| September 13, 2009
You are welcome to reflect on this message - September 13. 2009 “Signs of the Times” (Luke 13:1-9) Dr. Dan Ivins, preaching
It takes time to get used to life. These young people -- they don’t know what’s coming! I don’t know who told us life’s supposed to be easy. But it’s always hard. We assume it’s gonna go our way. Zippidee do dah! But it rarely does. We hope bad things will never happen to us. But they always do. The thing about mastering life is: it’s not what happens to us but what we do about what happens to us. After awhile, you figure it out. To have any joy, purpose or peace, you have to piece it together out of fragments. Because you rarely get 24 smooth hours in a row.
The Bible knows that. It wasn’t written by somebody sipping mint juleps on the beach, but by people who put life together with short sections of string. In our text Jesus is using mishaps and accidents to drive home the uncertainty of life with two disaster stories. One was the equivalent of a first century 9/11, about a tower in Siloam collapsing to the ground and a lot of innocent people were killed. Likewise the Galileans were dutifully involved in the worship of God, busying themselves with holy things. Then disaster strikes! Pilate sent in some terrorists who hack the worshipers to death in the place where they were praying!
Jesus anticipated his audience wondering if they did something wrong to deserve this unfortunate turn of luck. As people inevitably try to make a correlation between wrong-doing and tragedies, stemming mostly from faulty theology – a poor understanding of God’s ways. One thing’s for sure, you really learn what people are made of when calamity strikes. Whenever it happens to us, we start wondering what we did to bring it about. It stands to reason that we must’ve done something! So we scrutinize our behavior, analyze our relationships, alter our diets, or re-think our beliefs. Searching for some cause to explain an effect, in hopes that we can stop causing it! When it comes to “truth or consequences,” we’re far more interested in the consequences than the truth. But what we crave more than truth, is to have control over the chaos in our lives ... so that life will be safe and God will be tame.
When Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, he struggles with a child born with an incurable illness. And its popularity attests to his courageous writing about the unfairness of it. When bad things happen, he attributes it to bad luck. There is good luck and bad luck -- neither of which are dependent upon our goodness or badness. There’s a maddening randomness to life that we must live or die with.
But Jesus indulges in no such handy philosophizing. When he was confronted with two concrete examples of life’s unfairness, he never mentioned luck, good or bad. “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered like this, they’re any worse sinners than all the other Galileans?” According to Jesus, it’s not about judgment or getting what we deserve. He’s more interested in what we can do something about, namely, our relationship with God.
Why do terrible things happen? Probably for no good reason. Sometimes it’s just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad things happen to both good and bad all the time. “The same sun shines on the just and unjust.” But the notion that good things happen to good people was laid to rest for all time when they nailed Jesus to the cross. All he wants to know is if we can love God -- without linking our love to the cards life has dealt us. They want to connect hapless tragedy with helpless ideology. Jesus prefers repentance and purposeful theology. Their question to Jesus belies a tempting idea because it solves a lot of problems for us. First, it answers the riddle about “why bad things happen to good people.” They happen to both good and bad. The religious prefer that bad things happen only to bad people. “Retribution theology” is attractive because it punishes sinners out in the open as a warning to everybody else. Also it gives us a predictable God who obeys the laws of physics: cause and effect. For every action, there must be an opposite reaction. Any questions? Like St. Paul said, “We reap what we sow.” It’s mighty tempting to leave it at that.
Only Jesus won’t go there. Instead, he moves in a different direction…toward them! “Nope,” he tells the crowd, “unless you repent, you will perish like they did.” Jesus didn’t believe there was any connection between human suffering and sin. I’m so glad because I can’t think of anything more cruel than the slogan “There but for the grace of God, go I?” It assumes no grace for the sufferer. Only for me. Luke appears to be telling a story that isn’t meant to aid reason, but to disarm it. Jesus is speaking to our gut. The panic we all feel when life ambushes us. So we search our own hearts for any bait that might bring disaster sniffing our way. But Jesus won’t honor their illusion that people can protect themselves with delusional thinking. He does honor the vulnerability that their fear has opened in them.
It’s not a bad thing to be reminded from time to time of our helplessness. It’s not a bad thing to realize that our lives are hanging by a slender thread most of the time. It’s not a bad thing to recognize that we are creatures…not if it makes us turn toward God and away from our self-deception. That is precisely what Jesus wants for them, which is why he tweaks their apprehensions. “Don’t worry about Pilate or the towers that can come crashing down on your heads. Bad things happen. And sometimes there’s nobody to blame.” Well enough. But Jesus is saying we can’t let that stop us from what we need to be doing. We can’t let the fear that bad things might happen to us, immobilize us. Or after they happen to us. Especially after. Evidently Jesus believes that torn place inside of you can become a holy place. If you pay attention to it, it may hurt to hang out there for awhile. But it is the pain that leads to life not death.
I don’t see a whole lot of gospel in this scripture, except to remind us that good news can be hard, but it’s still good. Luke is telling us about people who have discovered a valuable lesson on their life’s journey: you can’t make life safe nor God tame. We keep trying to make it thus. Which is why Jesus said we’re better at giving a weather report than predicting what God’s gonna do. Good meteorologists. Bad theologians. “Ya’ll are a bunch of hypocrites” he thunders! “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but you don’t know the first thing about the signs of the times” (Lk 12:54-56). He allowed as how they didn’t “have a clue about how to interpret the future.” As soon as he challenged their desire for predictability that religion is supposed to give us -- they come out of the woodwork. “What do you mean we can’t interpret the signs, what about that time when Pilate slaughtered the innocent people or when the tower of Siloam fell and killed 18 people?” Jesus said, “That’s not it.” Tragedy? Misfortune? Bad luck? Surely there’s some sign! There is. According to Jesus and we must watch for it closely and faithfully, or we’ll miss it.
To sharpen our vision, Jesus tells another story. This one is about a farmer who was frustrated at a barren fig tree. He thought it oughta be cut down. But the gardener pleads for patience. “Sir,” let’s nurture it, care for it, fertilize it...give it one more year.” That’s it. That’s the sign. People want a sign. There is a clue to the in-breaking of the reign of God. And I’m afraid it’s a disappointment to us. All who expected a great show of fireworks in the sky, tsunamis or inexplicable tragedies like 9/11, wars and rumors of wars...aren’t gonna like this Gospel text. Because it clarifies the sign of God’s kingdom among us -- the gracious hand that reached out to halt the ax about to strike the fruitless fig tree. So Jesus stops the swinging-ax, aimed at the useless tree. “Cut it down! It’s good for nothing.” That’s the farmer talking. Stopping that ax. That’s God talking. The sign of God’s reign is mercy. Forgiveness. Granting a second chance. That’s the sign! “Let’s give this hopeless case one more year.”
We’re a lot more like John the Baptist who thought the axe was the sign. “Even now,” he said, “the ax is lying at the root of the trees.” He’s looking forward to it! That’s the kind of sign we expect. Something violent, destructive. But Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord has sent me to bring good news to the poor and to bind up the brokenhearted...” That’s his sign: constructive, redemptive. And when the Nazarenes heard it, they were so enraged, they became violent and tried to toss him over a cliff. You don’t have to go very far into Luke’s Gospel to find it. Chapter four. “Let’s give this one more year.”
I served as a chaplain at a mental hospital during seminary days in La Grange, KY. On my wing, many hopeless cases were relegated to the back ward. I noticed that the psychiatrists and social workers avoided this place, making the bare minimum calls, writing these patients off as unsalvageable. But a women’s group from a local Baptist church came to visit the patients on my floor, as a matter of compassion. Nobody told them those in the back were the abandoned cases. So in blessed-ignorance, they visited them regularly -- brought them flowers, cookies, prayer, cheerfulness. Before long some of the patients began to respond. A few of them even became healthy enough to move out onto other wards.
I don’t know what you make of something like that. Because at one level, this was just another women’s church group doing what church groups do. But on another level ... it was “a sign of the times.”
Providence Prayers (9-13-09) We congregate in the church, O God, as is our habit, trusting that the components of our worship will connect with the needs of our souls. This week especially, as we remember the 9/11 tragedy. Some hearts are here today, aching with silent suffering. Others are pulsing with unspoken joys. May our gathering serve as a means of encouragement. Some of our minds are cluttered with tangled thoughts; unable to make any sense of what we see. Weary of having to make difficult decisions, that please some and alienate others. Enable us to be people unafraid to make the toughest choices, that involve moral dilemmas and the gray areas of ethics.
Guide us by Thy Spirit. Remind us that the church is called to act in a world where right answers are more elusive than loving choices. May these quiet moments serve as spaces for sorting and renewal. May these prayers we offer serve as occasions for confession and commitment. Jesus warned the Galileans to neither test the patience of God nor take the grace of God for granted. If we’re lucky enough to escape suffering, it’s not because of our goodness, but only God’s graciousness. Transform us lest we also perish.
Forgive us when we fail to have a global concern and lapse back into fancying ourselves as heaven’s favorites. Save us from parochial attitudes that constantly attempt to wrest control of the world from you so that our self-interests define reality. Sharpen our ability to appreciate how Jesus ceaselessly did your will yet never missed out on a moment’s joy; who saw clearly when others were blinded by prejudice, who practiced love in a world full of apathy; who risked living with passion, and a trust that took no detours around the cross, but believed in Thy power to open up possibilities beyond the cross.
May we learn to embrace all our experiences as gifts from God. The illness that makes us stronger; the grief that makes us softer; the mistakes that allow us to laugh at ourselves. Back |
