THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 23, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Exodus 3:1-15

Psalm 63:1-8

I Corinthians 10:1-3

Luke 13:1-9

 

From today’s reading from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.” The idea is that making an example of someone serves as a warning not to repeat that person’s mistakes. This verse thus invites us to reflect on the nature of warnings and examples in general.

 

A warning is not quite the same as a threat. I’m old enough to remember when the warning first appeared on packs of cigarettes: “The Surgeon General has determined that smoking may be hazardous to your health.” Tame language compared with today, but the intent was to warn people that by smoking they incurred a grave risk of lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and a variety of other potentially fatal ailments. It wasn’t a threat but a warning.

 

The distinction is that a threat has the purpose of intimidation, coercion, and control—and it’s made for the benefit of the party issuing the threat. Someone who habitually gets his way by making threats is a bully. A warning, by contrast, is made for the protection and safety of those being warned: like the signs we see on the beach: No swimming: dangerous rip currents! It’s for our own good, and we ignore it at our peril.

 

God doesn’t make threats. But he does issue warnings: intended for our ultimate good and, indeed, our eternal salvation.

 

In the Old Testament reading from Exodus on the burning bush, God commissions Moses to liberate the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt. Although the reading doesn’t explicitly mention it, a key component of Moses’ ministry will be to warn Pharaoh and the Egyptians of the dire consequences of their failure to obey God’s command to let his people go—warnings that sadly go unheeded.

 

In the reading from First Corinthians, Saint Paul is warning his readers not to presume upon baptism, Church membership, and participation in the Eucharist as a license to indulge in immorality and disobedience. During their forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the Hebrews incurred God’s wrath when they put the Lord to the test and defied his commandments. Never mind that they’d come through the Red Sea and tasted the heavenly manna. Having received such great gifts, they were all the more accountable for their behavior.  From those to whom much is given, much is expected. So, Saint Paul writes, “These things happened to them to serve as an example, and were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.”

 

The early Church fathers interpreted this to mean that the temporal punishments of sinners in the Old Testament serve as figurative warnings of the eternal punishments awaiting unrepentant sinners in the world to come. In other words, while we may well not be punished for our sins in this life by plagues, fiery serpents, or the earth swallowing us up alive, nonetheless these calamities point to the miseries of hell, and hence serve as warnings to repent while we still have time.

 

Our Lord conveys a similar message in today’s Gospel. Preaching to the crowds, he’s told of a group of Galileans massacred by the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. We don’t know the exact incident referred to here, but those relating it are likely seeking to entrap him. If, on one hand, he condemns Pilate for his brutality, then he can be charged with sedition. If, on the other hand, he says that those Galileans were sinners who got just what they deserved, then he’ll lose the support of the people.

 

Jesus sidesteps the trap brilliantly. Yes, those Galileans were sinners, but no worse than the rest of you. Similarly, with respect to the eighteen Jerusalemites killed by a collapsing tower in Siloam: again, we don’t know the historical incident referred to, but the point’s the same: they were sinners, yes, but no worse than all the other inhabitants of Jerusalem. And in both cases, Jesus repeats the refrain: “unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

 

Our Lord’s point is much the same as Saint Paul’s in today’s Epistle: “these things are examples for us.” Specifically: the temporal sufferings of the Galileans massacred by Pilate and the Jerusalemites crushed by the falling tower point to the eternal sufferings awaiting all who fail to repent. Not a particularly comfortable message but hey, it’s Lent, and we owe it to ourselves and to God to wrestle a bit with the Sunday Scriptures that the Church lays before us in this holy season.

 

The underlying theological point is that heaven and hell are choices we make for ourselves. God never sends us anywhere we don’t want to go. If we end up in heaven, it’s because we’ve chosen, explicitly or implicitly, to accept God’s offer of eternal life. If we end up in hell, it’s because we’ve chosen, explicitly or implicitly, to reject God. The so-called torments of hell consist of the eternal frustration of forfeiting the happiness and fulfillment that only God can give us. So, again, heaven and hell are choices that we make for ourselves. In the end, we all get what we want.

 

The examples in today’s Epistle and Gospel are thus given to help us want the right things. Both Paul and Jesus are warning us to repent, to put God before all else, precisely so that we may enjoy eternal happiness. God does not want any to perish, but desires all to be saved—and indeed gives his only Son to death on a cross to precisely that end.

 

The parable of the barren fig tree drives this point home. The fig tree is us. Even if we fail to bear the fruit that the Lord seeks from us, he doesn’t cut us down right away. When the landowner comes three successive years and finds no fruit, the groundskeeper persuades him to give it yet another season. In like manner, God gives us not only second chances, but third, fourth, and fifth chances. Christ digs about our roots and pours on manure. (It may seem irreverent to picture God’s grace as manure, but hey, that’s the metaphor—right there in the parable!)

The day of judgment will come, when the fig tree must either bear fruit or be cut down. But the good news is that that day is not yet. We still have time to repent and return to the Lord. And we have the promise relayed by Saint Paul in today’s Epistle: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out, so that you may be able to endure it.” In other words: We can do this. By God’s grace, we can do this.