Luke 13: 1-9 (links validated 3/1/22)

The Chronicles of Narnia tell about a terrible offense that leads to a long range good. Do you remember how Edmund betrayed his brother and sisters? Because of his betrayal he now belongs to the white witch, the queen, who sharpens a knife in order to kill Edmund. Aslan the Lion recognizes the queen's legal right to kill the boy, but he offers himself in place of Edmund. The white witch accepts, not knowing that Aslan's death will reverse death itself. Aslan comes back from the dead and confronts Edmund. The children see "Aslan and Edmund walking together in the dewy grass, apart from the rest of the court." We'll pick up this story next week when hear the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son...

Pádraig Ó Tuama is an Irish theologian and poet. One of his books is entitled In the Shelter: Finding Welcome in the Here and Now. In that book, he talks about inappropriate questions and the Japanese word “mu” which can mean “un-ask.” If someone asks a question that is too small, too simplistic, too flat, Ó Tuama points to this word, which is also used in Buddhist practice, to say ‘un-ask’ that question because there’s a better one, a wiser one, a deeper one...

I recently noticed that one of my houseplants was really struggling. It isn’t a finicky plant as I buy the kind that don’t need much attention to live. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a good reason for the change. And yet, here I am devoting more time and energy to try to keep it alive than I am for any of my other houseplants. Obviously, I thought of this plant as I read the parable of the fig tree in the vineyard. Will all this special attention and love make a difference? Can this plant live? Time will tell. But, I must say, I don’t enjoy how much head space this plant is taking up. I don’t like looking at it; and I’m more than a little frustrated with it. Maybe just a little I know what Jesus was intimating about the owner of vineyard. Do your job, Plant! Bear your fruit, Human!

The gardener, the one who has been tending to this particular tree for three years, knows its potential. The gardener can see that it needs conditions that are just a little bit better than the other trees around it, and so they ask the landowner for a stay of execution. Give it one more year. I’ll dig around it, give it plenty of manure, and hopefully next season it will produce fruit. The gardener put their money on dirt, manure, and sweat to bring about fullness of life – albeit messy, messy life – to that fig tree. I learned a lot about this kind of messy life back in 2008. The grass in south Alabama is not like the beautiful, lush lawns we have up here. Zoysia and Centipede might grow in the sandy soil, but they are rough, ugly, and hard to maintain. So, when my parents moved down there, into a brand-new house with a freshly sodded lawn, my dad wanted to everything he could to maintain it. He asked around at the Ace Hardware and learned that the best fertilizer he could use on the garbage grass in his yard was turkey manure. Early in the growing season, so like February in south Alabama, dad spread a few bags of turkey poop on his lawn, watered it per the instructions, and waited for it to do its work. What the helpful folks at Ace failed to mention was that no matter the season down there, the sun is really, really hot. Do you know what turkey manure does when it is met by the really hot sun? It stinks. It stinks to high heaven. It makes you want to sell your house and move a thousand miles away; it smells so bad. While you didn’t want anything to do with that yard through most of the spring, it was as lush and as green as a builders’ grade centipede lawn could be...

we must move from speaking about love to actually letting ourselves be loved. Nouwen uses his own life as an example. For years, he went all over the world giving talks about love, even while not letting those around him really love him. Only after moving in with the physically handicapped, with people who were not interested in what he had to say about love, did he actually allow himself to be loved. What was true for him is true for most of us. It is far easier for us to speak about love than to let ourselves actually be loved. Those around us, family and friends, already know all these things about us. It's time we recognized them too.

In a beautiful book of narrative theology, In the Shelter: Finding Welcome in the Here and Now, poet and healer Pádraig Ó Tuama describes the Buddhist concept of “mu,” or un-asking. If someone asks a question that’s too small, flat, or confining, Ó Tuama writes, you can answer with this word mu, which means, “Un-ask the question, because there’s a better question to be asked.” A wiser question, a deeper question, a truer question. A question that expands possibility, and resists fear. If I could sum up this week’s Gospel reading in a single word, I would adopt Ó Tuama’s. Mu...

("Where there's muck there's money so they say. If it's true George should have been a millionaire! His small farm was awash with muck. The land was low-lying and mostly dense yellow clay so whenever it rained the water had nowhere to go and would become vast shallow lakes. Add the churning of cow's hooves and their generous contributions of manure and yes the place was literally awash with muck...")

(includes lots of Greek help)

("In the movie The American President, Annette Bening plays Sydney Ellen Wade, an environmental lobbyist. Her job is to convince the White House to advocate for higher automobile emission standards. During her first trip to the White House, she meets with A.J. MacInerney, the President's Chief of Staff, played by Martin Sheen..." and other illustrations)

(excellent exegesis)

We were back for the first day of classes when Professor Robert Werberig, an artist, poet, and pastor, walked into the classroom to teach a course entitled Pastoral Theology. He sat closest to us on top of his desk, looked deeply into our eyes, and said in his native New Yorker accent: 'Everything bad that has ever happened to you is a blessing!'...

A couple years ago, this horrible story caught my attention – a 78 year old woman named Tona Herndon’s, who’s husband of 60 years ago had recently died, went to the cemetery to visit her husbands grave. Vulnerable, grief stricken, she didn’t even see it coming: a robber waiting, stalking her. As she walked to her husbands grave this man jumps out, mugs her, steals her purse with $700 in it. For Tona Herndon, the widow mugged at the cemetery, that happened in a very profound way which made this random horrible story so newsworthy and memorable for me. The criminal who had mugged the poor woman, thanks to Tona’s description, was arrested pretty quickly. The son of the robber, was a 15 year old boy named Christian, saw the story on the news, and recognized the mug shot being his father. His parents had divorced at a young age. His father had not been very present in his life – being in and out of prison over the years. There’s a lot of things Christian could’ve done. He could’ve ignored recognizing his father in the story (it’s not like anyone was asking Christian about it). He could’ve allowed the actions over his father’s abandoning him and hurting others to fuel his own anger. Instead what he did, was ask to meet Tona. He said to her that he believed on behalf of his family that he needed to apologize to her for what his father had done (saying if I didn’t apologize, who would) and then reached into his pocket and said that his father had recently given him $250 so that he could go on an upcoming band trip. He added I don’t know if it is yours, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t give it to you. The woman accepted the apology he didn’t have to give, the restitution the young man didn’t need to offer… and quite beautifully said “this is my money to do as I want” as she handed it back to Christian to go on the trip...

Early on in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer rails against what he calls cheap grace. “Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares,” he writes.[2] For Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is the disease by which the Christian comes to rest on their laurels. With cheap grace, a Christian is led to believe “the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.”[3] Cheap grace produces no change of life, no discipleship, but rather becomes a throwaway commodity, an abundance of rotten apples. After despairing at the abundance of cheap grace, Bonhoeffer establishes the concept of costly grace. He does this by metaphorically limiting its supply, saying, “Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has.”...

In her startling story “Revelation,” Flannery O’Connor introduces us to Mrs. Ruby Turpin, a fussy woman of a certain age who spends her life nurturing gratitude in her heart that she is not like most of the other people she meets. Without knowing it, Mrs. Turpin has narrowed the confines of her world steadily downward to the point that she gives off waves of disapproval to the people around her. One day while sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, Mrs. Turpin engages in just enough conversation with another woman in the room as to tip off a college girl named Mary Grace regarding Mrs. Turpin’s true attitudes toward others. (Indeed, in her heart, Mrs. Turpin had already written Mary Grace off as a fat and ugly girl.) Mary Grace finally becomes so incensed at Mrs. Turpin that she hurls her “Elementary Psychology” textbook at her face, blurting out as she does so, “Go back to hell where you belong, you old wart hog!” This shakes Ruby to the core. She’s just sure she’s not an old wart hog. From hell...

It was nearly 20 years ago, and I still remember it as if it were yesterday. I was working as the on-call Chaplain at the Grand River Hospital in Kitchener. I had been paged to the emergency room to attend to a man who had accompanied a patient to the hospital, VSA, the code for Vital Signs Absent. Someone was waiting for me in the Quiet Room. The Quiet Room was a small ten by twelve room, into which loved ones of really serious patients were asked to wait for the worst possible news. They were kept there in the Quiet Room so that they wouldn’t be disturbed, but I suspect that the real reason is so that they wouldn’t disturb the less seriously ill patients. Inside the Quiet Room sat one of the largest men I have ever met. He was about six-eight, with big broad shoulders. He wore blue jeans and a black leather jacket. He had long black hair and a bushy beard. He could have passed for the head of a biker gang and under normal circumstances, I probably would have been very afraid of this character. I introduced myself as the Chaplain and he just put his head in his hands. Chaplains are not popular people in hospital emergency rooms. People usually expect the worst when the medical profession calls in a chaplain. I took a seat and together we waited. Slowly, this big bear of a man began to tell me what had happened. He said, that everything was all his fault; he was to blame. Anne, his partner wouldn’t be in the other room fighting for her life if it wasn’t for him. After years of being on his own, driving truck from one place to another, never really having a home, he had met Anne and she had changed everything. No more long hauls for him. He switched to driving locally. For the first time in a very long time he had a home; a home he and Anne had made together. She’d made him so happy. He loved her so much. Everything was going so well for them. Why? Why did this have to happen? He knew he shouldn’t have allowed himself to be happy. It was all his fault. If only he hadn’t of stuck around. None of this would have happened...

Several years ago, I remember reading an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about a Republican state representative named Dan Ponder from a small town in Georgia who took the podium in the state legislature imploring that body to pass a bill that would impose extra penalties for hate crimes committed against minorities and gays. Representative Ponder told the Legislature that all his ancestors in the 19th century had owned slaves. His great-great grandfather had fought in the Civil War. His third-grade classmates cheered with him when they heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot. He told his fellow legislators of how his college fraternity had ostracized six of its members because they were suspected of being gay. He told of the African-American woman who had raised him, who had changed his diapers and read him books and taught him, more than anyone else, the difference between right and wrong. He told them how, one day when he was a boy and leaving for school, she had leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek, and how he had averted his head. Black people were not supposed to kiss white people. He spoke of the shame he had carried ever since that day. He said, "I pledged to myself then, and I re-pledged on the day we buried that magnificent woman, that never again would I look in the mirror and know that I had kept silent and let hate, prejudice, and indifference negatively impact another person's life." The he said, "I finally figured out that the only way we are ever going to make progress is when somebody stands up and takes a stand. I urge the House to pass this hate crimes bill." And so, they did...

Just a day after the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the Opinion section of the New York Times, Wajahat Ali analyzed the root of this hatred. Near the end of his piece, he commented how a Muslim friend had messaged wondering how they’d keep their kids safe. Wajahat Ali wrote, “I didn’t have a good answer. But I know the threat we’re facing isn’t just individual terrorists. It’s the global ideology of white nationalism and white supremacy. We have to take it seriously, and call out politicians, academics and media personalities who give it a platform under the guise of exploring both sides, fostering debate or avoiding political correctness.”...

Raissa Maritain, a convert to Roman Catholicism from Judaism, had always retained a deep love for and connection to her Jewish roots. She described herself as a Christian with a Jewish heart. Now, in 1936 when she wrote this poem, she was witnessing the ascent of Adolph Hitler and Nazism in Europe, was hearing first-hand of the accounts of Jews, some of whom were personal friends, being killed in Europe, especially in Poland, and she felt herself, a Jew, threatened and was acquiring the necessary papers to flee France for the United States. Her world was crumpling, her friends were dying, and she was scurrying for her personal safety. Evil was on the ascent and all the trusted political and social powers seemed to be either crushed by it or acquiescing to it. Within that crushing context, she wrote this poem:

("There is a German word, Schadenfreude, which describes a more or less universal human trait: the sometimes sad and always anxious relief, which, for example, certain soldiers feel during battle when the infantryman next to them is wounded or killed while they are spared. Two are in the field; one catches a bullet but the other does not. There is sadness, but there is relief, too...")

In his beautiful book of narrative theology, In the Shelter: Finding Welcome in the Here and Now, poet and healer Pádraig Ó Tuama describes the Buddhist concept of “mu,”or un-asking. If someone asks a question that’s too small, too flat, too confining, Ó Tuama writes, you can answer with this word mu, which means, “Un-ask the question, because there’s a better question to be asked.” A wiser question, a deeper question, a truer question. A question that expands possibility, and resists fear...

in our backyard in Austin, Texas, we had a fig tree, quite new to me as one who had grown up in the Midwest. It didn’t just grow on its own. It had to be pruned before the buds would swell in early spring and it had to be fertilized after the buds began to swell. And if thus nurtured properly, it should bear good fruit. Jesus, of course, is telling a parable, with a lesson as strong as the one given to the Galileans in the first part of our text. If all the proper nurture does nothing to produce growth—or to say it theologically, if all the grace given to you still results in your being a hard-hearted Hannah, a blamer who knows that only others are at fault, then you’re as useless as a fig tree that is so dead it needs to be cut down. It’s just taking up space! Wow. Is he saying this to you?...

It reminds me of that incredible scene in the movie Unforgiven, in which Clint Eastwood punforgivenlays an old gunslinger on one last mission of revenge, accompanied by a boastful young man who claims to have killed several people. But when the young man finally does kill the person he’s been after, he realises what a horrific thing it is that he has done, that it brings him no satisfaction or joy. And so he gets maudlin drunk, and admits that this is, in fact, the first time he’s killed a person...

a 78 year old woman named Tona Herndon, who’s husband of 60 years ago had died just two weeks earlier, went to the cemetery to visit her husbands grave. Vulnerable, grief stricken, she didn’t even see it coming: a robber waiting, stalking her. As she walked to her husbands grave the man jumps out, mugs her, steals her purse with $700 in it. What did she do wrong? Trying to wrestle with the reality of death, and the grief that accompanies it is bad enough. But then to have something like this happen... it’s enough to make anyone question where is God - or even more is there a God?...

I’m intrigued by something biblical scholar Charles Hedrick points out about this parable, something that many of us miss: this is one terrible vineyard owner. He has come to the tree for three years looking for fruit. Three years. There is no indication that he has done anything during that time to encourage the tree to produce fruit. As far as we can tell, this is the first time the owner has even spoken to the gardener about the problem. He just shows up, sees the tree has no fruit, gets grumpy about it, and goes away. Then comes back the next year to check. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Until the third year he is so fed up he says, “Cut it down!”. What did he expect? That the tree would just magically become healthy on its own?

Take the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004, for example. Many people died in that because when the water retreated before the tsunami hit, instead of running away, they went to take a closer look. Isn’t it tempting to think that we would have behaved differently, been more cautious, run like the clappers in the opposite direction? I doubt it is true, but it makes us feel safer to think the victims could have acted differently and saved themselves.

It's interesting, then, that French painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes made a pair of paintings out of a fig tree...and John the Baptist. Twice. The two compositions are related but certainly not the same.

The instructions were clear and exact from the elderly gentleman who gave what looked to be a dead stick to my mother. He asked a question that seemed puzzling at first… “How big is your backyard?” Then he held out his hand and offered to her the twig wrapped in a bit of newspaper. “Plant it deep and water it often,” he said. Those were his complete instructions for what he trusted would grow into a fig tree. He had complete faith that this seemingly dead twig would grow into a fine fig tree that would need a lot of backyard.
The words of the gift-giver tell it all, don’t they? “How big is your backyard” or perhaps better asked…”How big is your God?”

Today I’d simply like to share one of my favorite stories with you. It’s from Christian counselor and pastor Dennis Linn, his personal story of how his mind was changed about God1 — how he repented. He tells of Hilda coming into his office one day because her son had attempted suicide for the fourth time. She described how her son was involved in prostitution, drug dealing and murder and then ended her list of her son’s “big sins” with, “What bothers me most is that my son says he wants nothing to do with God. What will happen to my son if he commits suicide without repenting and wanting nothing to do with God?” Pastor Linn tells how he personally believed in the popular version of God being something like a stern father, but the counselor in him didn’t want to tell that to this struggling mother. Instead, he began by asking Hilda what she thought. But Hilda was trapped in that same idea of a stern punishing God...

Fred's a bit nervous. He hasn't been to church since he got married… and that was the shortest wedding service anyone could remember. He gets to the pearly gates, and St. Peter goes down the list of all the Freds until he finds this particular Fred Smith… "Ohh. There's a note here says Jesus wants a word with you." And Fred really starts to sweat. Jesus comes out and says, "Fred Smith— where have you been? What have you been doing— I've been trying to get your attention for years!!"

He was very sick, and he was very sad. Larry* had had his legs amputated due to blood flow and complications with diabetes. This had happened just days before I met him. Worse yet, he was alone. He was homeless with no family to speak of. His thin body shook with grief. Larry’s tears fell down his cheeks and stained his hospital gown as he managed to get the words out: “I just don’t know why God is doing this to me, Pastor. I just don’t know what I did to deserve this. I must have sinned real bad. Oh, Lord, I must have.”

("My developing understanding of Lent revives another childhood memory, that of a favorite book, The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I now see the story as another Lenten parable")

("One of my mentors and heroes was Browning Ware, long-time pastor of the First Baptist Church of Austin, Texas. He was tall, angular, and ruggedly handsome with a crusty voice that could put the fear of the Lord into pompous religionists or share the love of God with an overworked, under-rested, discouraged waitress at an all-night coffee shop...")

("A young woman once talked to her pastor about her sin of pride. She says, 'Pastor, every Sunday I come to church and look around and think to myself that I am the prettiest girl in the church. I try to stop but I just can't. Am I horribly sinful?' Pastor looked at her and said, 'No dear not sinful; just horribly mistaken.'...")

("Roko Belic's documentary film Happy begins in a muddy slum of Kolkata. There we meet a rickshaw driver named Manoj Singh. Manoj exudes happiness. 'My home is good,' he says, 'we live well.' He points to some sticks covered by a tarp. True, he admits, during the monsoon season one side of their tarp leaks. Nonetheless, says Manoj, 'When I come home from work and my son greets me, I feel like I'm not poor but the richest person in the world..." and another quote)

(includes several quotes including two from Barbara Brown Taylor and Barbara Lundblad)

("On July 8th 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached his most famous sermon in Connecticut – It was entitled 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God'. Edwards was a preacher at the time of the revival movement in America. Here are some parts of that sermon and you soon see that he used some very vivid imagery..." and another illustration)

("The Pharisees of Jesus' day were unwittingly participants in Israel's long history of failures--but don't tell them that. They had neatly repressed the bad in themselves. So when Jesus sat at table with prostitutes, tax collectors, crooks, drunks, and multiple-partner adulterers, the Pharisees were sure they didn't fit in and so refused to take a seat even when Jesus personally invited them to do so....")

("It will be six years this spring --- and I'm still waiting for my lilac bush to bloom. Here is how it went: Sixteen years ago in the spring after my dad died, my friend, Midge, asked me to dig up a corner of the lilac bush which had bloomed in my folks' back yard for all the years we lived there. She wanted something to remember him by. And so I did, packaging the roots in wet paper towels and transporting it several hours to her back yard...")

"Here is a take on the subject from William Countryman's little book, The Good News of Jesus: 'The new life of the good news is like this: There was a woman who lived in Sonoma County, near Sebastapol. She had no relatives there, not even any close neighbors..."

("On a certain Sunday night in October 1938, evening prayer services were in full swing at a local church when a man named Sam, a member of the congregation who lived down the road from the church, charged into the prayer meeting trembling with fear and excitement. Finally gaining the breath to speak, he shouted, 'Martians are attacking the earth in spaceships! Some of 'em have already landed in New Jersey!'...")

(good story)

During the Nazi occupation of Paris, a husky Gestapo storm trooper stepped into a subway car. Suddenly, he tripped headlong over the umbrella of a little old lady sitting next to the door. After picking himself up, the bruised Nazi launched into a tirade of abuse, then bolted from the car at the next station. When he was gone, the passengers burst into spontaneous applause for the little old woman. “I know it isn’t much,” she said, graciously accepting the compliments, “but he’s the sixth one I’ve brought down today.” We all have our part to play, I guess. Do you see the point, though? We are constantly asking God to solve the world’s problems. He is asking us to do the same thing, as he directs and empowers us...

Since Dr. Raymond Moody’s original research, (1) there has been a growing acceptance that approximately half of those who return from clinical death remember a near-death experience that is similar, despite varying religious and cultural backgrounds. Listen to this typical account: A dying woman hears her doctor pronounce her dead while feeling herself sucked rapidly through a long, dark tunnel. She then finds herself outside her physical body, looking down on the doctors still trying to resuscitate her. She experiences herself as having a spiritual body which is very different from her physical body, like a floating amorphous cloud that communicates by thought. Relatives and friends who have already died come to meet her and bring her to a “Being of Light” who accepts and loves her more deeply than she has ever experienced. Like a magnet drawn to iron, she is drawn to the personal acceptance and compassion of this dazzling Being of Light. Shortly after appearing, the Being of Light asks the question, “What have you done with your life to show me?” This question isn’t accusing or threatening, but rather is pervaded with total love and acceptance, no matter what the answer...

("Remember this encounter from the 1994 film Forrest Gump? Bumper Sticker Guy: [running after Forrest] 'Hey man! Hey listen, I was wondering if you might help me. 'Cause I'm in the bumper sticker business and I've been trying to think of a good slogan, and since you've been such a big inspiration to the people around here I thought you might be able to help me jump into...")

("In his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen tells us that as persons who understand ourselves as already committed, we still need to make a three-fold conversion movement: i) We need to move from being a bystander to being a participant; ii) from being a judge to being a repentant sinner; and iii) from speaking about love to actually letting ourselves be loved...")

("Hannah Teter was a gold medalist snowboarder in Torino in 2006, and a silver medalist in Vancouver. Hannah donates her winnings from all her contests, plus proceeds from a family maple syrup business, to the community of Kirindon, Kenya through World Vision. So far the money has been used for such things as clean water, sanitation, health education, and bicycles...")

("A young and fearless preacher had a problem with a somewhat worldly parishioner who would remark sarcastically every Sunday as he shook the preacher's hand at the front door, 'You got them today preacher!' Sunday after Sunday this same fellow never seemed to feel that he himself needed to repent and always felt that the sermon was intended for everybody else...")

("Annie Lamott has a story about going to see her best friend in the hospital who was dying of cancer. At some point Annie chatted on and Pammy said to her without thinking, 'Do you think I will look fat in the dress?' Annie said, 'Pam, you don't have that kind of time.'..." and another illustration)

Our theme of “lostness and foundness” this season guided me through the recent news story about U.S. Olympic skier Toby Dawson. Dawson was three years old when he was lost in a market by his mother in South Korea. Eventually he was adopted and raised by the Dawson family, ski instructors in Colorado. When Toby Dawson won the bronze medal in freestyle skiing last Winter Olympics, his story caused dozens of would-be Korean parents to come forward to claim him. Dawson waited until genetic tests confirmed Kim Jae Su as his biological father. The two met again just last week. The son was prepared to say in Korean, “I’ve been waiting a long time, father.” The father responded, “I am so thankful that he has come to look for me even after such a long time.” Toby Dawson added, “My life until now has been confused. I looked at my parents, and I didn’t look like them. Then I also felt if I went to Korea, I didn’t belong there. I felt like I was still lost, stuck between two different worlds.”...

I once owned a huge golden retriever named Duffy, who taught me the flesh-and-blood meaning of this week’s Lenten gospel. Duffy’s first owner was an avid show dog trainer. She had brought Duffy to the kind of perfection to which show dog aficionados aspire. He came on command. He heeled to the knee. He sat without moving for minutes. He “finished” slowly and ponderously but with never a flaw. He watched his handler’s every move. Duffy had a problem, however. Without a command to respond to, he was clearly nervous, timid and afraid. You could see it in the hang of his head. You could tell that new things confused him. You knew that risk, dare and exploration were not his strengths. He was perfect but he was not happy. He was a healthy dog but he was not a frisky one. He was a good dog but he was not a playful one. He simply lived his life waiting to be told what to do next. So after a while, I decided to stop showing off all his training exercises. I gave him no orders at all after that. I simply depended on the relationship between us to keep him near me on our walks. It took a long time before Duffy could trust stopping along the road to smell the flowers. It took ages before he chased a butterfly. It was a long time before he ran to retrieve a tennis ball. It was ages before he lunged at me, big paws flailing, tail high, drooling with delight. But when he got to that point there was something new in him. It wasn’t “obedience.” It was development. Duffy had outgrown “perfection” and become “good” instead. He wasn’t an automaton anymore; he was a dog. And, interestingly enough, I began to see in him what had been lacking in my understanding of Lent for a long, long time...

"The tragedy of the Titanic was not just the enormous loss of life, cargo and property from the arrogance of those who thought they were in the 'unsinkable ship'. The most tragic part of the story came in the last hour or so of the voyage when more and more people, including the captain, realized that the crash and demise of the ship was just a matter of time..."

("For much of his young and successful life David Kuo didn't. Then things changed. Conservative Christians like Charles Colson and James Dobson have hammered Kuo for his new book Tempting Faith, in which he describes his firsthand experiences in George W. Bush's administration. In his first presidential campaign Bush promised to spend $8 billion per year on faith-based initiatives...")

"To a man by the name of Jim Mertz the question was phrased like this: Do we really love Jesus that much? Jim once watched a movie on television. In it he saw a Muslim from India fall on his knees in the dust and heat of the day. Five times a day this Muslim stopped, faced his holy city of Mecca and worshipped Allah..." and other illustrations

("I recall a young man who was killed outside a bar in 1976. Neil was the brother of a friend of mine. He was out with his girl friend for a quiet evening. He was minding his own business when he got assaulted. People, talking about the incident, were heard to say things like: 'Well, if he hadn't gone to the bar he wouldn't have been killed.'..." and another illustration)

("In 1741 a sermon was preached entitled 'Sinners in the Hands of God'." Here are some parts of that sermon. 'The wrath of God burns against his enemies . . . The pit is prepared, the fire is made ready. Hell opens its mouth wide to receive them. There is nothing between you and hell – but air..." and another short illustration)

("Once there was a couple who won a great prize, a two week trip to Europe. They had a whole year to make the trip. Well, said the wife, let's not do it this summer because we don't want to interfere with our summer at the lake...")

("I know not why the evil, I know not why the good; Both mysteries remain unsolved, and both insoluble. I know that both are there, the battle set And I must fight on this side or on that. I can't stand shivering on the bank. I plunge head first. I bet my life on Beauty, Truth and Love. I bet my life on Christ; Christ crucified..." and other illustrations)

You are stuck at a stop sign trying to turn on to a busy street. Doesn't it sometimes seem as though the folks driving on that busy street are terribly inconsiderate. Not one wants to slow down and let you in. But, the strangest thing happens. Now you are the one on the busy street and along the way people are at stop signs trying to get in...

("You are stuck at a stop sign trying to turn on to a busy street. Doesn't it sometimes seem as though the folks driving on that busy street are terribly inconsiderate. Not one wants to slow down and let you in. But, the strangest thing happens. Now you are the one on the busy street and along the way people are at stop signs trying to get in...")

On the CBC program Ideas, there was a program titled, 'Why buildings fall down'. It looked at various disastrous building collapses and outlined the process whereby the experts determined the cause of the collapse...

Pearl Buck was riding a train in those days when India was one of Britain's colonies. In her cabin was a British army captain. They stopped in some little, remote town. Out of nowhere came all these beggars running to the platform, surrounding the train, shouting and begging. The captain, disturbed by all of this, stood up, reached into his luggage, and pulled out a rawhide whip...

("Victor Frankl spent a long time in a concentration camp. He suggests something similar to repentance when he describes what it was that made life intolerable for some while others simply gave up and died. 'What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life...")

("Steve Telkins of Washington, DC writes: 'Each time I read Jesus' parable of the barren fig tree, I remember an experience early in my foreign service career. My wife, Pat, and I were assigned to the American Consulate in Kaduna, Nigeria -- a predominantly Muslim, tropical, agricultural region of West Africa. Our house faced a street used by local traffic and cattle herds alike, and needed a hedge to keep the cattle out...")

In the little Georgia country church of my childhood, there was a story the older folks loved to tell again and again, laughing over it and savoring it and embellishing it. The tale involved a certain Sunday night in October 1938. Evening prayer services were in full swing when a man named Sam, a member of the congregation who lived down the road from the church, charged into the prayer meeting trembling with fear and excitement..." and another illustration

("In the little Georgia country church of my childhood, there was a story the older folks loved to tell again and again, laughing over it and savoring it and embellishing it. The tale involved a certain Sunday night in October 1938. Evening prayer services were in full swing when a man named Sam, a member of the congregation who lived down the road from the church, charged into the prayer meeting trembling with fear and excitement..." and another illustration)

("During the years when Rev. Coffin was senior minister of Riverside Church in New York City, his son Alex was killed in a tragic car accident. Alex was driving in a terrible storm; he lost control of his car and careened into the waters of Boston Harbor. The following Sunday, Dr. Coffin preached about his son's death...")

("The novel THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY, begins this way: 'On Friday noon, July 20th, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.' Brother Juniper looks at the bridge the instant it breaks. He watches the five people fall into the canyon. And he wonders, 'Why did these five people die?'..." and another illustration)

Thornton Wilder’s novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, tells the story of a little village in South America. Each day, the villagers made their way across a bridge to go to the fields. One day, without warning, the bridge snapped. Six persons fell to their deaths. There was a priest in the village who said, "Aha! I will do research into these people’s lives and show why those six people were on the bridge when it fell. I will then prove beyond a doubt that if you do bad things, bad will happen to you and if you do good things, good will be done to you." He studied every aspect of their lives and came to a conclusion: those six people were no worse, nor no better than anyone else in the village. God allows the sun and the rain to fall on the good and the bad...

In his book, Praying for Jennifer, John Cobb puts forth yet another way of grappling with the question of why the innocent suffer. His book, based on a true story, is about a group of four teenagers, all model students in school and members of their church youth group. They were out joy riding in the country one day – not misbehaving in any way – when the girl driving the car failed to negotiate a curve, and the car overturned..." and other illustrations

("How many of you have seen the movie Forrest Gump? There was a brief scene about the origin of a bumper sticker. You may remember the bumper sticker even if you haven't seen the movie. It was very simple; it just said 'Shit Happens'. It's a good slogan in a way; a bit crass, but clear and simple...")

We are frightened by the graphic violence and death in the movies that our children enjoy. But, again, I can risk pointing to one that obviously more than just our children have enjoyed, the blockbuster movie “The Titanic.” What if we replaced the Titanic accident in Jesus’ question about the tower of Siloam? Do we understand death any better not to get hung up on it, when we flock to a movie about the tragic death of so many people? Why are we fascinated by it so? You might respond, “But, Pastor Paul, it’s such a nice love story. I go to it for the love story.” That might be true. But should we ask ourselves, then, what is this all about to mix a love story with a tragic story of death? Are we somehow romanticizing death? Is it a sign of our being mesmerized by it? Well, we could have some fun debating that point about The Titanic. It would also be interesting to further look into how our romantic ideals of love are bound up with death — so many popular love songs, for instance, with the theme, ‘I can’t live without her/him.’ But it’s a more serious matter to close this morning by considering if we have sometimes taken a similar romanticizing tendency to the cross of Jesus and to our faith...

("It was fairly subdued in the funeral home that evening. Even though the line was long there was very little talking. The family was in line greeting relatives and friends. Many tears were flowing and people were very sad. The small casket was surrounded by flower arrangements in the shape of hearts and teddy bears were in every little nook and comer...")

("She heard a knock on the front door at about 10:00 am. Two young boys asked if Carl, her son was home. Andrea went to his room to see if he was up. Finding him asleep she suggested that the two teenagers to come back in about an hour. After the young men, left, she noticed that a leather cigarette case was missing..." and other illustrations)

("Diane was a lovely coed attending a prestigious east coast college. She was away from home for the first time but she took her studies seriously. She enjoyed the responsibilities and challenges of college life. She made friends quickly in her dorm. Life was wonderfully rewarding. One crisp spring morning she was walking to one of her morning classes, when she collapsed...." and other illustrations)

Phil Connor is a cynical, self-centered weather reporter who has been assigned to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to report on the well known Groundhog Day festival. Phil is appalled at the assignment. He considers the story below his professional standards. From the time he wakes in the morning his disdain for the residents of this small backwater town is apparent. Each conversation, each interaction is laced with tiny sarcastic barbs at the quaint, down home lifestyle of rural Pennsylvania. His on the air comments are brief and thoughtless. They only contain the barest of information. Phil does not want to waste any time doing research about the festival. He does not care about meeting the people or learning their story. He only wants to return to the city and its fast paced, glittery lifestyle. But when the crew attempts to go home they discover that the interstate is closed by a snowstorm. He is stranded in tiny Punxsutawney and must stay another night...

("The Emperor Napoleon had a rule in his army that anyone who went absent without leave, on being captured would be shot the next morning at breakfast time. There was a boy of seventeen who had seen many of his companions die. Scared, he ran away, but he was caught and was sentenced to be executed next morning at breakfast time...")

("I recently ran across a passage from the 19th century theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He wrote, 'The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand it we are obliged to act accordingly...")

("In her stunning book, The Shadow Man, Mary Oliver, the novelist, sets out to retrieve her father from the mausoleum of mourning. He had died when she was seven and for a long time she thought he was the most important thing in her life. Thirty years later she began to ask who her father really was and discovered - in libraries, archives and her own memory - a man she never knew...")

("Once, while playing golf, I had driven into the woods and when I went to find my ball, I found four brand-new balls. I looked around and saw no one but my partner. Just as I was about to step into the golf cart, over the hill came two carts with four of my church members. They inquired if I had seen their balls..." and other illustrations)

("A Sunday school teacher was teaching her students about God's part in the miracle of life. So she pointed to a large plant in the room and asked, 'And who made these beautiful flowers grow?' An answer came back quickly from one of the boys in the class. 'God did!' The teacher was pleased but before she had a chance to respond, another boy shouted, 'But fertilizer sure helps!'..." and another illustration)

("Left Behind is a fictional story based on Tim LaHaye's interpretation of Biblical prophecy about earth's final days. As the series opens, all true believers in Christ disappear off of the face of the earth in an event referred to in Tim LaHaye's prophetic interpretation as 'the rapture'. The safe transport of the faithful to heaven signals that the Great Tribulation is about to begin...")

("I would like to share with you four words that I learned from contemporary theologian and youth leader Amanda Hughes. Think of these words as the hope you felt every time the man went to the tree to look for figs. The first word is to 'speak gently as the Lord spoke gently'..." and another illustration)

One day I received a call to come sit with a mother while her five-year-old daughter was in surgery. Earlier in the week, the girl had been playing with a friend when her head began to hurt. By the time she found her mother, she could no longer see. At the hospital, a CAT scan confirmed that a large tumor was pressing on the girl’s optic nerve, and she was scheduled for surgery as soon as possible...

("One of Mark Link's meditations on the internet this week says something similar: 'Jesus measures greatness differently from the way modern society does. Society measure greatness in terms of the influence one wields, the position one holds, the amount of money one makes. Jesus considers such things irrelevant...")

("We used to have a swamp maple tree in our front yard. It shaded our porch and added to the landscaping in front of our house. We took it for granted and we never pruned it or fertilized it. About three years ago it began to lose its leaves and some branches withered and died. I pruned it back to give it some life..." and another illustration)

("In the movie Good Will Hunting, the main character, Will, played by Matt Damon, is a genius. He keeps getting into trouble with the law because of his outbursts of anger. Finally, he is released on parole with the condition that he see a therapist. He laughs, and after scuttling the efforts of five therapists to help him, he ends up with a therapist, Sean, played by Robin Williams...")

("Thomas G. Long tells a story that was told him by Seward Hiltner about the state-run mental hospital where truly hopeless cases were relegated to a back ward. The psychiatrists and other medical staff avoided this ward, making only the bare minimum of calls and writing off the patients there as unsalvageable. Then a women’s group from a local church began, as a matter of compassion, to visit the patients in this hospital...")

("There was a letter in the Christian Century in December of 1977 that I would like to share with you. It was written by a pastor 's wife who had lost her husband to sickness in the prime of life. She says: 'He was forthright and full of fun; sensitive and compassionate; vital, young and about to die. No one expected this. It came as a blow. Why him?..." and another similar illustration)

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Greyhound racing is a popular betting sport in some parts of the country. The sport attracts crowds who enjoy watching sleek and beautiful dogs run as fast as they can around a track. Unlike racehorses, Greyhounds run without the assistance of a jockey. To keep the dogs running in the right direction, they are trained to chase a mechanical rabbit made of fur as it zips along the track in front of them. A man in the press box electronically controls the speed of the rabbit, keeping it just out in front of the dogs. The dogs never catch up to it. At a Florida track some years back when it was still legal in that state, a big race was about to begin. The dogs crouched in their cages, ready to go. The gun went off. The man in the press box pushed his lever, starting the rabbit down the first stretch, while the cage doors flew open, releasing the dogs to take off after the little rabbit. As the rabbit made the first turn, however, an electrical short in the system caused the rabbit to come to a complete stop, explode, and go up in flames. The only thing left was some black fluff hanging on the end of a wire. Their rabbit gone, the bewildered dogs did not know how to act. According to news reports, several dogs simply stopped running and laid down on the track, their tongues hanging out. Two dogs, still frenzied with the chase, ran into a wall, breaking several ribs. Another dog began chasing his tail, while the rest howled at the people in the stands. Not one dog finished the race...