Perfume and Tears (Lent 5C)

“Perfume and Tears”

Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year C)
Homily Delivered at 10 a.m. Eucharist 

Congregation of the Good Shepherd 

21 March 2010
Beijing, China
Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In the second century, there was a great churchman named Tatian.  He was converted to Christianity because he hated the messiness of paganism.   He wanted his new faith to be clean and orderly, and in an effort to help the Church, he took the four Gospels and digested them into a single reconciled account, the Diatesseron (the 4-fold story). It was wildly popular.  For over two centuries it was read as the Gospel in the Eastern Church.  As an older man,  Tatian veered into a weird sect that hated the human body and demanded celibacy from all.  When it came time in the fourth century to decide what books were accepted as the standard for faith, the Church in council decided that the Four Gospels themselves, and not Tatian’s Harmony, were to go in the Bible.   They had been uniquely authoritative from the start, and this was why Tatian had used them.  So the Church accepted Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John in all their messy disharmony and inconsistencies, and rejected Tatian’s consistent single Gospel.

Tatian the Syrian

Today’s Gospel reading is an example of the messiness that Tatian tried to clean up. It is a messy story, both in the scene that it describes and the various forms it has come down to us in the Four Gospels.  All four Gospels a story of a woman who anoints Jesus.  The story takes one form in Mark and Matthew and very different forms in Luke and John.

In Mark and Matthew the scene describes a prophetic act by an unnamed woman who anoints Jesus’ head with extremely expensive perfumed oil and thus proclaims him as the ‘Christ’ (or Anointed One).

In Luke, an unnamed prostitute in a very different setting performs an overwrought act of gratitude for being forgiven of her sins.  She weeps, the tears falling on Jesus’ feet.  She wipes his feet dry with her unbound hair, and anoints his feet (not his head) with the precious ointment.   

In John, the woman is named.  She is Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.  Humbly standing at Jesus’ feet, she anoints them with the precious perfume and then wipes off the excess with her hair:  the act of loving devotion by a true follower of Jesus. 

A little background-- 

The ointment at issue is worth about $30,000 U.S. by today’s standards.   So the complaint about the waste of money found in Mark, Matthew, and John is not trivial. 

The unbound hair has social significance—a proper woman just did not appear in public with her hair unbound.   Luke clearly means it to identify the woman as a “sinner”; in John, it may just show that Mary is lost in what she is doing.

Matthew and Mark both have Jesus saying that wherever the Gospel is proclaimed, this story will be told “in memory of her.”  A measure of the misogyny of the times is that neither actually preserves her name.

The Gospel of Luke doesn’t name the prostitute, but in the verses that follow the story he mentions one “Mary of Magdala from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons.”  This is why many people, whenever they hear any version of the story, think that the woman is “Mary Magdalene,”  even though the Mary in John is from Bethany, not Magdala. 

All these stories understand that this woman’s action is socially unacceptable, given women’s marginal status in that society.  This is true especially in Luke, where she is a publicly known sinner to boot.  Mark and Matthew see the woman as a prophet of the truth who sees what the so-called leading disciples (all men!) can’t yet see.  Luke sees her as a model for the penitent believer.  John sees her as a hero in faith.  But all describe her as expressing her emotions and devotion to Jesus in a totally over-the-top, socially inappropriate, and shockingly extravagant way.  That’s why in all the stories someone complains about her.  The disciples in Mark and Matthew complain about the waste of money that could have gone to the poor.  The Pharisee host in Luke complains that Jesus can’t be a prophet if he is so unaware of the woman’s past that he lets her come in and actually touch him.  And Judas in the Gospel of John complains about the loss of money for the poor while the narrator tells us that what he was really after was his own cut of the money.    In all four, the woman’s act is extravagant, out of proportion, embarrassing, and questionable morally. 

But in all these stories, Jesus defends the woman.  He does not criticize her extravagance, but loves her for it.  The woman is an example of the truth in several parables, “The kingdom of God is like the case of a laborer who having found a treasure in the field, in his joy goes and sells everything he has and buys the field; or like the merchant who having found a pearl of great price, goes and sells everything and buys the pearl” (Matthew 13:44-46).   In accepting Jesus’ love, no cost is too much, no expression of thanks too extravagant. 

That is the point I want us to take from the story today.  We stand at Jesus’ feet, not at his head.  Tears and extravagance are what each of us must give Jesus if we truly understand what he offers us.  The woman comes to Jesus and offers all she has, including her dignity.  Her ego and self seeking are dissolved in the wash of tears and the outpouring of the costly perfume.  She comes to Jesus just as she is, with no pretense to herself, to him, or to others.   And, being human, there is plenty for others to criticize in her "just as she is."  

But Jesus sees her heart.  He knows what she means to say, and what her actions point to, even if she does not.  And he loves her for honesty, her sincerity, for her desire.   In John, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet just days before he himself picks up a towel and scrubs the feet of his disciples the night he is to be betrayed by the very disciple who criticizes Mary’s extravagance.   Her action not only points to his burial, but to his service.   Her love reflects his love.  If it’s a waste of money, so be it.  If it’s inappropriate and morally dubious, tough.  If its extravagance reflects in its own little way the extravagance of God's love toward us, good.  What counts for Jesus is the woman’s intentions, as flawed as she or they might be. 

Now we musn’t take Jesus’ defense of her as an excuse to ignore the poor, or think that Jesus did.  After a ministry focused on the poor he says, “The poor are always with you, but I am not always with you.”  He answers the criticism on the same level at which it came.  The ethics of the period said that an act of mercy done for the dead (such as burying an abandoned body) had greater moral merit than an act of justice done for the living (such as giving alms to the poor).   Jesus is saying that caring for the poor is important, but mustn’t get in the way of greater things. 

The fact is, maybe we do not have to get everything just right before the Lord accepts us or looks at us with favor.  He loves us so much that, like the father in the parable in last week’s Gospel, he will come out running with arms outspread if we simply turn to him. 

Tears of gratitude warm Jesus’ heart and refresh the soul.  The fragrance of expensive perfume, extravagantly offered by a humble heart, can fill not only a house, but the whole world.  Accepting ourselves and offering our whole selves, including our disabilities and weaknesses, to God is necessary for this to happen. 

Contrast this with those who look on with hard hearts and calculators, and criticize, who whine about the failings of those who wash the feet of Jesus with their tears, and anoint him with expensive oil just because it feels right to do so.    Contrast it with Tatian, who preferred a clean, harmonized Gospel, to the messy ones that God saw fit to deliver to us, and who preferred an orderly world filled with ascetics rather than real human beings. 

Let us all try to be a little more honest with ourselves and with God as we pray.  Let us recognize our failings and not loathe ourselves for them, but love and thank God all the more for delivering us from the hopelessness of life without Jesus.  Let us be a little easier on ourselves and more comfortable in the presence of a loving God.  Let us be extravagant in showing our gratitude. 

In the name of God, Amen. 

+++

NOTE ON THE STORY:

All four of the Gospels contain a story of a woman who anoints Jesus.  The stories are similar enough to make many readers think that they may all refer to the same event, but different enough that others feel they probably refer to two different events in the life of Jesus: the one described in Luke and the one described in Mark and Matthew.  The scene in John would be a theologized combining of the two by the Fourth Gospel.   

Mark (14:3-9), followed by Matthew (26:6-13), sets the story at the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany near Jerusalem just days before his death.  A woman enters a dinner where Jesus is reclined with other guests on small couches around a dinner table.  She brings a precious flask of extremely expensive perfumed ointment worth 300 denarii, amost a year’s wages for a skilled laborer.  She breaks it, and pours it onto Jesus’ head.  Jesus’ followers, reclining with him, are outraged at the waste of money that could have been given to the poor.  But Jesus defends her, saying, “Let her alone.  She has done a beautiful thing for me.”  Using a common rabbinical distinction at the time that attributed more moral merit to works of mercy done for the dead than to works of social justice done for the living, Jesus adds, “You will always have the poor with you, but I am about to die.  She was just preparing my body for burial a little early.”  The story ends with Jesus saying that wherever the Gospel is preached, the story of what the woman did will be recounted “in memory of her.”  

The scene is one where a woman serves a prophetic role and through a symbolic act—anointing the head with oil, like the kings of ancient Israel—announces what Jesus’ men disciples, those styled as the leaders of the Church after his death, couldn’t see until after his death and reappearance:  that Jesus is the anointed one, the Messiah or Christ, awaited by Jews for the consolation of Israel and the bringing in of the righteous gentiles.  In these Gospels, Jesus’ burial after the crucifixion is done so hurriedly that his corpse cannot be properly prepared for burial.  So the prophetic action of the woman is seen as an anointing of the body of Jesus for burial before the fact.  A measure of the deep misogyny of the society in which the Church grew is that though Jesus in the story says that this prophetic act is so striking that would be told “in memory of her” forever more, her name has not been preserved. 

Luke, who like Matthew usually edits and adapts Mark, tells a very different story, one that is very close to the one told in John.  Luke probably has his own sources apart from Mark and the Sayings Source (Q) he shares with Matthew; this story probably comes from these sources specific to Luke (L).  Because it was so different from the story told in Mark, but apparently a doubled version of the story, Luke simply deleted the Mark story when he got to that part of the narrative (he often deletes such “doublets.”)   

Luke (7:36-50) places his version of the story very early in Jesus’ ministry, at the home of a Pharisee (rather than a Leper) named Simon in Galilee.  A woman “of the city, known to be a sinner” interrupts the dinner party.  She comes in behind Jesus as he reclines and begins to weep.  Her tears cover Jesus’ feet, which she then wipes dry with her hair, unbound in public in the style of prostitutes in that place and time advertising their availability.  She then kisses and anoints his feet (not his head) with the precious ointment.  The Pharisee host says to himself that if Jesus were a prophet, he would know what kind of sleazy person this was and wouldn’t allow her to touch him.  Jesus tells the parable of the two debtors explaining that the woman had been forgiven much sin and so has greater gratitude.  He contrasts his host’s cool reception to the care the woman has lavished on Jesus, pointedly noting “you did not anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet.”  

Immediately after the story, Luke tells of the early women disciples of Jesus, including one Mary of Magdala, from whom Jesus had cast seven demons.  Forever since, Christians have tended to identify the unnamed prostitute in Luke’s story with Mary Magdalen, and from there, with the woman in all four of the stories.  (This, despite the fact that Mary of Bethany in John’s story and a separate story in Luke almost certainly cannot be Mary of Magdala.)  The scene in Luke emphasizes the woman’s interior reasons for approaching Jesus—she is a sinner, an outcast, and she is grateful for the forgiveness and welcome Jesus offers.  This is contrasted in the story with the reaction of the nominal host, the Pharisee (one thinks of the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector for a similar contrast in a parable of Jesus).  Luke, however, draws it out by the inclusion of the Parable of the Two Debtors. 

John (12:1-8) says the scene takes place just before Jesus’ death (like Mark), but before Jesus enters Jerusalem.  It is still in the “Book of Signs” section of the Gospel, just before the “Book of Glory.”  Remember that for John, Jesus’ crucifixion is his elevation to glory, his triumph over evil, and the hour for which the Father sent him.  Thus the plot to kill Jesus and Lazarus actually works to fulfill God’s plan.  The dinner takes place  at an unnamed home in Bethany, but the main servers are Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus.  It looks like the dinner is to thank Jesus for raising Lazarus from the dead, an act that in John’s Gospel becomes the trigger for the plot to put Jesus to death.  This Mary is Mary of Bethany, not Mary of Magdala.  She, a devoted disciple, anoints the feet of Jesus with costly ointment and then wipes the excess off with her hair, “filling the house with the fragrance of the ointment.”  

 In John, the complaint is not made by the disciples generally and about the waste of money that could have been used for the poor (as in Mark and Matthew), or made by Simon the Pharisee and about Jesus' seeming ignorance of the woman's past  (as in Luke).  Rather, here it is about money and it is raised by Judas Iscariot, the treasurer of the disciples who Johns notes is about to betray Jesus, and the narrator says Judas was actually just concerned about lining his own pockets through embezzlement.  The personal invective against the apostle named Judas reflects in part the (regrettable) overall anti-Jewish tone of the Gospel of John (see esp. 8:44), a reaction of Jewish believers of Jesus having been “put out of the synagogue” (9:22; 12:42; 16:2).   In reaction to the complaint of Judas, Jesus simply defends Mary, “Let her alone, her purpose was to keep it for my burial day.  You will always have the poor, but you will not always have me with you.”  In John’s Gospel, there is time for Jesus’ body to be properly prepared for burial, including anointing and wrapping in linen. So here the reference to the anointing oil as for Jesus’ burial is not an interpretation of the woman’s action but rather as an explanation of her motives for keeping such an expensive item on hand.  

In John, the scene describes not a prophetic act by a woman proclaiming Jesus as Christ and hinting at his death (as in Mark and Matthew), nor an overwrought act of gratitude of a sinful woman in the presence of grace (as in Luke), but rather an act of loving devotion by follower of Jesus whose desires are focused on caring for Jesus, contrasted with the self-serving focus of one whose main concern is not the person of Jesus itself, but perhaps one or another of his teachings.  

Tatian harmonizes the three accounts (Mark/Matthew, Luke, and John) into two naratives.  The first is at the end of section 14 and the beginning of section 15 of the Diatesseron:  it is essentially the Luke 7 account in the original Luke setting.    The second is in section 39 of the Diatesseron, which combines the Mark/Matthew account with the John account, placing it in the Johannine textual setting before the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and during the plot to kill Jesus and Lazarus .   In Tatian, the scene takes place in Bethany at the home of Simon the Leper with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in attendance.  Mary anoints both the head and feet of Jesus, and both Judas and several other unnamed disciples complain about the waste of money.  And the defense includes both the reason "she was keeping it for my burial" (John) and "she anointed my body for burial ahead of time" (Mark and Matthew).  It also includes the "the story will be told in memory of her" (Matthew and Mark), though in Tatian the woman is named as Mary of Bethany.  

Modern scholars are divided.  Some, like Raymond Brown, say that there were originally two events--a Galilean one with a penitent prostitute weeping onto Jesus' feet and one just before Passion Week with a prophetic woman anointing Jesus' head with expensive perfume.  The two events were confused in the oral tradition and the Gospel versions we now have is the result.  Other scholars, like Joseph Fitzmyer, believe that there was probably only one event that in the oral transmission of stories took on differing interpretations and narrative elements.  I am inclined here to follow Fitzmyer, since it is hard to see why two stories of two events would have evolved in a way that results in what we end up with in the Gospels.  On the other hand, it easy to see why a story of an event very much like Luke's could evolve into what all four Gospels have.  In that society, you washed feet, but anointed heads.  The embarrassing elements of the penitent's tearful foot-washing, especially if it involved an expensive perfume obtained through the wages of prostitution, could have morphed into a pious retelling of a virtuous woman prophet doing a prophetic act proclaiming Jesus Messiah.   It is not all that apparent to me that any of Jesus' disciples understood his status as a Messiah who had to die until after Good Friday and Easter.  Once understood in light of the bodily reappearance of Jesus after his death and transformed in the oral tradition, the story naturally gravitates to a setting near Holy Week and the "anointing before burial" interpretation of the anointing.  

Crazy Love (Prodigal Son) Lent 4C

Crazy Love
Homily delivered For Sung Eucharist 

for group of Expatriate English Teachers
Saturday 13th May 1 p.m. Haidian District, Beijing
4th Sunday of Lent (Year C RCL TEC)

Readings: Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In Luke chapter 15, Jesus gives three parables describing God.  The first sees God as a shepherd with 100 sheep.  When one gets lost, he leaves the 99 to fend for themselves, and seeks out the lost one.  He then brings it back on his shoulders, rejoicing, and is so excited that he throws a party (Luke 15:1-7).  Clearly the shepherd is a little wacky—he risks all his sheep and probably spends way more than he can afford on the party.

The second parable compares God to a slightly eccentric woman who has 10 silver coins.  When she loses one, she lights the lamp, sweeps the house, and, when she finds it, throws a party to celebrate with her friends (Luke 15: 8-10).  The party may cost more than the coin's value.

The third parable told is today’s gospel, often called “The Prodigal Son.”   If you listen to it carefully, though, you soon realize that it should probably be called “the Parable of the Loving Father with Two Lost Sons” or the "Parable of the Dysfunctional Family."  It too is about a slightly crazy person, a father who does not respect the conventions of good parenting in his society and who throws a party in his joy at the return of a wayward son.  In this parable, the coin and the sheep in the previous parables talk back in the persons of the eccentric father's two sons. 

The family is clearly dysfunctional (as most families seem to be in some way, once you get to know them).   A younger son is impatient for his father to die off, and demands his share of his inheritance in cash, now.  The father is not a good father by the expectations of Jesus’ society:  he does not stand up to defend his own position, his own dignity, and does not defend the integrity of the family nest egg or put up anything even approaching an argument to dissuade the son.  He simply caves and gives the son what he wants.  The son goes off among hated and despised gentiles, and wastes all the money in pleasure seeking and immorality.  When the money runs out, he is reduced to feeding the unclean pigs the gentiles raise for food and hits bottom when he realizes that the pigs are eating better than he is, and that slaves in his father house are better off than he is.  He resolves to go back and ask to hired as a servant in his father’s house, knowing that there is no warrant at for him to be restored to anything close to his former status after the harm he has done his family.  But the father, again, does not meet even the minimum standards of decency and honor then expected of parents.  Not worrying about dignity, honor, or even fairness to the other son, he loses all semblance of acting as a proper father should and runs out to meet the boy as soon as he sees him in the distance.  He doesn’t even wait for the reprobate to come to him and beg forgiveness.  He welcomes him back, and throws a big party. 

At this point, the older son’s reaction takes center stage. He is the one most disadvantaged by his brother’s actions, and by his father’s lack of concern for his own duties and the family’s standing in the community.  “I’ve worked night and day my whole life to build our family’s security.  I’ve obeyed and honored you without question.  And now this son of yours [note he can’t even bring himself to call him his brother] comes back and you throw a big party for him.   You never threw a party for me.” 

The old man’s reply is touching.  “But we had to celebrate!  This whole place is yours, I know.  But this is your brother we’re talking about.  He was dead, and now he has come back to life!  We have to throw a party!”   The father seems genuinely bewildered at the cold, self-seeking calculation of the older brother.  He seems to vaguely recognize the validity of the older son’s demands for fairness—he says, “Yeah, yeah, everything I own is written over to you in the will.”  But he seems totally stunned by the older son’s contempt and anger, contempt perhaps even worse than that of the younger son when he ran off.  “He’s your brother.  He was dead, and now is back from the dead.  We have to throw a party.” 

Jesus here is saying that God is more than a little crazy when it comes to loving us.  In God, love trumps demands of dignity, of face, of justice, of purity, or even of fairness.  The calculus of God’s love is not a zero sum, but a geometric expansion.  This parable of a dysfunctional family has the same point as the parable of the bad personnel policy (the parable of the day laborers) found in Matthew (20:1-16).  There, laborers who work throughout a long hard day complain when latecomers hired in the last minutes of the day are paid the same wage as they.  There, the boss says, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?  Are you going to going to give me sour looks because I am generous?”  

Jesus did teach that there was one situation where God's love was not so obvious, where, in fact,  it looked more to its recipient  as anger, not love.   It is in when God stands before a heart that because of its lack of gratitude itself has no love, no mercy.  There is the parable of the merciless servant-- whose own debt of millions is forgiven, but then who is unwilling to forgive a $200 debt from a coworker.  The boss is merciless on him when he hears.  In the story of The Pharisee and the Tax Collector Jesus tells the story of  a “religious” man who goes to the Temple and prays, “Thank God I’m not like the sinners around me.” Beside him stands a traitor—a collaborator with the occupying Romans, a man who profits from the sufferings of God’s people. The traitor stands far off due to his shame. He won’t even lift up his eyes to God because he fears that God might give him what he deserves. “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” he prays. And Jesus says that the traitor went away right with God while the so-called religious man went away as stone-cold-hearted as he came (Luke 18:10-14).

The difference is the heart itself.  When I was a much younger man, for several years I went around with what I now see what an attitude of resentment.  "Why don't people give me what I deserve?  Why doesn't God give me what I deserve?" I'd ask.  As long as I was this way, I caused a lot of damage to the people around me.  Finally, when I hit a bottom like the younger son looking at the pig's food, I changed perspectives entirely.  I let go, and let God.  My attitude now was, "Thank God hasn't given me what I deserve!"  I was a lot easier on myself, and a lot easier on others.  Much of the previous damage was healed, and the past redeemed. 

Jesus' point is that the basic, most fundamental nature of God is to love.  It is a love that is non-contingent.  It does not respond to requirements met, to expectations satisfied, to standards conformed to.  It is a love that actively creates gratitude and love in its recipient, and with this the ability to better meet expectations, standards, and requirements.   And it is not accountable to standards of fairness, justice, honor, or convention.  But it produces in the heart of a person who willingly accepts it such gratitude that that person, too, goes a little crazy and loves wildly. 

In Jesus’ parable picture of God’s love, it is always a little over-the-top, inappropriate, and, the truth be told, embarrassing.   If our hearts are right with God, it is the kind of inclusive, accepting love we should have as well. 

In our society, we like to praise the value of love, but we tend to deceive ourselves about what unconditional love actually means.  It means ignoring our deep-felt need to establish our own dignity and “save face.”  It means losing our ego.  It means losing our self-seeking, and pursuing mercy to the point of ignoring appeals to fairness on occasion.  It means forgiving the unforgivable, and welcoming not just those seen as outcast by others, but those who we ourselves think should be cast out.  

Being a little crazy in loving doesn’t mean being stupid.  Jesus does tell us to be as clever as snakes but harmless as doves.  But often we tart up our ego and fear and call it street smarts.   But the issue here is our hearts, not the pretty self-deceptions we are able to sell ourselves on. 

God is crazy about us.  God is crazy about you.  Let us be thankful, overwhelmingly so, and respond in kind. 

In the Name of God, Amen. 

Two Kinds of Why (Lent 3C)

“Two Kinds of ‘Why’”
Third Sunday of Lent (Year C)
7th March 2010
Beijing, China
Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

We just heard this week of yet more earthquakes—another in Taiwan and a horrendous one in Chile.  The dead in Haiti are not yet all buried, and yet now we have more death from natural disasters.  It is enough to make you wonder, if you have faith, or if you are naturally optimistic.  It certainly doesn’t weaken the native pessimism that some of us seem to have, or the belief of some that the world is totally random and meaningless. 

A disaster 250 years ago had similar results.  Some historians have said that the beginning of the nihilism of the modern world can be traced to the November 1, 1755 earthquake that leveled the capital of Portugal, Lisbon.  It was the point where the Enlightenment lost confidence in a world guided by any kind of friendly providence.  Historian Will Durant put it succinctly, “Both faith and hope suffered most when, in November, 1755, came the news of the awful earthquake at Lisbon, in which 30,000 people had been killed.  The quake had come on All Saints’ Day; the churches had been crowded with worshippers; and death, finding its enemies in close formation, had reaped a rich harvest.”  Voltaire and Rousseau both reacted by suggesting that in light of the disaster if God were good, he could not be almighty, and if he were almighty, he could not be good.  This is the classic problem of theodicy, how we explain the justice and goodness of God in the face of irrational and random horror. 

When the Haiti earthquake struck a month ago, television Evangelist Pat Robertson quickly chimed in by affirming that God was not only both good and almighty, but directly  and personally responsible for the earthquake.  God, Robertson said, was punishing the Haitians for what he called their ‘historic pact with the Devil’, dredging up a bit of Haitian revolutionary war propaganda from two centuries ago.  Most of us when we heard this were aghast.  The Rev. Franklin Graham, to his credit, replied simply that Robertson must have misspoken, for, as he knew, “God loves the people of Haiti and has not abandoned them.” 

But statements such as Robertson’s, clearly wrong-headed and wrong-hearted, seem to appear with an unfortunate regularity in certain theological quarters when really bad things happen.  Remember Jerry Falwell’s blaming the 9-11 attacks in 2001 also on the victims, saying that God had visited punishment on an America for what Falwell said was an-all-too lax sexual morality and an-all-too-casual acceptance of abortion.  

The religious people who make such comments are consciously trying to cast themselves in the role of prophets—diviners of God’s will and intentions.  They can quote the Book of Deuteronomy and its kindred works in the Old Testament to the effect that God rewards and blesses the righteous and punishes and brings disaster on the wicked.  They can point to many passages in the Old Testament that account for disasters by saying they were God’s punishment.   The logic of this position is that since God is involved in day-to-day life, and since God is just, bad things must happen to bad people and good things must happen to good people.  

But not all scripture agrees with this view, regardless of what the Book of Deuteronomy has to say on this particular issue.  Some parts of the Bible, indeed, strongly deny it.

 The Book of Job tells the story of a man who is “perfect in all his ways,” yet who suffers horror.  His friends, ever willing to defend the justice of God, urge Job to confess and repent of whatever hidden sin he has committed that God is so obviously punishing him for.  Most of the book’s 40 some chapters outline the argument.  But Job just can’t agree that what has happened has any semblance of fairness.  He won’t lie to get God off the hook.  Yet he does not “curse God and die,” as suggested by his wife.  He continues the argument, drags out the discussion.  Finally, when God at long last engages him directly, and speaks to him from “out of the whirlwind,” the revelation of the difference of their perspectives is so overwhelming that all Job can do is put on dust and ashes, repent himself, and bless the name of the Lord.  In so doing, he is not granting his friends’ arguments.  He is simply mourning the hard, hard, facts of our human condition, and expressing his hope and trust for its ultimate resolution by a reliable but mysterious God.   

I was raised in a religious community that, like Robertson and Falwell, taught simply that God blessed the righteous, punished the wicked, and heard and answered the prayers of the righteous. My wife and I had a major trial in our faith just after we were married while we were still in college and just starting our own family. We had become friends with a young couple that went to Church with us. They were good people. After several years of unsuccessful efforts, they were able to get pregnant and had a beautiful little baby boy. After a month or so, though, it became apparent that sometime was wrong. He had been born with a genetic defect: the upper layers of his skin were not fully connected with the deeper layers. If you touched him slightly on the arm, it quickly would turn into a large blister, would easily burst and become infected. There was little that the doctors could do. Despite two months in intensive care, the baby’s body was covered with what essentially were second-degree burns. He was held suspended in a light net to prevent further damage from the bed. His parents were not allowed to touch him, so they could not even comfort him as he screamed his little life out in agony. During the ordeal, we prayed. Our friends prayed. The Church elders prayed and anointed the baby with healing oil, carefully, on the inch or so of sound skin on the side of his head. The whole community prayed. And the baby suffered and slowly died.

It is not the only time in my life when I wished that the world were as simple as I had been taught in Sunday School: my wife’s mother’s cancer, my father’s Alzheimer’s disease.

Yet I have also seen prayers answered in wonderful and miraculous ways, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually: a deadly disease stopped in its tracks and healed, broken relationships mended and strengthened, mental illness managed.

The gospel stories of Jesus healing the sick tell us that the ultimate purpose of God does not include disease, suffering, and death. Jesus’ ministry of announcing the in-breaking of the reign of God focused in large part in healing physical and mental suffering. This tells us that God doesn’t intend horror and disappointment for his creatures. 

As we can see in the embarrassments that the Deuteronomy retribution theology causes people like the Reverends Robertson and Falwell, one of the key difficulties in theodicy is finding the appropriate connection between God’s ultimate good purposes and intention and what we experience in our actual lives.  

Jesus was asked questions like this several times in his life.  “Why was this man born blind—did his parents sin or was it him?”  “Neither,” he replies, “it wasn’t as punishment, but so that I would have the chance to heal him” (John 9:2-3).  They ask him why, and he answers why.  But note—the “why” question that Jesus answers is a very different “why” than the question posed.  The question asked is “why was he born blind," i.e., "what was the cause or origin of his being born blind?"  The answer Jesus gives is a “why was he born blind," i.e., "for what purpose was he born blind, or for what effect?”   

The former is a 'why' that seeks origins or cause, the latter is a 'why' that seeks final purpose or effect.  I once preached this text in Chinese, and there the distinction is far clearer than it is in English--  the people ask Jesus "Wei shenme (why)?"  Instead of answering "yinwei... (because, on account of....)" he says it is "wei le .... (in order that)" he heal the man.   

Jesus' shift between the two different kinds of 'why' is essential. 

Jesus assumes, along with Job after the voice in the whirlwind, that God is good and all powerful.   In The Doors of the Sea, a book written in response to the tsunami of 2004, theologian David Hart writes:  “As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy.”  Jesus would have agreed.  That’s what all the healings and exorcisms in his ministry are about.  Such an attitude may not intellectually answer the problem of theodicy, but it addresses the emotional questions involved. 

This faith is the basis of Jesus’ answer to the question “why does a seemingly innocent person suffer?” Jesus, together with Job, does not falsify his life experience in order to defend this basic truth:  he won’t lie and say the man born blind or his parents were any worse than others.  He admits that the innocent suffer, and this implies that in our current situation, with our current perspective, there may not be an answer that we can give to the “why, on what account?” question when we see horror.  It is not on account of unusual wickedness worthy of punishment, nor is it on the account of injustice, incompetence, or evil in the heart of God. 

So the only possible answer to a “why” here is to shift it to a “why, to what purpose?” question and look for opportunities to serve and help bring the ultimate intentions of God closer to the reality we see before us. 

“The coming of the rule of God” was the great image used in Jesus’ day to describe the hoped-for day when God’s ultimate purposes were realized.  Jesus’ proclamation of the in-breaking of God’s reign was marked by his healings and exorcisms and his call for greater social justice—this embodies his shift from “why, on what account?” to “why, for what purpose?”  He saw the arrival of the final purposes of God as not only possible but inevitable, but knew we needed to get out of God’s way.    

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is asked about people who suffer horrible things.  “Did you hear that the Romans massacred those countrymen of yours who were worshipping in the Temple?  Their own blood was mixed with that of the animals they were sacrificing!  What did they do that was so bad that God punished them this way?”  “They did nothing any worse than anyone else,” he replies.

“What about those people who died in the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed?  They were no worse than anyone else.  The lesson we should take here,” says Jesus, “is not that they were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke 13:1-5).  

He then tells the parable of the slow-bearing fig tree—the gardener being patient and working with the non-fruit-bearing plant.   Again, the point is to describe the connection between the arrival of God’s ultimate intention and where we are today.  God is cutting us slack so that we can bring forth fruit.  The delay in the arrival of God’s intentions is actually a mercy to us, since we are part of the problem in keeping God’s will from being achieved. 

Jesus knew well that sometimes bad things happen to good people and that in this world the evil often prosper.  His death of the cross is the ultimate example of the righteous suffering unjustly.   But he trusted in God and the goodness of God nonetheless.   That’s why in Gethsemane, he asks if it is possible to have the cup pass from him.  But immediately he adds, “Your will, not mine, be done.”  It is this very openness to God that gets us out of the way, and helps bring the kingdom closer. 

William Pike, writing on the Haiti earthquake, said that he had been reminded of the story of Elijah’s flight to Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19, where God spoke to Elijah not out of an earthquake, whirlwind, or fire, but out of the whispering of the still breeze.  In thinking about Pat Robertson’s graceless remarks, Pike remembers the words used in the passage—“The Lord was not in the earthquake.” 

God indeed is not in the earthquake, is not in the horror.  He is not in towers falling, whether it be the tower of Siloam or the Twin Towers in New York.  All these things show us how far the world is from God's ultimate intention, not God in action.   Rather, God is in the efforts of people trying to help the victims of such things.  He is in reconciliation and service.  He is in justice and peace. 

May we learn to shift our perspectives and better submit to our loving God.   May his kingdom come, and his will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. 

In the name of Christ,  Amen.