We first arrived in Chile not long after a major earthquake in September 2015. The pictures of damage caused by the Tsunami that followed were seen around the world- ships tossed onto the land, flooding and roads broken up, houses destroyed and lives lost.

The first thing we did as we moved into our apartment was to read the earthquake advice and make sure we knew all the exits and had a cash of equipment, axes, crowbar, and torch, that we could use to extract ourselves if necessary.

The secret of course is to be prepared, or as the earthquake advice leaflet says:

‘Take an active role in your safety’

A brutal massacre

That could be the theme of this short passage in Luke's account of Jesus' teaching that ends with his lament over Jerusalem.

Jesus has just heard of a recent massacre of Galileans by Roman soldiers struck down as they worshipped. Pilate then ordered that their blood should be mingled with the blood of the animals they had brought to sacrifice.

The worshippers are taken unawares and unprepared, they have no means to defend themselves and no time to escape. Jesus is making a point about their innocence. This is not an act of Divine judgment as some had said but an example of the pointless brutality for which Pilate was well known.

A tragic accident

The same point is made, in a different way as Jesus reminds his listeners of a tragic accident that had recently happened in Jerusalem. One of the defensive towers on the walls of Jerusalem had collapsed and crushed 18 innocent bystanders. The point is made again, they are not to blame for the fact that they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor is this a sign of an angry god taking it out on wayward humanity. This is just a tragic accident!

However, Jesus ends this description of innocent suffering with the chilling words:

“But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” Luke 13: 3

Complacent crowds

The common assumption in Jesus' day was that ‘Bad things happen to bad people’. The book of Job is an example of this kind of wisdom. Job’s comforters attempt to get Job to confess his sins since he must surely have done something terrible to deserve such suffering.

The reverse was also true, in so far as those who prospered were assumed to be blessed by God. The so-called, ‘Prosperity Gospel’ still has a strong appeal among many Christians today, equating our comfortable lifestyle with a God who seems to have a bias towards the rich rather than the poor.

It is this complacency that Jesus is determined to challenge with these chilling words. For the second time he says forcefully:

“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” Luke 13: 5

The Parable of the Fig tree

Clare once made me a cushion decorated with fig leaves. It is very precious to me as it represents a difficult time in my ministry when there seemed to be no ‘Fruit’, a barren time. I looked for other openings, applied for another post, but nothing worked out. Clare, however, must have had this parable in her mind as she stitched it because she gave it to me just as a new project began with my Bishop’s backing and an exciting 3 years of growth and blessing began.

The lesson I take from this parable is that times of barrenness, when nothing seems to be happening are not a sign of God’s disfavour but of His Love and Mercy. Times like those are times when we should be growing in other ways, not maybe the showy fruit but the deep roots of faith. Only when those roots are established can the Fig tree bear the weight of the fruit.

Christ in the wilderness - The Eagles

This is very much the theme of Stanly Spencer's wilderness series, painted in a time when Spencer was in a wilderness of his own. He had divorced his wife for another woman but the relationship had not worked out. Hie erotic paintings featuring this new woman in his life had not been well received! To add to all this gloom Spencer relived the trauma of the Great War as Britain battle for survival.

It was a time to reset and renew his life and the Wilderness series provided just the means to do so. In the eagles, he reflects on the violence of the world, maybe with the passage in Luke's gospel in mind.

The Eagles gorge on a young deer, ‘Nature raw in tooth and claw’ we might reflect, but this is not the ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ where the lion is to lie down with the lamb. Jesus looks away, he too is headed for a cruel and agonizing death, an innocent victim of our cruel world. Just in case we are tempted to point the finger at those terrible Romans or is it Russians we are reminded that Christ died for the sins of all because we all share in the violence of this fallen world.

Jesus lies prone like the fallen deer, maybe to remind us that his body and blood feed us too, for through his death we like the fig tree are given a second chance and given a good manuring! An opportunity to start again, to reimagine the future, to reset the agenda, or as Jesus puts it to repent. Maybe this is what Spencer was so desperately asking of his friends and family.

Wilderness years are not lost years, but waiting years as we examine our lives ready for the next move forward. We do not know what that will be but we must be prepared. Jesus’ parable then doesn’t represent a barren tree but a growing tree that is about to fruit, given time.

“We should wait”, the gardener says before we uproot it and so he digs around it so the water can reach the roots and manures it so that the rich mineral can nourish the soil.

Repentance?

Part of the process by which I came through my wilderness was by what I would like to call ‘Reimagining’ my ministry. Why was it not bearing fruit? What could I do to change that? I actually took time out to study and re-examined what I believed Parish ministry to be. By the end of this process, I was a very different person and approached parish life in a completely different way.

Smell the Coffee!

That’s the way we talk about repentance today. It is a call to wake up and realise where we are heading and just what is ahead of us. Are we sleepwalking into a disaster? If so it will be entirely of our own making. We have been given time to think, to change, to reimaging our future but we have been asleep. “Wake up, ‘smell the coffee’.

Lent

Lent, is rightly understood as a time of repentance in which we reflect on our life choices and ask whether we are going in the right direction.

We have time and space. We have a loving and merciful God who patiently watches over us watering and nourishing us with His gracious gifts so that we can bear abundant fruit. So let’s be fruitful!

Rev Simon Brignall