For once, our four scriptural texts this morning relate to a common theme: that of turning to God. The text from Isaiah is from the very last chapter of the second section of Isaiah. It's the 'last words' as it were, from the poet-prophet of the time of the exile, a time in which at least one thing has been learned. God seeks his people, and they can seek God, wherever they are. God issues an invitation to life, to feasting, to the drinking of wine, water and milk, to a renewed covenant. And this is a gift to everyone, no longer primarily a gift to a king - who no longer exists and who will never exist for them again in the old way - but a gift now to a particular community to share with others. Incline your ear, come, seek, call, return - God will have mercy, abundance of pardon, beyond our ability to imagine. The conviction that God is revealed as mercy goes right back to the desert experience of Moses at the burning bush, and remains a theme of central importance in our texts, as I hope we shall see. To that invitation of Isaiah it is as though the writer of Psalm 63 responds. The writer thirsts for God, and seems to have taken some rug or mat into the restored sanctuary in Jerusalem to stay overnight, waiting for the break of dawn in all its beauty, waiting for the light which will show him something of the divine strength and loving kindness. The writer recalls earlier trust in God, praising God, praying with uplifted hands. And joining a feast again is the best metaphor for recovering trust in God.
Both of these texts would have been familiar to Jesus of Nazareth and to at least some of his followers. So when we find him in Luke 13 part way through the grim journey to Jerusalem by way of Galilee and Samaria and Jericho, Jesus can as it were presume a lot in his stern warnings. God is indeed mercy, but is judge too. So far as the incidents included in this bit of Luke are concerned - and found nowhere else in the Gospels - we have no idea of the events to which they refer apart from this text. Would even Pilate have authorised the slaughter of men at worship with all the risk of uproar that would have entailed. The building accident is perhaps more believable. Either way, the point is clear. There is no necessary connection between such disasters and being turned away from God; nor of course will trust in God inevitably mean protection from disaster. What matters is relationship to God, and it is being out of that relationship that is the real disaster. Do his hearers believe that the most important thing at stake is trust and fidelity to God no matter what? And no one need as it were presume on God's abundant mercy: bear fruit, as the parable urges, don't become like the kind of tree that's good for nothing but to make way for something better.
There's a lot more to be said on this theme in Luke's Gospel of course, such as the parables which conclude with the words about joy in heaven over even just one person who turns to God; but if they do, they are expected to live in certain ways. And here Jesus parts company with the writer of Psalm 63 we could say. For the bit we did not hear is concerned with the fate of the Psalmist's opponents: 'They shall fall by the sword; they shall be a portion for the foxes' in verse 10. There's plenty of this in the Psalms, and nowadays we are too squeamish by half, because we do not like to hold up a mirror to our own faces by saying or singing such words, words which often express what we really feel about those differ from us or who do us down in some way - as we in turn do to them. We need safe places in which to say and sing such things so long as we remember that we have to move out of that place. We remember that we are someone else's opponent and they would like to see us as supper for the foxes as it were. For we really have to get beyond thinking of or speaking of one another in that way. Jesus of Nazareth expects more of those who trust God, that they love their enemies, and do good to those who hate us. 'Be merciful as your Father also is merciful.' So if we want to know what sort of fruit to bear, there is some tough work on ourselves ahead, tough tne risky, and sometimes very problematic in our troubled societies, because mercy does not mean and cannot mean simply accepting everything that happens or everything we do.
So Paul in Corinthians as it were picks this problem up. It simply is not the case that we can turn to God and think we can carry on much as before . Think of your predecessors in the desert he suggest to his hearers. They too were given pledges of divine presence - a baptism, a meal. He says that Christ was with them in the desert, but because of the way they behaved, God to them was judge. He cut them down as the parable promises to those who do not bear fruit. And there is as it were a special word of caution to those who think they can rely solely on themselves under stress: 'Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.' Think perhaps of Peter in Luke's gospel (22.33) so disastrously insisting that he is ready to go with Jesus to prison and to death, whereas Jesus is desperately trying to get across to him that it is God's fidelity to Peter that will sustain him in the end, no matter what. So there is that terrible moment in the fire-lit courtyard when Peter does indeed deny knowledge of Jesus and Jesus turns and looks at him- in compassion? - and Peter goes out and weeps bitterly. No wonder that Paul insists that it is God's fidelity to us which will make it possible to withstand whatever befalls us. And, we may venture to add, whether we explicitly know it and acknowledge it or not.
Let me conclude by giving you one example which I think makes this point. In Hans Fallada's novel Alone in Berlin (Penguin, 2009), written after the fall of Germany in 1946-1947, by a deeply troubled man who nevertheless found a way to honour the risk-taking of some profoundly decent citizens in the midst of the horrors. Fallada wrote up in fictional form the real-life resistance of a couple who had undertaken a three-year campaign again the regime which was bringing so much suffering to so many. They left postcards all over Berlin calling for civil disobedience and workplace sabotage. The particularly urged that citizens not give to the Winter Fund, which was supposed to be a charitable distribution to the needy but which in fact was funding the way in which men were so needlessly dying, and in which some were being turned into criminal killers wearing very smart uniforms. It took almost three years before systematic police work and some accidental slips identified the couple, who were of course tried, sentences and executed as traitors in 1943. Fallada the author was in a bad way by the end of the war, having spent part of it in a mental hospital - he was fortunate indeed to be still alive, when to help get him back to his work as a writer a government minister in Eastern Germany handed over to him the police file on the couple responsible for the postcard campaign. He suggested that Fallada write a novel about them, which indeed he did - in just twenty-four days. It is unsurprising that Fallada is a bit uncertain about how to express his conviction of the importance of the fundamental decency of the couple. They are the wheat among the tares, to use a metaphor from another parable, the promise of conscience, of a turn to God. Particularly moving, I think, is the confrontation between Otto, when arrested, and the police officer who can take credit for his capture. The inspector asks Otto what on earth he had hoped to accomplish, behaving like a gnat against an elephant. But Otto replies, 'You see, it doesn't matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not. I had to fight, and given the choice I would do it again only I would do it very differently.' The inspector finds that he cannot withstand Otto who says to him, 'You're working in the employ of a murderer, delivering ever new victims to him. You do it for money; perhaps you don't even believe in the man. No, I'm certain you don't believe in him. Just for the money then ... .'
At midnight, in his office, recognising the truth of what Otto, the prisoner, has said to him, in despair the inspector kills himself. He has no way out of his situation. Eventually, Otto dies with as much dignity as he can muster. The last words of the novel are about reaping what we sow, and it is clear enough what the author of the novel thinks about the ultimate significance of such protest as the dissidents have been able to muster. They are to be found at the throne of God. My point in quoting the novel was to provide an example of what Paul could mean by God's fidelity to us making it possible for us to withstand whatever befalls us, and, I added, whether we explicitly know it or not. Otto in his decency, in his dissidence in terrible circumstances, has turned to God as best he can, though it is others who explicitly believe in God, not he himself. And even the desperate inspector, challenged by Otto, in acknowledging the truth of what Otto has said to him, also makes his turn to God, and we may think, is also embraced by the divine mercy. But I think that one could not become an Otto unless in the habit of practising small acts of decency as it were, indications however small, of the turn to God of which Isaiah and the Psalmist speak, and which Jesus of Nazareth urges on his followers. And our austerities in Lent, large or small, are fundamentally about helping us to make and sustain our turn to God, a bit of toughening up so that in reliance on God we may become more like the fig tree that bears fruit than the fig tree that can only be uprooted, good for nothing at the end of the day.
Sermon by: Ann Loades