“Good Enough?” March 7, 2010

Luke 13:1-9 Stephens City UMC

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I. A number of you may be like me and enjoy listening to National Public Radio on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon to their broadcast of Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”

A. The show is set in the mythical town of Lake Woebegon, Minnesota, and on the weekends listeners receive “news updates” about what is happening around that small town.

1. The news is sponsored by imaginary local businesses and companies such as Bertha’s Kitty Boutique, Powermilk Biscuits and the Chatterbox Café.

2. One other sponsor is Ralph’s Pretty Good Groceries.

3. Those commercials remind listeners that if Ralph’s doesn’t carry what you want, you probably didn’t need it anyway.

4. Regarding Ralph’s the underlying assumption is that any normal, reasonable citizen of Lake Woebegon will be satisfied with what Ralph’s has to offer.

5. And besides, it is better to shop at Ralph’s Pretty Good Groceries than to venture down to “the Cities” with their big, anonymous supermarkets.

B. Keillor is tapping into more than comparison shopping (and after all this is a mythical grocery store), as reasonable people do settle for what is “good enough.”

1. As Ira Gershwin wrote for one of the songs composed by his brother George “Who could ask for anything more?”

2. And that’s one of the problems with unreasonable people, they do ask for many things more and they are not willing to settle for “good enough.”

3. Actually the actions of unreasonable people make reasonable people feel better about themselves because reasonable people compare themselves to unreasonable people and conclude “at least we didn’t ask for an extra serving of pie.”

4. Righteous people don’t ask for an extra serving of pie or an extra scoop of ice cream.

5. That’s what unreasonable people do and it is satisfying to know that we are better than them.

C. Some other examples of this would be those who in a few weeks decide to fudge on their income tax and rationalize that behavior by saying to themselves “I may have fudged on my tax return, but it’s nothing compared to what those big corporations do.”

1. With regards to religion, “No, I don’t have daily devotions, but I attend church pretty regularly and try to lead a decent life. Anyway, I never claimed to be Mother Teresa.”

II. “Pretty Good” is usually good enough to meet the world’s standards, but our scripture lesson for today allows us to know that there is no such thing as “good enough” for the Kingdom of God.

A. You don’t get into the Kingdom just because you think you compare more favorably to God than does Public Enemy No. 1 who has murdered 9 people and set fire to five neighborhoods.

1. Compared with Public Enemy No. 1 you do appear to be quite righteous, but compared with God you are tarnished with sin.

2. Oh, you may look good enough on the outside, but Jesus can see into the inside of you and he knows better and that’s good.

3. It’s like one of the commercials they kept playing during the Winter Olympics where you heard the voice of the man explaining that he’s seen beautiful sights like sunrises and mountains and ocean waves and while he’s describing those experiences you see scenes of him and his wife dating and getting married and taking their children on vacation.

4. Then you see a doctor using a scanning device and the man clutching his wife in their retirement years while the man proclaims “But I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than the image the doctor showed us that told us that my wife’s cancer was treatable.”

5. Like that commercial Jesus can see inside of us and he knows that there is some bad stuff in there but he can treat it and that’s what he wants to do.

B. Now the question is will we let him? Will we response to his graceful willingness to help or while we say that we don’t need to change because we’re good enough.

1. In the parable that Jesus tells about the fig tree “good enough” isn’t “good enough.”

2. Like the fig tree that hasn’t produced fruit in three years, the stuff inside of us is severely limiting our fruitfulness and in God’s Kingdom that just isn’t acceptable.

3. In the parable the owner of the vineyard tells the gardener to cut it down but the gardener pleads with the owner to allow him one more year to work with the fig tree. If after that effort there is still no fruit, then the gardener will cut it down.

4. What you and I are suppose to figure out from this parable is that by the grace of Jesus Christ we are granted a little more time to repent and become fruitful for the Kingdom of God.

5. God grants this request not because we are “good enough” to merit another chance or because we are better than sinful people in other parts of the world.

6. God is extending the deadline for us because God is gracious.

C. Now, don’t be silly about this and think that the extending of the deadline goes on forever.

1. The deadline is extended but there will be a deadline and since we don’t know when that will be we’d best make use of this opportunity and the time we do have to repent and turn to God.

2. There’s no time like the present.

3. So while you may not be good enough this is a good enough time to repent.