“Return to the Lord Your God”Main point: All circumstances observed should lead us to repentance. The environment of our repentance is an environment of grace.INTRODUCTION:During this season of Lent, I pray we will give ourselves permission to take an honest look at our lives and deal truthfully with what we find. A sober look may do us good and I pray we do not miss the opportunity. Today’s gospel tells us to repent. To repent means to turn from our wicked ways and return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, (Joel 2:13)Explain the PassageJesus hears some skuttle in the crowd. Pilot, the Roman governor of Judea, violently massacred a group of people from the province of Galilee as unilateral, governmental retribution for something evil they did - the details of which are unknown to us. We only get a fleeting reference to the story in Luke’s gospel, but as Jesus is standing there and hearing the news, all eyes turn to him for an interpretation of these events. He is teaching about God after all. What does God have to say about a tragedy like this? Well, Jesus? Were these people sinning and this is God’s judgement on them?These folks were following the common logic that many religious people follow. It goes something like this…Sin is present in the world and since sin is in opposition to God, God judges sin through various negative means (including weather patterns, large-scale catastrophes, personal tragedies, and any other means necessary).Therefore, if a person experiences these negative means, they must be under God’s judgement because they have sinned.But they missed something.. Because life is far more complicated than that.This sort of logic is sort of like saying, if we look up and the sky is blue it cannot be raining outside. And yet, we’ve all experienced a sunshower. In fact, it’s only under these circumstances that we see rainbows.You see, those who would say “if the sky is blue it cannot be raining outside” miss something, because life is far more complicated than that.“No,” Jesus says, “God did not use Pilot to execute God’s judgement on the Galileans because they are grave sinners.” “What’s more,” Jesus says, “it was not God’s judgement when the tower of Siloam fell on those eighteen people.” Intentional massacres and accidental tragedies are not signs of God’s judgement. That’s not how it works!You may recall the story when Jesus encountered the blind beggar and was asked, “Who sinned this man or his parents?” Jesus answered, "Neither of these people sinned, but that the works of God might be revealed through him.”You might also recall the story of righteous Job who’s possessions and family were systematically obliterated. Over and over Job’s friends said, “Look at all of these terrible circumstances pouring down on you! You must have sinned! It must be the judgement of God!” Job’s answer: “No, I didn’t sin! Seriously!”Intentional massacres and accidental tragedies are not signs of God’s judgement. That’s not how it works! It’s much more complicated than that.

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