by what we know about how people tend to talk about things, we can guess that Jesus was spot on, and the conversation about the tragedy of the day was quickly turning into nasty stories about those awful Galileans and thanksgiving to God that the speakers were not like those awful Galileans. 

The people talking about the Galileans were trying to make sense of their world.  They’d heard about this awful killing by Pilate.  They were probably horrified, sad, frightened, and threatened all at once, and so their brains did what peoples’ brains do.  They started making up stories to go along with what they had heard, to make sense of it. 

We do this all the time.  Someone is very rude to us, and our brains immediately start making up stories about that person, about how they’re just a jerk, or about how they’ve got some misplaced grudge against us.  In reality, the person who was rude was just having a bad day, and we met them in a bad moment, but we don’t know that story.  We only know the stories our brains make up about what a perpetual jerk that person is.  It doesn’t matter to our brains if the stories are true or not.  Our brains are hardwired for story.  Stories are how we make sense of our world, and when our brains make up these little stories, we get biochemically rewarded for having made sense of the world.  It also helps that we usually make ourselves the heroes and others the villains in these stories, right?

So that’s what the people talking about the dead Galileans were doing, and then Jesus did what he does so well.  He said, “That’s not the right story, guys,” and he gave them a new story.  “No, they weren’t worse sinners than anybody else.  Tragic, unexpected death can happen to anyone at anytime.”

“Well thanks a lot, Jesus.”  Our brains hate that.  Chaos, uncertainty, threats to our survival.  Our brains want to rest easy, knowing that we’re going to be ok.  Jesus keeps saying, “Guys, you can rest easy, knowing that you’re going to be ok, you just don’t get to do it by making up stories about how terrible everyone else is and about how righteous and therefore ‘God protected’ you are.”

In Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus said,

‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. 

We often devalue each other in order to make ourselves feel more secure, and Jesus says that when we do that, we are making ourselves less secure.  We’re pouring God’s judgment upon ourselves whenever we hate another person.  We’re pouring God’s judgment upon ourselves whenever we make up these stories in our own minds about how terrible someone else is. 

It seems crazy to us that just hating someone is tantamount to murder, but Jesus says it is.  It makes sense that a murderer is deserving of death, but are we really deserving of death in God’s eyes just for hating each other?  Well, yeah.  Jesus is pointing out just how darn important we are to God.  We are God’s children, the apple of God’s eye.  So when we are hateful and hurtful to each other, yeah, it really upsets God.  Imagine a parent whose child is being bullied so that they feel badly about themselves and withdrawing inward.  Do you think that parent is going to be pretty hacked off at those other kids.  That’s how God feels when he sees us hating and hurting each other.  That’s how God feels when he sees us making up our stories about how others are the villains and we are the heroes.

“Get the log out of your eye,” Jesus says.  How can you say to your neighbor, “Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye”, when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Luke 6:42) 

We’ll also see the other with compassion rather than self-righteous judgment, because when we take the log out of our own eye, when we see clearly our own mess, then we can see another’s mess with greater compassion.  When we see ourselves clearly and accept our mess, then we are no longer threatened by someone else’s mess. 

Further, Jesus teaches, there is something greater than ourselves in which we can place our security.  There is something greater than our own power and our own righteousness in which we can place our security.  There is a greater story than the countless self-serving stories our brains make up.  That something greater is our eternal, loving Father, and that greater story, is the Gospel story of love and creation, sin and redemption, second chances and reconciliation.

That’s the story Jesus led the people to when he told them the parable of the fig tree.  He first had to break them down and divest them of their false, self-serving narratives.  Then, laid bare, empty, and not the least bit afraid, Jesus clothed them and filled them up with the true story of God’s love for us and his striving with us.

In the parable Jesus told, there is the worthless fig tree which is taking up good soil and producing nothing, and the gardener says, “Give it another year.  Let me work with it. Let me tend it and care for it.  Let me give it even better soil, and we’ll see if it can then bear fruit.”  Looking at the idea of the garden, where were we all planted?  The Garden of Eden.  The fig tree is humanity.  Jesus is telling us that despite how often we give up on ourselves and how often we give up on each other, we’re in his garden, and he wants to keep striving with us. 

Does this mean, that once we accept Jesus, that bad things won’t happen to us, or we will be perfectly shielded from tragedy or unexpected death?  No.  Even while loving Jesus and loving each other, we can still die unexpectedly and suddenly.  When people do, however, our brains don’t need to make up stories about how they must be bad and such tragedy can’t happen to us. 

Jesus has given us the true story, that when we die, either tragically and unexpectedly or at a ripe old age, we continue on living with the Gardener.  We need not fear death because in death we are transformed from life to life. 

Accept and believe that story, Jesus says, and then let it be the story not only of your death, but of your life.  Let yourselves trust in God enough that you no longer have to make up stories about each other when you harm one another, but instead, I was going to say “put manure around each other,” following the parable Jesus told, but that doesn’t quite seem to work.  Jesus is saying that when you hurt one another, strive with each other.  Offer to one another, the compassion and forgiveness that God has given to you. 

Rather than making up stories about one another, accept he story in which we are all deserving of death, because we all have hatred in our hearts, and accept the rest of that story in which God does not say condemned, but rather says, “forgiven,” the story in which God calls us beloved. 

Accept and live the story in which there is still uncertainty in the world, but that uncertainty spurns us on to greater love, greater forgiveness, greater urgency in our desire for reconciliation, because when we love one another as God loves us, we don’t want one more day to go by with the other still hurting.  When we have enmity in our hearts toward someone and we’re living God’s story, then we don’t want one more day to go by without having embraced that person and offered and received forgiveness and love.  Living God’s story, trusting in his story, and placing our security in his story, we change the narratives we make up about others, no longer making them villains, but calling them beloved and forgiven.  Amen.