Luke 13:1-9

The Time is Now

March 8, 2007 - Lent 3

Do bad things happen to certain people simply because they are more wicked than the rest of us?

Some people think so; in fact, a lot of people are like Job’s friends certain that personal tragedy is the consequence of some hidden sin. If you dig deep enough, you will find it. They can quote the first Psalm that separates the wicked from the righteous to bolster their case.

A tower falls unexpectedly, perhaps a violent wind topples it, or a flaw in the design causing the structure to give way; maybe a tremor causes the foundation to shift. Crash! Eighteen people are dead; only moments before they were fully alive – maybe eating their lunches on a sunny day in the shadow of the tower, their children playing in the park nearby. All 18 dead. Why? Were these people marked as somehow worse than anyone else in all Jerusalem? The question is there; Jesus heard it, even if whispered. Maybe it was the guilty cry of the survivors. Why them? Which, of course, is another ways of saying why not me?

Of course, since September 11 2001, any mention of the tower in Siloam reminds us of those twin Towers that fell – not by an accident of the wind or earth but an evil act. Did the ones who died that terrible day deserve their fate while the others escaped because of their moral superiority? Jesus raised a similar question in light of the cruel ritual sacrifice of group of Galileans at the hand of tyrant. Was their death a punishment for their sins?

Those who follow that trail of thinking must wonder then about the five Amish children senselessly murdered by a deranged neighbor. Did these five deserve a fate worse than anyone else in the beloved community? Even to ask the question seems unseemly. But apparently people have been asking such questions for generations and the answers they have received have not always been the one you might expect. In fact, it is often shockingly the opposite.

Jesus says emphatically NO, people are classified by their sins, some marked for tragedy – the worst ones – while the best are spared. While you and I can surely make a life that is more likely to bring happiness than hardship by the choices we make, we can not predict upon whom the rain of pain shall fall. It falls upon the just and the unjust and often not in equal measure. There is no class of people slotted for punishment. To believe otherwise, as one prominent Christian did when he predicted the path of a hurricane would go right over the wicked, puts you on a path that leads to arrogance and a false sense of self importance.

Why then does Jesus call us to repent? What’s up with that?

No doubt the suffering of others raises disturbing questions. How you and I respond is crucial. For the wise and discerning tragedy can function as a wake up call. When the rug is pulled out from others – I can shake my head at their loss, offer a prayer and go on my way. Or it can be an occasion to examine my life more closely. This mortal life is brief – and briefer still for some of us when tragedy strikes at a moment we can’t predict. What is that I must forsake, turn away from, renounce, to be in right relation to God and neighbor?

Frankly, it is a whole lot easier to wonder about the sins of others that cause their various perils and predicaments than to focus on what I may need to renounce. What are the habits of heart and mind that I must forsake because they lead not life in God but life oriented to self alone, and all the phony pretensions that go with presumed moral goodness. I suppose this is what Jesus may have had in mind; after all, Jesus came to disturb the righteous not to humiliate the sinner. (Janet Morley)

I know it’s strange to say but even the virtues of good people may have to be forsaken or at least transformed by the mercy of God into humility. Why? Well, you tell me, what is worse than the smugness of the morally virtuous who know without a doubt of their goodness?

Jesus came not to condemn the sinner but to disturb the righteous, so that I might see my own condition before God. Judgment and grace form the paradox of the gospel. Judgment without grace is cruelty, of which there is plenty. Grace without any sense of accountability is cheap sentimentality, of which there is plenty. Gospel medicine is in short supply.

The great novelist Flannery O’Connor had a fine way of revealing how good people can be deceived into thinking they are superior to others who are less virtuous. In a scene from her short story, Revelation, Mrs. Turpin, who has neatly divided the world into good people and bad, white trash and others, so concerned with keeping appearances that she is proud of cleanliness of the pigs on her farm that she washes each day in the setting sun. Her favorite prayer is, thank you Jesus for not making me like those other people. But one day in a doctor’s waiting room while she was praising the fact of her goodness, a young teenager stopped her cold with the piercing accusation that Mrs Turpin was actually wart hog straight from hell. Well, of course, that’s not a nice thing to say, but it this story – in this particular life – it became the revelation that led to reversal.

Later that day was washing down the pigs and cleaning their pen, Mrs. Turpin turns her eyes to God above with fierce question, “how can I be a wart hog from hell, and saved at the same time? How am I both?” Then in a vision, she turned her gaze toward the horizon where there was only a purple streak in the sky. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of negroes in white robes and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.

And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right.

She leaned in forward to observe them closer.

They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were singing on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. ... In a moment the vision faded but she remained, where she was, immobile. ... In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah. (Revelation. Page 508-509)

The good news that comes like daily manna is the grace given to live lives of purpose, bearing fruit pleasing to God. The barren fig tree was spared that it may have yet more time to bear fruit. God’s judgment – whatever that is - is always in conversation with God’s mercy. So I believe it is so for me, I am alive in God, whose judgment is real and whose mercy is generous, that I might turn and turn and turn again until I arrive at the place just right.

How is it with you?

This mortal life is not forever, even under the best of circumstances. While the fig tree is spared yet one more year, so there is an urgency involved in the kingdom of God. Today is the day – always today; not yesterday for it is past and will not return; not tomorrow for it is not yours or mine to predict. Today is the day given to you, in God’s mercy.

Are you awake? Do you hear the invitation? The time for turning is now.

______________________

Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free

Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be

For when we find ourselves in the place just right

we will be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained

To bow and to bend we’ll not be ashamed

For in turning and turning will be our delight

And in turning and turning we’ll come round right.