Today we have a gospel reading about atrocities, judgement and repentance, but also the good news of God’s patience and kindness.
We begin with those troubling questions about why bad things happen to some people but not others. This question, no doubt, has been asked many times this week, in the light of the massacre in Christchurch. It leads us to contemplate the fragility of life. The more important question for Jesus, however, is: “How will you live the life you get to live?” For Jesus, this becomes a question about repentance and its urgency for our lives. But what is repentance and what do we repent of? Is it just the individual little misdeeds that we are sorry for and want to eliminate from our lives? Or is there more to sin and repentance?
We also have the story of the fig tree that does not bear fruit, a story about judgement (if it isn’t bearing fruit, why keep it?), and about caretaker’s patience and love of the tree that ensures it remains alive for another year. This, by analogy, is the patience and love that God shows to each one of us, which, in turn, gives us the freedom to repent and bear the fruits of repentance.
Pastor Ian Rentsch