Rev. Tessie Mandeville
March 11, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30033

We are half-way through the Lenten season on a journey similar to Jesus’ journey where he found himself in the wilderness for 40 days. Wilderness experiences change us. They force us to confront some of our deepest fears and struggles. They force us to ask the difficult questions about God and about ourselves.

Let me tell you about a woman who wanted to become a mother. She came to the hospital where I served as a chaplain. She was 30 weeks pregnant, in labor and having contractions. In general, we like for women to get to 38 or 39 weeks before they give birth. Christina had what is called “placenta previa.” It’s a condition that makes pregnancy very risky because the placenta, which nourishes the baby, doesn’t attach where it’s supposed to and this causes a lot of potential complications—to the baby and mother.

Our goal as a team was to help Christina get to 36 weeks, hoping that would be good enough for both her and her baby to survive. As the chaplain, my task was to attend to her spirit and her spirit was in the wilderness. For you see, Christina had already had three miscarriages. This was her fourth pregnancy and it was very risky. It was highly likely that she would lose this baby, and even her own life.

During that six week journey in the wilderness, I bore witness to Christina’s grief over the loss of her first three children. I listened to her ask the difficult questions about God: Why would God let this happen? What did I do wrong? Why is God punishing me?” I believe it is the experience of suffering that makes us ask the difficult questions about God. In times of deep pain and tragedy, we wonder where God is and how we’ll ever survive.

Our gospel story today grapples with the difficult questions about God. Two terrible tragedies had happened in Jerusalem. One in the temple, the other near the pool of Siloam. In the first incident, Pilate, the Roman governor, had killed some Galileans who were making sacrifices at the temple and then he mixed their blood with the sacrifices. It’s a pretty gruesome account of political murder. In the other incident, a tower fell near a pool and killed 18 people who simply happened to be there. In today’s time we would call this a natural disaster.

The people came to Jesus and basically asked, “How can such things be explained?” My pastoral imagination allows me to believe that the people questioning him were trying to make sense of their lives. They were trying to understand these tragedies. They were confused, frightened, and even angry that God let this happen. That God didn’t seem to be around or in control. Sometimes we say things like this because it’s actually how we’re thinking and feeling about God. I’m sure these people believed in a good God, so it troubled them to think that if God is good, why did God let these things happen? Mostly, I believe the people were in deep pain and Jesus met them right where they were at. He loved them and he listened to them pour out their anguish in their questions.

It was a common understanding at that time to believe that physical suffering was a consequence of sin. That pain and premature death were signs of God’s judgment. That God was punishing people. In other words, people tried to make sense of a senseless tragedy by thinking that “those people must have done something to deserve it.” How many times did we hear that back in the early 80’s, and still hear now, “God is punishing homosexuals for their behavior by giving them AIDS”? However, as my friend and colleague, Rev. Kharma Amos says, “Blaming particular human actions or failings for the suffering around us attempts to tidy up the messiness of life. It also keeps God (and often, the rest of us) far removed from human suffering.”

But Jesus lovingly asks, “Do you really think that those who suffered in this way were worse sinners than anyone else? In other words, “Do you really believe that God punishes people in this way?”

Repentance is a difficult word for many of us depending on our religious heritage and how the concept was used. Often for LGBT people, it was a word used to describe turning from gay to straight. Or, if you were straight, it meant for you to turn away for your LGBT children, family and friends. But that’s not the repentance that God is looking for from us.

I declare to you today that to repent is to see God anew. Jesus says, “Let me help you. Let me tell you a story about God's wild ways with us. A man has a fig tree in his vineyard, and comes looking for fruit but doesn’t find any. He says to the gardener, ‘I've been looking for fruit for three years. Cut this tree down. Why should it take up space?’” But the gardener says, ‘Let it go for another year. Let me tend it more carefully, do some new things with it. Let’s give it some more time, some more love.’”

Jesus invites us to repent and to see God anew. If we see God as one who punishes us, then we see God as the impatient owner of the vineyard, ready to cut us down if we make a mistake, lurking around the corner to “get us.” But if we repent and see God anew, we see a God with wild ways who is involved in our lives. Who cares deeply about us and what happens to us. Who takes the time to tend and nurture us, especially when we are struggling. Who meets us in our darkest nights. Who meets us in the wilderness with love, even when, in the moment, we can’t perceive God. Sometimes, it’s only when we look back that we can see more clearly the hand of God.

There is hope in this parable. There is hope when we’re in the wilderness. During the journey with Christina, it was my task to help her have hope, to help her imagine her baby surviving. Up to this point, because Christina had experienced so much loss, she hadn’t named this baby yet. She hadn’t bought a car seat or gotten his room ready. She was afraid to hope because she knew she’d be devastated if she lost this one too. But slowly, in the middle of the wilderness, we began to hope together. To imagine what he looked like. The color of his hair and eyes. What talents he would have. What they would name him. One step at a time, Christina made it to 36 weeks and it was time for the delivery.

I had the honor of accompanying them to the operating room and witnessing whatever was going to happen next. I prayed. And I hoped. And I prayed some more. I saw the doctors bring this little baby boy out of her body. They held him up for his Mom to see him and then they cut the umbilical cord. Everything went better than we could have hoped for. Both Mom and baby survived. Their son, Michael, was 6 pounds, 9 ounces. No health problems. Lungs perfectly formed. They wrapped him in a blanket and Dad carried him out of the operating room with the sweetest look of wonder and amazement on his face. We all knew he held a miracle in his hands and we all knew what a long journey in the wilderness this had been for them.

Christina called me into her hospital room one morning before she left. She said, “Tessie, I still not sure what to think about God, and how to reconcile everything that’s happened, but if God has anything to do with the compassion that all of you have shown me, then I just might start seeing God anew.”

Wilderness experiences change us. They force us to confront some of our deepest fears and struggles. They force us to ask the difficult questions about God and about ourselves. But in the wilderness, we can repent from believing things about God that only cause us more suffering. We can repent from thinking that when painful things happen to us, God is punishing us. We can turn away from a theology of judgment and toward a theology of life.

On our Lenten journey, may we all repent and see God anew. May we all come face to face with the wild, loving and tender ways of God. Let it be. Amen.

Rev. Kharma Amos, “Beyond Judging—A New Way.” Out In Scripture: An Honest Encounter Between Our Lives and the Bible, Human Rights Campaign. (LGBT perspective)