“Americans Love Big“; Isaiah 55:1-9, Luke 13:1-9
“Connecting with Jesus, One Another, and Others in the Unconditional Love of Our God (Together, in a variety of ways)”
Robert Frost writes, “There’s nothing I’m afraid of like scared people.”[1] Will fear of “the other” escalate irrational behavior? The writer of Isaiah asks us to hold …two realities in paradoxical tension: “‘Come, thirsty one,’ and ‘My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts not your thoughts.’”[2] Isaiah 55:6 exhorts people to return to God, listen to and seek the Lord, while God still can be found. Let’s heed Isaiah’s word and address our striving after things that don’t matter and our wasteful use of resources.
Jesus was teaching the crowd on how to read the signs of the times. Pilate had no regard for human life. Jesus states that the Galileans killed by Pilate were no worse than other Galileans. He also notes that when the tower of Siloam fell on eighteen people and killed them, they were no guiltier than those who survived the tower’s crash. Death comes upon anyone at any time and for any reason. It behooves people to get right with God.
Jesus says in Luke 13:3, “…unless you repent, you will all perish…” Fear is often at the core of our deepest thoughts and aches of the human heart.[3] Repenting of our “fear” and trusting God’s promises are in order. The fig tree was a mature tree given the owner’s expectation that it should bear fruit. But for three years the tree regularly disappointed the owner. The vineyard worker is ordered to cut the tree down, but asks for one more year to nurture it. Judgment is held back. In our case, the repentant will survive, the unrepentant will not. Decisions have consequences.[4]
Love, not fear must lead. Martin Luther feared the peasants might rise up and take power from those who had it, because they could read the Bible he translated into German. White Christians in the American south feared the black slaves, because they had constructed a society based on it even though they knew slavery was incompatible with the Bible’s teaching. Those who supported national socialism in Germany lived in fear that they might never again control the destiny of their country if they didn’t persecute “the other.” For more than fifty years, Americans lived in fear of communism, because it appealed to the disaffected in American society and argued for the redistribution of wealth. The current fear gripping Americans is whether we see a new golden age forming or the demise of democracy. This fear is rooted in the notion of truth or untruth being the plumbline. Loving others in words and deeds will expose untruth.[5]
Fear does not generate good policy or good behavior. Love generates good policy and good behavior. I agree with Peter Gomes, former Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School when he writes, “Fear represents the absence of courage and a poverty of imagination.”[6] Receive God’s grace. Reconnect God’s history of loving with both the past and future. Be thankful. Embrace the giving presence of our loving, compassionate, and gracious God. Condemn hateful rhetoric. Participate in the saving work of our powerful God. Repent and bear fruit worthy of repentance. Live Grace’s mission: “…to make fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.” Perfect love casts out fear and we love Jesus. Let’s love big, friends. Amen.
This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday in Lent, 23 March 2025 by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary at
Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas.
Copyright Ó 2025
Steven M. Marsh
All rights reserved.
[1]From A Hundred Collars by Robert Frost.
[2]Kenyatta R. Gilbert in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 75.
[3]Idea gleaned from Michael B. Curry in in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, 93.
[4]In the three paragraphs above, I was challenged by the thinking of Patricia K. Tull, David A. Davis, J. Clinton McCann Jr., William Greenway, Richard F. Ward, Dennis E. Smith, and Adam J. Copeland in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 2 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 61-63, 63-65, 66-67, 68-70, 70-71, 72-74, and 74-75.
[5]The cited “fears” gleaned from Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus (New York City, New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 105-106.
[6]Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus,106.
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