The 3rd Sunday in Lent-Year C
The Rev. David Wilcox
Sunday, March 23, 2025
There’s nothing more startling than a blaring alarm clock waking you from a deep sleep in the early morning hours. No matter how many times in our lives we hear that noise we never quite get used to it. Each morning it continues to startle us awake and urge us to get up and prepare ourselves for a new day. The focus of being woken up is connected to today’s readings in a way The readings offer various images: fire flaming from a bush, the invitation to Moses to remove his sandals because he is on holy ground, a falling tower at Siloam which leads Jesus to speak to those hearing him about repentance, and a barren fig tree that are meant to act as spiritual alarm clocks for us. On one level these images are quite normal yet when seen through the eyes of faith, they reveal deeper meaning. Perhaps this is at the heart of the Lenten journey, recognizing that we need to wake up again and again to signs of God’s presence in and around us. We need to open our eyes and ears to the people and things around us that have something to say to us about who God is and how God desires to speak to us.
The readings assigned for this Sunday also all touch on the importance of placing hope in God, the All-Merciful Giver-of-life, who is always ready to forgive us and help us even though we have no power to help ourselves.
The first lesson this morning takes us back into the wilderness and recounts the memorable event of Moses before the burning bush on Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. An experience that wakes Moses up to the Presence of God, and calls him to action. This profound experience of God’s presence sparks in Moses an immense awe and fear that led Moses to hide his face. Moses instinctively knows that God’s majesty is so great that no human being can gaze at it and live. But God is near enough to tell Moses that the time has come for the Israelites to be freed from slavery in Egypt and that Moses would be the chosen instrument for bringing it about.
God assures Moses that he will not be alone, but under God’s care and guidance and so should proceed with confidence in God’s saving help. The prophetic vocation of Moses shows clearly God’s love and compassion, especially for the oppressed and downtrodden.
Continuing along the same line of thinking, Jesus uses a reference to the collapse of the tower of Siloam in his preaching as a way to wake us up to the suffering in the world and remind us of our own need to examine our lives and come to repentance. Jesus then turns to an image for God as a gardener and the challenge of growing plants and trees, which includes weeding out what is not-productive or dead. In the case of the fig tree being described in the Gospel, the chief gardener or owner of the vineyard notices a fruitless tree and orders it to be cut down.
The vinedresser, though, pleads for another year, a further chance for the tree, in the hope that it may indeed bear fruit. The point being made by Jesus is that God is truly patient and merciful, more than willing to give innumerable chances for a change of heart, a deeper union, a fuller communion, with the living God.
There comes a point, though, when in fact the human heart may be so far from God that nothing less than God’s all-powerful grace can redirect it. The reality of free will always has to be taken into account, of course, with the reminder that God never forces us to act against our will, but lovingly invites us to share in God’s life.
In this Sunday’s Gospel passage Jesus is indeed calling us to wake up but is also teaching his disciples, and us to never let their lives be so out of control or far from God that the turning to God becomes more and more difficult, though never impossible. Our free will is just that: not being forced to choose for God and the ways of the Gospel, but truly free, leaving us with the ability to choose for God and life or seek the way of error and separation from God. But whatever we’ve chosen in the past it is never too late to turn to God.
Someone once said that we Christians speak much about God but in fact very little to God. In Lent we are being called to wake up, speak to God, to be people of prayer, striving for union with our Maker, at all times. Our annual observance of this Lenten season, these forty days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving or doing good, is an opportunity to meet God and belong more fully to the One who ultimately satisfies the longings of the human heart.
Today is the acceptable time to wake up from our spiritual sleep, and return to God and experience God’s loving mercy. It is time to offer our forgiveness to those who have offended us in the past or are offending us now. This is the acceptable time to be kind and give others another chance. When we do these things, when we turn to God with humility, when we leave ourselves open to true life and love it is easier for Jesus to come into our hearts and make his home with us
When we come together to celebrate the Eucharist, in our Church we experience the presence of God in our midst and we thank God for his goodness and patience with us. Salvation history is the story of God’s redeeming mercy, expressed in faithful patience with all people past, present and to come. And “another year” is being offered to us to bear fruit.
The good fruit includes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control (see Galatians 5:22-23). And the greatest fruit produced is love and forgiveness toward all. We are only able to do this by the grace of God. May God’s grace come into our lives today and throughout these forty days of Lent.
The Prophet Isaiah tells us that “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength,” Hope here is to be understood as closely linked to the virtue of waiting, of being patient. In Spanish, for example, the word “esperar,” means both to wait and to hope. “Saber esperar,” means to know how to hope and to know how to wait.
This is how God acts toward us and we are called to do likewise in our relationship to God and one another. “By returning and rest you shall be saved ” the prophet Isaiah also wrote (Is 30:15).
The Lord has called us to wake up. He has promised to be at our side in good times and bad, in joy and in sorrow, so return to him with all your heart and put your trust in the one who helps us, and invites us to be in relationship with him.
