NRSLuke 13:1
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.2He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.4Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them-- do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?5No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
6Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' 8 He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
May the blessing of the Lord rest and remain upon you always, for the sake of Jesus. Amen.
In today’s gospel Jesus takes up the age-old question of human suffering. When people tell him about another act of state-sponsored terrorism that Pilate has inflicted on Jesus’ own fellow Galileans, Jesus asks, “"Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” Jesus then responds in the same way to the plight of 18 people who died when a tower collapsed, asking again, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?” In other words, does God single out some people for judgment, while giving others a free pass? Is suffering earned, or is suffering random, or is suffering something else altogether?
Over fifty years ago the Old Testament theologian Gerhard von Rad hypothesized that this creed from Deuteronomy 26 was the ancient germ around which the traditions of Israel would come together in what we know today as the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, or in Jewish practice, the Torah. Subsequent scholars have convincingly argued that this creed was probably not as old as von Rad originally thought, but the idea that this was and is a creedal formula is still a widely held assumption. But how is a recitation of historical memories a creed?
The philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote, “Little things console us because little things afflict us.” Whether it’s a couple of smashed fingers, or a badly stubbed toe, or a single grain of sand under your eyelid, suffering is suffering is suffering. And we can’t help but ask, why is there so much of it? Why doesn’t God just stop it? Stop the tsunamis, stop the floods, stop the landslides, stop the throbbing fingers, aching teeth, creaking knees, hurting backs. On scales both great and small, the whole world is awash in pain and suffering, both human and animal. St. Paul wrote that “all creation has been groaning in labor pains” (Romans 8: 22), and it’s only human of us to ask, “When is this baby going to be born? Where is the new creation? When will the Kingdom finally come, when ‘mourning and crying and pain will be no more’ (Revelation 21:4)?”
In Deuteronomy 26, though, the faithful Israelite is not being asked to believe that Jacob was his ancestor, or that Jacob went down to Egypt, or that the descendants of Jacob suffered oppression at the hands of the Pharaoh. Rather, faith here is not so much subscription to a set of beliefs, but instead the adoption of a story, Jacob’s story, as my story. For Israel, belief centers not so much on doctrines, but on identifying yourself with a story that continues to unfold in your own life. Faith means believing that I am part of the story that began with my wandering ancestor landing in Egypt, and that continues with my life being oppressed, and God hearing my cry, and God delivering me and bringing me to a land of milk and honey.
The problem of pain is something humans have batted around for millennia, but when it’s our pain, the whole question of suffering suddenly becomes a lot more urgent and significantly more personal. Over the years many people have told me that they don’t fear death so much as they fear the suffering that precedes death. How many of you would agree? In his book “My Life with the Saints,” Father James Martin writes of visiting with a missionary friend. The missionary had served in East Africa, where he had contracted dengue fever, and as he explained to Father Martin, “The first week I was afraid that I was going to die. The second week I was afraid that I wouldn’t.”
From start to finish, the Bible is deeply engaged with the human struggle to find the meaning of suffering. That includes the suffering of trying to reconcile the reality of our pain with our faith in a God who is good and gracious and merciful. As many of you know all too well, there’s a special hurt that comes from watching a loved one suffer even as we beseech God to relieve their pain.
The Bible recognizes that through our sin and rebellion against God we often bring suffering on ourselves. As a species, we are highly adept at shooting ourselves in the foot, again and again and again. But the Bible also acknowledges that we sometimes suffer at the hands of unseen forces and powers that resist and oppose the good will of God. After all, we live in a fallen world, and that fallenness can manifest itself in many and various ways, from great storms and earthquakes to microscopic cancers and genetic disorders. God can use suffering, in St. Paul’s words, to produce “endurance,” and, as St. Paul adds, “endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5: 4). When I was a child and I would come home crying over a scraped knee or a twisted ankle, my mother would frequently tell me, “It’ll build character.” Then one day I told her, “I don’t want any more character. God can keep the character. Just make it stop hurting.” If it were only that easy! But for all its vast wisdom and secret knowledge, the Bible does not give us a one-size-fits-all explanation as to the why, what, where, when, or who of suffering, and of course, we have trouble with that.
When a great and terrible evil befalls a friend, neighbor, or acquaintance, we all like to think, however secretly, that the same thing couldn’t possibly happen to us. It’s just human nature. We want to insulate ourselves from our own fear of suffering. In our neighbor’s grief we see the mirror image of our own vulnerability, which is pretty darn scary. When we’re young and we think we’re immortal, we can delude ourselves into believing that we’re the exception to the rule, that the grief that befalls everybody else will not visit us. But as we grow older and we come to know death and suffering on more intimate terms, we have to figure out new ways to explain how our neighbor’s pain is just, right, and appropriate, or at least understandable, and why the same couldn’t just as easily happen to us.
That often leads to something called blaming the victim. The reasoning goes like this: Bad things happen to people because those people must have done something bad. Even if we can’t find a moral fault that led to their pain, then we conclude it must be that they didn’t watch their diet, or they smoked, or they didn’t work out, or, my favorite, they should have known better than to live in a place that had earthquakes or tornadoes or hurricanes or droughts or floods or blizzards or wild fires or crazy people that go on shooting sprees.
In today’s Gospel Jesus says no dice to blame the victim theology. Because something bad happens to someone, you cannot automatically conclude that God must be punishing them for whatever bad thing they’ve done. Jesus insists that when tragedy strikes you cannot instantly make God the fall guy. Instead, Jesus slams the door shut to blaming the victim by insisting that we’re all subject to God’s judgment:
"Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
Not only are the victims of tragedy no worse than others, but also, and maybe more importantly, the survivors are no better.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says that our Father in heaven “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5: 45). I’ve often wondered, though, if we’d be better off if God did exactly that. What if God showered blessings on just the good and curses on just the bad? What if the world were governed by a strict moral code as sure and certain as, say, the law of gravity? I’m guessing that things would be a lot more orderly. People would know exactly where they stood on the 0-10 scale of moral rectitude. I guarantee that that kind of plan would make all the planes, trains, and buses run on time. Think of it: a world where you get exactly what you deserve; a world where your every thought, word, and deed would be immediately judged, either to be rewarded or punished; a world where there’s no one to blame, or turn to, when you find yourself in a mess. Would such a world be capable of love? I don’t think so.
When you get right down to the nub of the matter, what is love but reaching out to our fellow sufferers? And what is sin except withholding our love from the people who need it the most, the lost, the lonely, the hurting? Back in the late ‘80’s some of you may recall that there was a lot of discussion about whether people with AIDS had just gotten what they deserved, and then I met a man dying of AIDS. I’d gone to see him, and he was so weak and frail that when he opened the door for me, he fell down. I didn’t know what to do. I thought, “Do I need to have rubber gloves on or what?” Finally, I just picked him and put him in his chair. It was like lifting a three or four-year old. He was nothing but skin and bones. And all of a sudden it didn’t matter how he’d come by his disease. It didn’t matter whether he was gay or straight, whether he’d had many lovers or none at all. He was just another bag of bones, like me, and right then all he needed was somebody to help him get back in his chair.
In the parable of the fig tree the gardener intercedes with the owner of the vineyard to give him just one more year to water and nurture the fig tree into bearing fruit. Isn’t this what Jesus does for us? Is this the reason Jesus continues to dig around our roots, so that we may bear the fruit of compassion?
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
