Monday Morning Sermon: Coping With Tragedy

This week's sermon text came courtesy of the Gospel of Luke, the 13th chapter:

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

8 “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”

Tragedy evokes many responses from us:  sadness, empathy, fear, the desire to protect ourselves, the need for warmth and security, the tendency to "check the locks" and make sure everything around us is under control.  Some of these responses are more graceful and some less, but all are natural.  Modern technology and quick communication exposes us to more tragic events than any previous generation ever had to endure so we've all had practice responding in all of these ways...most of us within the last year or so.  Our entire country ran this gamut of emotions after the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, for instance.

It wasn't any different in Jesus' time.  Maybe you wouldn't hear about things that happened thousands of miles away but this gospel shows us two tragedies within earshot of Jesus and his followers.  Governor Pilate had slaughtered some Galileans at their worship and a tower had fallen in Jerusalem, killing 18.

I can empathize with the "buzz" Jesus heard in response to these events.  Both 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina happened a day before regularly scheduled church meetings.  Naturally they were the topic of discussion the next day.  Inevitably as people shared their thoughts one or two folks would come up with, "Well, [insert place of tragedy here] was full of wicked people and America isn't following God anymore so maybe this was his punishment.  We need to wake up!"  They weren't alone, of course.  Every time something bad happens some crackpot preacher with access to a microphone and a sensation-seeking media audience gets up and claims the same thing, in essence turning the deaths of other people into an opportunity to say, "See?!?  I was right!!!"  As if God would slaughter his children so you can get an ego stroke.  These "preachers" are idiots.  They mislead all who hear them, give birth to (and permission for) evil and lies spoken in God's name, and no matter what kind of label they try to put on their "faith" they lure people away from God, not towards him.  Being able to quote scripture is no big trick.  It's how you use it that matters.

As I said on Sunday, I was a younger and more polite Pastor Boy back then so we all worked through that conversation about whether God sent a hurricane to destroy a town because of Mardi Gras parades.  What I probably should have done as soon as someone suggested God wiped out towns with sinners in them is to dive under the table and reach for a helmet.  Because guess what?  Everybody sitting around the table that day was a sinner...some worse than anybody knew, others worse than even they knew.

That's exactly what Jesus pointed out to people in this gospel.

There's a backwards way to read this scripture and a right one.  Unless you're careful you're going to fall into  the backwards way.  It assumes that yes, those people whom Pilate slaughtered and on whom the tower fell were punished by God.  When Jesus says, "Unless you repent, you too will perish" confirms for this listener that God smites evil folks and they had better be good lest the next storm hit them.  To interpret the lesson this way we have to ignore that verse 2 begins with Jesus questioning the listener's assumption that these events were divine retribution and verse 5 flat out tells them, "No!"  Then again, people who want to scare you into their way of thinking don't have much trouble ignoring parts of scripture that are inconvenient to their opinion.

Instead of confirming the assertion that disasters are God's retribution on sinners, Jesus is using the "Judge not, lest ye be judged" principle here.  "You have judged those people more wicked than you and said God struck them down because of it.  Well, you are all sinners.  If God really acts like you say he does, YOU better be afraid!"

The only thing that allows people to make claims of divine retribution is the certainty that the disaster won't strike them.  When you hear, "God sent the hurricane to punish the wicked" you should also hear, "And I don't judge myself wicked therefore hurricanes will never strike my home, Amen."  Do you see what's going on there?  That isn't an assertion of faith, it's the same old human response we started this explanation with.  "I'm afraid.  I need to feel secure.  I'm checking the locks to make sure no hurricanes come here."  Except instead owning that fear and dealing with it they're denying it, trying to foist off the whole thing on God.  Saying, "I am sad in the face of this tragedy...it makes me feel scared and insecure and I'm worried this could happen to me or people I love," would be honest.  It would allow us to come together to talk about how we all feel.  But that admission also leaves the speaker vulnerable.  It's much easier to say, "This was God's Will because of wickedness and I am not that bad so I am not afraid of it happening to me."  Unfortunately this denial leaves us in the same place as the bad preacher, claiming that God killed other people to show how good we are.

We are all God's children whether we know it or not. God hears, "God sent the hurricane to punish the wicked" just like a parent would hear, "Dad killed my brother Jimmy because he was bad and I was good".  That's horrible...unimaginable.  It would also make Dad very angry at the kid who dared to utter it.

The fig tree parable at the end of the gospel confirms this.  Some people read God as the guy who wants to chop down the tree, eager to smite all of us for our wrongdoing. That's backwards. The tree-choppers in this story are actually the same people who came to Jesus talking about God's retribution on the Galileans and the tower victims.  They are so quick to condemn their brothers and sisters whom they perceive as wicked and fruitless.  They say that the gardener should just chop the tree down, which is just what they perceived happening with these tragedies.  "God should just wipe out those wicked people!"  How does the gardener respond to this?  "Wait!  Have patience.  The tree needs more tending.  Let me care for it more.  If it never ends up bearing fruit then you may be right, but we haven't spent enough time or TLC on it to make that determination yet."  That's God's response:  not smiting, but love and care.

This also guides our Christian response to tragedy.  Our role when sad things happen isn't to sit and worry about ourselves.  Nor is our role to protect ourselves, denying our fear and the possibility of anything bad happening to us.  Least of all should our role be cloaking our human fears and frailties behind the cover of divine retribution.  Instead we are called to do what God does:  response in the kindest, most loving, most patient and helpful way possible.  Compassion and empathy are the fruits of God's Spirit, not distance and judgment.  This is true in the best of times, even more so in the worst.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)