13 Now there were some present at
that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with
their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think
that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because
they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you
repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when
the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all
the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you
repent, you too will all perish.”
Were the people who suffered worse
sinners than other people who did not suffer? Do bad things happen to good people
or only to bad people? Were these Galileans worse sinners than all the other
Galileans because they suffered this way? Were those 18 who died when the tower
fell on them worse sinners than all others because they suffered this way? Were
those who died on 9/11 when the twin towers fell on them worse sinners than all
others because they suffered this way? Were those who died in the Mosque
shootings in New Zealand and Montreal worse sinners because they suffered that
way? Those who died in the plane crash in Ethiopia, were they worse sinners
than those who have flown many times without incident because they suffered
that way? Think of that really horrible thing that happened to you (me) once
upon a time or just the other week. Was that because you (I) was worse than
those who were spared that tragedy?
·
Matthew 5:45 "...your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to
rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous"
·
Ecclesiastes 9:11 “…The race is not to the swift or the battle to
the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favour
to the learned…”
·
John 16:33: “I have told you these things, so
that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take
heart! I have overcome the world.”.
·
John 9:1-3a: As he went along, he saw a man
blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned…”
said Jesus
These
questions, is this man blind because someone sinned? Did this tragedy fall upon
the Galileans because they were worse sinners than others? These questions
relate to a theological term called theodicy. If there is anyone here going off
to seminary or training college you might want to make a note of that word,
theodicy; you will impress your instructors. It relates to the question of
suffering: In its most basic form theodicy refers to the question, ‘do bad
things only happen to bad people’? This is exactly what is being asked of Jesus in
our scripture today. To which Jesus emphatically answers 'no' and then he adds
"But unless you repent, you too will all perish. [like those in the
tragedies just mentioned]”
I will come back to this in a bit but right now I want to
share with you some stories from our trip. For those of you that don’t know already, Susan, the girls
and I spent much of spring break driving all over the western United States:
Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and then
back again through Oregon and Washington before we arrived home.
That was a lot of driving over a few days but as those who are our ‘friends’ on
Facebook or who follow us on other social media know already, we got
to see a lot of things: a Stonehenge replica, the original Starbucks, the first
Taco Bell and the oldest McDonald's. We saw the Rio Grande and other amazing
scenery. We saw Roswell New Mexico where the aliens supposedly landed in 1947;
we saw Tombstone Arizona, the OK Corral and Boothill. We saw Hollywood and the
Walk of Fame.
(One of the many blessings that comes from being an Officer
is that you can be transferred to anywhere. I encourage everyone then to
explore everywhere within driving distance of where you live. It is a great way
to really get to know the history, culture and traditions of different parts of
the world and I think it has been quite valuable for our kids growing up too).
We stayed in some great hotels and we stayed in some other
ones. This was an actual sign from one of the hotels we stayed in:
We saw Aztec’s ruins. That was neat. We were going to see
some other ruins but they were all closed due to weather. We ran into some
pretty bad weather on our trip surprisingly. Here we are looking at some
ancient petroglyphs down south where the weather is supposed to be nice and you
can see that we were caught in the snow.
The weather actually got way worse than a little bit of snow
and it even got a little bit scary at one point. We were heading through the
mountains to see a particular bridge over the Rio Grande but the snow kept
coming down and the road through the mountain pass kept getting narrower and
narrower as snow piled up on both sides and it looked like there was no place
to turn around even though it looked more and more like that is exactly what we
should do. Do we keep going? Do we turn back? Can we even turn back? And then
we got to a point in the road where it was totally closed off! We could not go
any further. We had to slowly turn the car around and get out of there as
carefully as we could. We had to back track quite a bit and find another way,
hours longer, through another mountain pass. Needless to say we didn’t see the
bridge that evening.
We did make it to our hotel and when we were there we overheard a man speaking to his friend or acquaintance and he said that he was caught in an avalanche in that same mountain pass. He and his girlfriend/significant other had rented a house up there and an avalanche came down and buried the place where they were staying. Maybe she was unconscious; they managed to get out and someone somehow got her to a hospital, where she still was when we were there. We prayed for them that night and/or the next and a couple of other times along our trip. They got caught in the avalanche; we did not? Relating back to our text today: Is that because they are worse sinners than us? Of course not! He, and hopefully she, survived; does that mean they are holier than those who do not survive disasters like this? Of course not! …but let us all change direction lest we perish…(ellipses)
The next day, we altered our plans and backtracked to
see the bridge over the Rio Grande. It was amazing to see. At every vantage point on the bridge
they had these things. They were direct lines to a crisis/suicide hotline. At first I
had concerns that if you picked them up you might get an automated message as
confusing as ours here: "Press 1 in you are thinking about jumping of this
bridge; for all other inquiries press 2, for service in Spanish press 3, or at
anytime you can press '0' to talk to an operator. Please Hold." I am sure
they are not like that. I am sure they are a direct line to some help and I
think that it is great that they have these direct lines right on the bridge
over the canyon. It is sad that they need them but great that they have them
there and hopefully God uses some of those machines to help some people change
direction, repent so that they do not perish. Is it because some people are
worse sinners that their life circumstances or mental health get so bad that
they contemplate suicide? No, of course not! Whenever I see things like that I
am reminded that but for the grace of God, there go I...(ellipses; 1 Corinthians
15:8-10).
On our way to the bridge we saw some police trucks and some
protesters. We later heard about them in the news like we also heard about the
people caught in the avalanche on the news. There was a big protest in that
area about water. Did God send the water problems because the people there were
worse sinners than others? Did God send the protestors because the police were
worse there than elsewhere? No, Of course not! We said a prayer or two for the
protesters, those arrested, the police, and the water situation.
I mentioned Aztec’s ruins that we saw. No one knows why
these were evacuated. What caused the people to leave their civilization as
ruins? Famine? War? Disease? Other tragedy? Did they suffer this because they
were worse sinners than civilizations who were not wiped out? Near by there
were some similar pueblos that are still inhabited from ancient times. Were the
ones who had to flee or who died out necessarily worse sinners than the others?
No.
We stopped by many museums on our trip. We read about
American wars of aggression towards the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Sioux,
Apache, pueblos, and others. We read about the US genocide programs and how
they enslaved people or used them as cannon fodder. Are those who suffered at
the hands of American ‘Manifest Destiny’ greater sinners than those who
benefited from their crimes? Of course not! And we should all repent if we are
contributing someway to that same mentality today unless we all want to perish.
The book that I was reading on this trip, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, mentioned some of the oppression and persecution
that the Scots suffered at the hands of the English after Culloden. I think
this is around the time that the Scottish side of my family fled Britain.
They not only suffered typical military reprisals; but there was also
whole scale policy put in place to wipe out their culture, their language, and
even their dress; does this sound familiar to at all to our local environment's
history? Were Scots or the various First Nations worse sinners than the rest?
Of course not!
We visited a display at a museum in New Mexico about the
Atomic bomb. New Mexico is where the US developed the Atomic Bombs that they
would go on to drop on Japan… after Japan had already offered
surrendered. And did you know that the US intentionally dropped the bomb, not
only after Japan had already surrendered but also at a time when mothers would
be walking their kids to school so that they could kill as many innocent people
as possible? Did you know that at first the Americans wanted to bomb Tokyo but
Tokyo was spared due to bad weather? Is that because the people in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki were worse sinners that the people in Tokyo - of course not! But
let us all repent from the horrors of war and nuclear weapons if we do not wish
to perish that way ourselves!
Bad things happen! Whether it is the Americans attacking
Nagasaki, Mexico, or the Sioux; or whether it is Pilate and the Romans
attacking the Galileans in our text today; or other Superpowers from other
times and places attacking other people around the world. And more than just
these military kind of tragedies that Jesus directly addresses here: sad,
miserable things happen in this world. Sad miserable things happen in our city.
Sad, miserable things happen in our corps; and sad, miserable things happen in
our families and in our lives. Do these sad miserable things that happen to us
and others happen because we and they are worse sinners than the rest? No. Of
course not!
Now I want to come back to the two things I said that I
would come back to later: the fig tree and its importance to all of this and
the fact that Jesus, after he tells us that it isn't our fault that bad things
happen to us tells us to repent.
About repentance: I read this story by David Hume (he was an
18th Century Scottish Enlightenment Atheist Philosopher) he told this story in
a few of his lectures.
I thought that was amusing and I read it when I was
meditating on our text in Luke about repentance so I thought I would share it.
Jesus
talks a lot in Luke's gospel about repentance, changing not only the way we act
but also the whole way we believe. And the major
repentance reflected in this story, I think, is one of love. We are to change
so that we love one another. Because we
don't want anyone to perish, we are going to love them and support them the way
Christ loves and supports them and the way Christ loves and supports us and
we are going encourage them to grow in the faith having patience with one
another just like God has faith in us.
Luke 13:6-8:
6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any.(A) 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down!(B) Why should it use up the soil?’
8 “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it.
The parable of tree today is very important. Through it,
Jesus reminds us that we need to be extremely patient with one another, tending
to and caring for each other; interceding for each other; doing everything we
can to help each other grow just like the gardener does everything in his power
to help the tree produce fruit. We must love and encourage each other to bear
fruit. And as we each change, as we each repent so that we love and take care
of each other just like the gardener takes care of this tree that he loves,
than even we might be saved.
Let us pray.
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