3rd Sunday in Lent                      Luke 13:1-9                        March 7, 2010

It was a beautiful Sunday morning as the people were leaving worship at Lake Woebegone Lutheran when dear old Violet Jorgenson somehow fell down the outside flight of stairs and broke her hip.
As you might imagine there was a great deal of anxiety within the whole congregation as they shared their concern for this dear old saint of a woman.
The prayer chain was fired up.
Someone brought Violet a prayer shawl in order to offer some comfort and meals were being brought to her husband Ralph while Violet lay in the hospital.
Sadly, Violet did not recover from the hip surgery and died a few days later.

Pastor Ingqvist, the kind and gentle pastor at Lake Woebegone Lutheran was diligent and pastoral during this tragedy.
He had spent time with Violet at her bedside while she was hospitalized, he visited and checked in on Ralph and was there when the family met with the funeral director.
On the evening of the visitation Pastor Ingqvist was present and stood beside Ralph as people came to pay their respects and express their sympathies with words of advice and comfort.
As Pastor Ingqvist stood near the casket, and as he mingled around the funeral home, he could not help pick up on the some of the well-intentioned comments offered to family members:
"God must have had a plan for this, so accept it."
"It was God's will, and we must live by it."
"God planned this to test your faith, so be strong."
"There's a silver lining in every cloud, you will find God's reason beneath this eventually."

Each time Pastor Ingqvist heard one of these supposedly helpful platitudes he bristled with growing anger and disgust.
By the time the visitation was over, he made a quick return to his study at the church, he tore up the funeral sermon he had prepared and started over with the opening line: "My God does not push old ladies down church steps!"
Then he proceeded to explain that God couldn't be blamed or accused for all the brokenness of this world.

That's a sermon I would love to get my hands on!

In our Gospel reading from Luke, we are told that some people approached Jesus with a similar situation.
They asked, "Have you hear about the massacre in the holy place? Pilate slaughtered Galileans there as they worshipped, mingling their blood with the blood of their sacrifices."
While they might be questioning Jesus as to whether he was aware of this tragedy, what they really wanted to know was, "Why would God let something like this happen to such faithful people while they were at the temple?"
Or, the similar question, "Where was God when all this was happening?"
Or, the challenging question: "What kind of God allows that sort of thing happen?"

Luke gives us the impression that Jesus knows what they are thinking; and I have to say that, at first, Jesus seems to come across as less than pastoral in his response.
Rather than offering some insight into the problem of evil in the world, or perhaps help clarify to us poor schmucks as to why God allows such evil and tragedy to happen in the world—but no, nothing like that.
But he did make one thing perfectly clear that we all need to hear: In response to the question--were these people who were killed worse sinners than others?
Did this happen to them because of their own sin?
And to this Jesus makes it clear: No! Not at all!
Let me repeat this…the victims of this slaughter were not killed because of some particular sinful behavior.
The Galileans who were killed by Pilate's army were not killed because it was "part of God's plan."
And to bring this question in line with current events-despite what Pat Robertson says, the people of Haiti or Chile for that matter, were not the victims of hurricanes sent by God to punish them for some particular sinful behavior, or to fulfill God's plan.
In other words, suffering caused by any variety of accidents, tornados, hurricanes or tsunamis does not come from an angry God.
Our God is not the angry judge, judging each deed, and then giving out punishment such as sickness, death or tragedy.

Now having said that, Jesus does add that rather puzzling addendum: "But unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did".
In other words, rather than entering into the ongoing philosophical or theological debate, Jesus asks, "What about you? ‘Will you repent or perish?'"

I have to confess that Jesus' response is personally frustrating because of what he does not say.
What he does say is good.
I appreciate the fact that he makes it clear that we must not assume that tragedy is a fault of the victims.
But I really wish he had taken time to expound a bit more on the problem.

I say this because I believe that many of us struggle with the need for life and death to make sense.
And many of us want to know what kinds of behaviors bring us good and obviously, what behaviors will not benefit our lives, though I suspect we already know what those behaviors might be.

Let me put it this way, whether we might think of it this way or not, we want some sort of mathematical certainty. We like black and white answers, we want clarity.
To use the mathematical suggestion, we want 1+1=2, 2+3=5, and 4 + 7=11.
For many there is real comfort in knowing that some things add up the same way every time.
Our problem is that we want the same certainty in the circumstances of life.
For example…attending worship plus reading the Bible every day equals God's blessings.
Serving on the church council plus volunteering at the Milaca Food Pantry equals on going marital bliss.
Contributing to the monthly Noisy offering plus teaching Sunday School equals a life free of agonizing health concerns.
It all sounds like a fair deal to us.
But we all know there are no such mathematical certainties in life.
The rain falls on the just and the unjust.
And even though we probably know this deep down, we still complain to God when life doesn't add up the way we want or expect it to.
I mean why should the Pharaoh have plenty of food and the children of Israel are hungry in the wilderness?
Why do the evil and the unethical prosper and decent and hard working folks get struck down with job losses and a health crisis to boot?

I have to admit; I really wish Jesus had addressed that in our text for today!
But no, instead he adds this message of judgment sounding like hell-fire and damnation for those of us who are inclined to raise such questions.
"Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."

OK, I guess we all know that in some sort of way.
Deep down I suspect we all know that there simply are no easy pat answers to life's mathematical equations.
Some questions can't be answered.
Life really does involve chance and free will.
Not every bad thing that happens can be laid at the feet of God.
And if we insist on pat mathematical formulas for life, we will get bogged down in that pursuit forever.

The bottom line is that Jesus knew the important question is not "Why?" but "What now?"
There is no good answer as to why bad things happen to good people or why calamity reeks havoc in one country and not another—when in the end, we are all responsible for what happens now.
Jesus wants us to be the kind of people that have faith when life is good and have faith when life is bad.
God wanted the Israelites to be in covenant when the plagues escape them and fell on the Egyptians, and when they were thirsty in the wilderness.
Jesus wanted his disciples to stay with him when he was preaching to the thousands in the Sermon on the Mount, and when he was being crucified on the hill of Calvary. God wants us to have faith when our son wins the lottery, and when our brother dies in a plane crash.

I believe Jesus knew that if we only have faith because we have a mathematical deal with God, then we don't have much faith at all.
If you recall, Jesus was pretty critical of the people who enjoyed the meal at the feeding of the 5,000 and only followed him because they were hoping for another free lunch.
This disappointment is seen in John's Gospel when we read: "Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him."

In today's readings Jesus is saying to us, "Your mathematical equations, your philosophical questioning, and your fickle faith during the good times—won't get you very far.
Perhaps rather than asking all these answerable questions about the fate of others, you need to take a closer examination of your own life, repent if need be and strive for a right relationship with God your Father."

And maybe the first act of repentance might come when we examine our own lives and realize that somewhere along the way we have come to believe that any difficulty, any struggle, is wrong and unjust and that we believe that no one should need to suffer…that you can somehow go through life without bearing the effects of unfairness and injustice.
And perhaps we need to confess that some where along the way we stopped trusting in a God whose presence makes tragedy and suffering and unanswered questions bearable—and on top of that, along the way--we stopped looking to God, but started looking for answers and if we haven't found the easy answers we want, we allowed ourselves to wandered even further away from God.

From Job, to the folks who questioned Jesus about the Galileans, to good and faithful folks at Lake Woebegone Lutheran…they all wanted to know "Why?" as do we so often.
We all want to know why did this have to happen?
Why did this happen to me?
And to be honest, I have to tell you, that there probably is no good reason.
Bad and good things happen all the time and the notion that only good things happen to good people was put to rest when Jesus was put on the cross.
The more crucial question is and always will be: in all circumstances, be they circumstances of either joy or pain, can you, will you trust God to be God?
Can you love God without linking such love to the good and bad things that come your way?

Hopefully, at some point in our lives we all come to the realization that there are no easy answers to life's tough questions.
The church of Jesus Christ is not built upon easy answers.
Instead, it is built upon a singular recognition that in the presence of the God we know in Christ-- we get a God whose love in our lives challenges and enables us to live without all the answers, a God who is willing to dig around our hearts like the gardener in the parable, patiently encouraging us toward repentance and faithfulness and fruitfulness.
We get a God who has given God's whole life to us, so that we might come to learn how to give our lives to God more fully.
Beyond what's fair, that seems to me to be a pretty good deal. Amen

Pastor Stephen Blenkush
Zion Lutheran
Milaca, MN
www.ZionMilaca.org

 

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