It’s now just over a year since my great friend and colleague, Fr Neville Ashton, died. I know that most of you knew Fr Neville too because he came to St Mark’s and St Gabriel’s numerous times to cover for me when I was on holiday. So I know too, because many of you have told me, just how well-liked Fr Neville was. That’s not surprising because he was a very friendly and approachable person, not to mention a very good pastoral priest, he was a good listener, especially when people came to him with problems. I also know that Fr Neville was well-liked for his preaching.
I knew Fr Neville for over 40 years and so I know that his style of preaching changed over the years. At one time he’d hand write or type out his sermons and preach from the pulpit. But over the years he stopped doing that and started preaching in front of the people. He also stopped preaching from a text and started giving short, homely talks that didn’t tax people too much either by their length or with complicated, academic style, theological arguments. But however Fr Neville’s preaching changed over the years, one thing about it remained constant and that was that there was a recurring theme in his sermons. And that theme was death.
Death was a theme in Fr Neville’s sermons so often in fact that, when he was my parish priest, there was often a conversation in the vestry before Mass about how far he’d get into his sermon before he mentioned death; because he almost always did. Typically, he’d use the Gospel of the day to make a point about following Jesus’ example more closely and then he’d go on to say something like this:
“And you need to start doing this now because you never know what’s going to happen. The only thing we do know is that we’re all going to die. But we don’t know when. You might not be here tomorrow. I might not be here tomorrow. So you need to start doing this now because tomorrow may be too late.”
At which point, the servers in the Sanctuary and the choir in their stalls would all look at each other and smile.
To be fair to Fr Neville, he was making a very good point, and one that needs to be made. The trouble was, he made it so often, that it lost its impact and became something of a running joke.
And that’s a shame because what Fr Neville said so often does need saying from time to time. I’ve mentioned it today because, to all intents and purposes, it’s exactly what Jesus is saying in this morning’s Gospel.
When we read this Gospel story, we have to bear in mind the understanding of the people of Jesus’ day. To them, personal sin had a direct effect in and on life. So, if someone was ill, or if something bad happened to them, such as with the people mentioned in the Gospel, it was regarded as the result of their sins; the punishment if you like, for their sins. And that’s what Jesus is referring to when he asks if people think those Pilate had killed and those who died when a tower fell were worse sinners or more guilty than other people. In the popular understanding of the day they probably were but Jesus tells them, ‘No’, they weren’t. These people were no worse than anyone else and so if they could die so suddenly and unexpectedly, it could happen to anyone, at any time. And Jesus says that his listeners will die in the same way unless they repent.
We also need to think here about the circumstances of these people’s deaths. We’re told that the Galilean’s blood was mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. We can only assume that the blood of their sacrifices refers to the blood of the animals they were sacrificing to God. So these Galileans must have been killed whilst they were at worship. The tower at Siloam that fell killing eighteen people must be associated with the Pool of Siloam in which Jesus told a blind man to wash, in the course of restoring his sight. We know that the Pool of Siloam was adjacent to the Temple Mount and that water from the pool was used in temple worship at times. So these eighteen may have either been leaving the temple or making their way to the temple when the tower fell and killed them. In other words, all these people probably died either shortly before worshipping God, while they were worshipping God, or shortly after worshipping God.
That gives an added dimension to Jesus’ words. These people who died were, to all appearances, good people. They were good Jews who worshipped God. And yet they died, suddenly and quite horrifically really. And Jesus tells those he’s speaking to that they are no better than these people. He’s telling them that, if this can happen to people who worship God, people who are no worse than anyone else, it can happen to you too, at any time. These words of Jesus suggest that those who died, and his audience were all in the same boat, they worshipped God, but they were all unrepentant sinners too. Does that also apply to us? Those who died were no worse than those he was speaking to, but they were probably no better either. They worshipped God but they died, suddenly, and if it can happen to them it can happen to anyone, it can happen to you, and me, too. And they, and we, might not be here tomorrow so the time to repent is now. Which is the warning Fr Neville gave people so often in his sermons.
Of course, we believe in a God who is loving and merciful. We believe that the price of our sins has already been paid, in blood, by Jesus on the Cross. So we don’t have anything to worry about do we? But, as I said in my sermon last Sunday, we have a covenant with God, a deal, a deal sealed in the blood of Jesus. We can be forgiven and have eternal life, but we have to believe in Jesus and follow his teaching and example. Part of doing that is to be repentant. We have to accept that we are sinners but do our very best not to sin. We can’t think that Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross means that we can do as we please and we’ll be OK because Jesus has already suffered for our sins and paid the price of them. We have to keep our side of the covenant. And this is what the parable of the unfruitful fig tree we heard this morning is telling us.
The fig tree had been unfruitful for three years, so the owner decides to cut it down. But the man who tended the fig tree wanted to give the tree another chance, one more year to see if it would bear fruit. In the context of his ministry, what Jesus seems to be saying here is that the people have had three years to repent and bear fruit; they’ve had the three years of his ministry to do that. But that ministry is now coming to an end because he’ll shortly be making his final journey to Jerusalem where he knows he’s going to be betrayed, arrested and put to death. At this point, there’s still time to repent and bear fruit, but there’s not much time left.
And isn’t that always the case for us? We’ve had a lot more than three years to listen to Jesus, to repent and bear fruit, in fact, we’ve had our whole lives, or at least, the whole of our lives from the time we first heard the Gospel, to do that. And for most of us, there’s still time, plenty of time hopefully, to repent and bear fruit. But we can’t ever be certain of that because none of us know exactly how much time we’ve got left do we. We may live another ten, twenty, thirty years. Some of us may live a lot longer than that. But on the other hand, we may walk under a bus tomorrow and then our time will be up. We simply don’t know.
What we do know is that one day our time will be up and then our future will depend not on what we could do or could have done, but on what we did do. And we never know when that time will come. You might not be here tomorrow. I might not be here tomorrow. So if we’re going to repent and bear fruit, the kind of fruit that we’re called to bear under the terms of the deal we have with God, the time to do it is now, while we still can, before it’s too late.
Amen.
The Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Lent can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 