Today the gospel reading is about ways we respond to painful situations in our world. There is something about human nature that we feel the need to blame victims for their circumstances. It is not unusual, for instance, to hear people blaming those who are on the dole for their plight. We sometimes call them dole bludgers. It is said that the reason they are there is because they are lazy free loaders who don’t really want to work. In some cases that may be true, but it is also true that we make comments like that when we don’t want to face the painful possibility that there are not enough jobs to go around. We blame victims or “the outsider” when we don’t want to face a painful truth, or when we need to feel better about ourselves.
There is another thing we sometimes do in the face of our own pain. From time to time, we say that the reason for the predicament we are in is that we must be useless human beings. So we blame ourselves. It is also a human reaction to think that God is punishing us or doing something to teach us a lesson. Or we think the reason we are where we are, is because it’s our fault and that we are not good enough. If we put this into religious language, we are in effect, suggesting that sin and suffering are linked. In other words, if someone is suffering, this is the result of God’s punishment. Luckily, in the text before us today, Jesus kicks this view into touch, well and truly.
The people who came to Jesus in today’s gospel held to the popular opinion that suffering was brought about by God’s judgement. They asked Jesus about to two recent disasters in the city of Jerusalem. Innocent worshippers who had come to the temple to offer sacrifices had been caught in the crossfire of a riot. They were killed by Pilate’s military police. And in a separate incident, a construction accident had killed eighteen people in Siloam. The people who came to Jesus were saying, “Is this the result of their sin? Is it because they were worse sinners than us? Had they brought suffering upon themselves?”
Typically, Jesus does not answer their question with an explanation. Instead, as he often does, he puts the question back to those who approach him. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the others, because they suffered thus? I tell you, no!” This is good news. As he does on many other occasions, Jesus declares that fatal accidents, or physical deformities or illnesses for that matter, are not visited on us by a retributive God meeting out punishment for sin. This is an issue that the book of Job deals with extensively; perhaps even suggesting that the idea of an angry God raining down punishment on us is a human projection onto God. So if you have been through such a crisis, or if you are living with one, please note that all through the gospels it is clear that Jesus refused to proclaim a God of retributive judgement. He rejects that idea in the case of the man born blind, and again when the disciples wanted Jesus to call down fire and brimstone on the Samaritans. So, we can and should put that idea right out of our heads. As one of my spiritual directors once said, the voice suggesting God is like this needs to be taken into a back room of our minds and shut away where it can no longer be heard.
The idea that suffering is caused by our sin, however, is as old as human existence. Much of the Old Testament deals with this question, especially in relation to the exile into Babylon. There was a dominant party in ancient Israel who believed the exile was God’s punishment for years of poor leadership offered by bad kings. The book of Job and many of the psalms question this theological position. “What if suffering is undeserved?” they ask. “What if the people have been faithful to God, like Job, and still suffer?”
The idea that all suffering is the result of God’s punishment is questioned by Job, and by Christ. Even so, it is human nature to believe it. The language of our secular culture puts this in terms of the right to punitive action when other people hurt us, and we see that being played out in discourse about law and order in this country. Jonathan Sacks, the chief Rabbi in the UK, points out that part of the reason for this need for retribution stems from the way our culture is turning key relationships into a commodity. We now have therapists and counsellors telling us how to run our lives, fulfilling the role that once would have been filled over a cup of tea with our elders and mentors. As a church leader, I am aware of the need for these services for those in responsibility, don’t get me wrong, they do an important job. Sacks’ point, however, is that because of the commodification of relationships, when disaster strikes we find ourselves no longer in control of our destiny. Other’s control it. The result is the intensification of despair. That’s when it becomes too easy to say, “I am not good enough. I am useless. Someone has to be blamed.”
Today Jesus is saying that this is not the way Christians should act or think or view the world. We are to be motivated out of our experience of God’s grace and compassion. That’s what should drive our thoughts and our actions. Already, we know that Jesus has resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem. We know that Jesus will suffer and will lay down his life as a costly demonstration of God’s love. The call to repent that Jesus’ issues in this text is an indication that Jesus knows that time is short. The time for giving and receiving God’s love is now. If you refuse to adopt the way of love and compassion, there will be a natural consequence; the need for revenge, to strike back, will turn bitter and toxic. This is this kind of living death that God wants to save us from.
So Jesus plainly rejects the notion that calamities come as a result of sin. Jesus’ point is that all of us are frail human beings and all of us are equally vulnerable. He is saying that suffering is often arbitrary, that there is no explanation, and there aren’t easy platitudinous words that can make it all better. St Paul will go on to say that Jesus becomes an embodied image of what we are. He takes upon himself the same trials and suffering that we experience so that he can take all that into God. Having brought our pain and suffering to God he prays for us with sighs and moans too deep for words, that we might be healed, restored, forgiven, raised up to offer praise to God. In our prayer this Lent, our task is to ask God to show us a repentance that enables us love and forgive as Christ taught, even while we cry for justice and for our pain to be heard and acknowledged.
Our gospel reading concludes with a parable about the fig tree, the of the parable being that God gives us time to heal, time to love, time to repent. The first reading today reminds us of another important plant in the history of salvation, the burning bush. By the time of Jesus it was generally accepted that the burning bush was a thorn bush, and it was from this lowly bush that God spoke to Moses to reveal nothing less than his name, and to begin the process of liberating his people from Egypt. God enlightening Moses in the midst of thorns. This has tremendous resonance all through the bible. When Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, one of the consequences was that thorns would cover the ground. The thorn bush appears again when Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac; the saving victim, a ram, appears among thorns. The thorn bush, an unlikely plant, is involved at crucial moments; moments of judgement, revelation, salvation and sacrifice.
For Christians, in this season of Lent, thorns come to mind again. “And soldiers, platting a crown of thorns, put it on his head.” Like the burning bush, the thorniness of our humanity is joined to Jesus, and his humanity is joined to the fire of his divinity. In his dying he speaks words of comfort to the thief, words of hope to his mother and a disciple, words of love and obedience to God the Father. But the thorns are not the end of the story. As the wood of the cross becomes the tree of life, so the crown of thorns becomes the crown of glory at the resurrection. God raises Jesus and crowns him with glory and honour. A crown of glory awaits us too, as it has been given to those who have gone before us. In the meantime, much of life has the harshness of thorns, but it is here that God comes to us bringing healing and salvation. God gives us time: time to repent, time to receive healing, time to accept forgiveness, and time to live with compassion.
