“…unless you repent, you will all perish
just as they did.” (Luke 13:5)
So why does God let terrible things
happen? Is it righteous judgment, or is it just because, as the old saying goes,
“shit happens?”
In the gospel lesson appointed in the RCL
for Lent 3, Year C (Luke 13:1-9) Jesus is confronted with news of a pretty
terrible act perpetrated by Pontius Pilate. If you read about ol’ Pontius in
any of the histories of the ancient world (like those of Flavius Josephus for
example), you’ll soon see that he wasn’t a very nice guy, and terrible acts
were kind of his thing. He was something like a Nazi camp commandant. His job
was to keep the peace at all costs, and he wasn’t too delicate about how he did
it. Even though Josephus doesn’t record the massacre of Galileans from our
Gospel lesson, he does record that killing a bunch of folks while they offer
sacrifice was just the sort of thing Pilate was famous for doing.
But what does that say about the victims?
Jesus’ remarks in the Gospel seem to suggest that those who asked him about the
massacre held the old-fashioned belief that rotten things happen to people who
deserve them. That is, if a ruthless minion of a totalitarian state has a brutal
soldier gut you like a fish while you’re in church, it’s obviously because you
had it coming. You must’ve offended God in some way or God wouldn’t let this
happen to you.
This is kind of like the logic used by the
late (albeit not-so-lamented-by-me) Jerry Falwell and the not-late-enough Pat
Robertson following the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. Falwell opined
that America’s tolerance of LGBT people, refusal to have prayer in public
schools, and pro-choice abortion policies angered God to the point that the
Almighty allowed terrorists to fly planes into buildings and take the lives of
over 3,000 people. Such an opinion is, of course, just plain, bigoted goat crap—the
sort of bigoted goat crap we’ve come to expect from Robertson and Falwell.[i]
Jesus’ answer to this “blame the victim”
supposition is that the folks who died weren’t worse sinners than anyone else.
Bad stuff just happens in this world, and it sometime happens unexpectedly. Don’t
try to read God’s mind. It won’t help. Just get your own act together.
Luke’s Gospel marries this story of the
Galilean massacre and the fall of the tower of Siloam with a parable about a
fig tree which doesn’t bear any fruit. The landowner is about to cut it down,
but a wise gardener gives it a reprieve. He asks the boss if he can tend and
fertilize the tree first. If that doesn’t work it will be okay to uproot it. He
grants the figless tree a little more time.
We’ve been granted more time, too. If you’re
awake and can read these words, you have time to get your act together. You’re
being called, as, indeed, we all are, to repentance. We’re called to a changing
of our minds to be the people God wants us to be—and not because that will save
us from unexpected catastrophe, but because we will feel more fully alive and
at peace in the time that is granted to us.
Last Friday, a cyclone hit the nation of
Mozambique taking the lives of possibly 1,000 people, flooding the city of Beira,
and putting almost 100,000 human beings in danger of flood waters. Are the
folks in Mozambique less pleasing to God than any others of God’s children? Yet
unless we pull our heads out and recognize the dangers of a changing climate, we
may all perish as they did.[ii]
On the same day, some idiot white
supremacist entered a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand and opened fire with
an AR-17. He killed 50 people and wounded 50 more in their place of worship.
Are the Muslims of New Zealand worse sinners than you or I? But unless we start
teaching children tolerance, unless we recognize that we live on a small and
crowded planet with people who are also made in the image of God, we might just
face an endless cycle of terrorism and revenge.
This week I have invited a teacher form
the Muslim Youth Center of Philadelphia to address my Confirmation class. My
hope is that the students will meet a person from a different culture and a different
religion without fear or condescension, and learn to look upon such a one with
honor and respect. I pray they will grow up with a spirit of hospitality and
love for all whom God has made.
The good news is this: we still have time to
change. What are we waiting for?
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