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.
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