Jesus asked them, 'Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?

Luke 13:2

I frankly wasn't sure how I was going to handle this text, until I remembered an editorial in the NY Times about, of all things, Mel Gibson's blockbuster film from a few years ago, The Passion of the Christ.

The editorial was by David Brooks. As you may know, Mr. Brooks is a regular contributor to the New York Times . He's also a political commentator on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. If you've seen or heard him in those contexts you'll know, one, that he's very smart. And, two, that he can be a bit of a curmudgeon.

But even allowing for Mr. Brooks' grumpy tendencies, I was amazed by his op-ed piece in the Times . He opened it with this question: "Who worries you most, Mel Gibson or Mitch Albom" (NY Times, March 9, 2004)?

Mitch Albom, in case you don't recognize that name, is the author of the runaway best sellers Tuesdays with Morrie and, more recently, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. The thrust of Mr. Brook's editorial was that Mel Gibson's brutally violent interpretation of Christ's final hours is less of a threat to our country's spiritual health than what he calls "soft-core spirituality," of which Mitch Albom's sweet books are apparently a prime example.

I must say that strikes me a bit like comparing a grizzly bear to a Care Bear. But the really odd thing is this: if the only passage from the NT you ever heard was today's Gospel lesson, you might conclude that Jesus was a curmudgeon on a par with David Brooks. And even more, you might also conclude he was himself a threat to the spiritual well-being of anyone who wants to feel good about him or herself.

On first reading, it almost seems like this story doesn't belong in the Gospels. You can perhaps imagine Paul using this kind of language, but the spirit of this passage is so very different from the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. And its distressing tone and dire threat of judgment are just at odds with the larger body of Jesus' teaching. So much so that it's hard to make sense out of what's going on here.

It's an odd text it other respects too. It contains a level of journalistic detail that's rare in the gospels. First there is the allusion to Pilate's gruesome practice of executing innocent Jews and mixing their blood with religious sacrifices. And that's followed with a very precise reference to the death of eighteen innocent people who might have been picnicking on the outskirts Jerusalem when a wall collapsed, killing them all.

What's shocking is not the report of these misfortunes. Our own headlines are full of equally tragic news, which is sadly not all that shocking anymore. What is shocking is Jesus' hard response. He appears to greet the loss of innocent life without a trace of sympathy. Instead of compassion for the victims, he issues what sounds like a threat: unless you repent, you will all perish just as these folks did.

That sounds like harsh news, not good news. So it is tempting to run from passages like this one. My own instinct is to ignore their grizzly bear severity in favor of something softer and fuzzier.

One of the reasons this text rubs us the wrong way may actually be cultural, not theological. For centuries the idea of judgment has fired the imagination of revivalist preachers. In our time, any number of angry preachers have seized on passages like this one, reducing the biblical record in general and the gospel message in particular to the scare tactic we know as fire and brimstone. Indeed, even in my study Bible the inscription above this passage reads "Repent or Parish." That's a highbrow way of saying "Turn or burn."

Who needs it? Why focus on passages that demand so much of us, and make our great Christ sound like a rival preacher? The reason is simple, I believe. If we edit these passages out of our lives, we may be missing something important that Jesus is trying to tell us.

The obvious point he seems to be making here has something to do with God's judgment, and the sobering effect it can have on our behavior and our lives. Judgment is certainly part of what this passage is about, and that's why we get it every third year in the Lenten cycle.

But if it is about God's judgment, that judgment has very little to do with fire and brimstone. For one thing, did you notice Jesus does not once mention hell? And he doesn't mention God, either, for that matter.

So I think something else is going on here. What's happening is that Jesus the rabbi, Jesus the Teacher of teachers, is responding to a common belief of his day. It's plain from the context here that he's responding to the idea that our sins trigger the bad things that happen to us. He is in fact rebutting the deep-seated, widespread idea in his time, and in ours, that God's judgment is always motivated by God's desire to visit retribution upon a sinful world.

That notion is alive even in our time. We heard an egregious example of this same kind of thinking a few years ago, didn't we, when Jerry Falwell blamed the 9/11 attacks on everyone he doesn't like.

As outlandish and offensive as Mr. Falwell's claim's were, the underlying sentiment is actually not that uncommon.

Robert Capon is a wonderful commentator on the Jesus' parables. He writes: "I can with the greatest of ease tell people that God is going to get them, and they will believe every word I say. But what I cannot do, without inviting utter disbelief . . . is proclaim that God has in fact taken away the sins of the world" (ibid, pg. 7).

That is arguably the best news in the history of the world. And yet we somehow resist that idea. Maybe we resist it because we need to. If the people's sin could be blamed for what Pilate did to the Galileans, or for the tragedies that happen in our time, it solves a big problem for us. It saves us from blaming God.

God's role in the bad things that happen in life is an awkward problem for us Christians. Our theology is anchored deeply in the idea that God is all-powerful, completely just and all loving. And yet bad things happen to good people. How can this be?

Early in his Christian life C.S. Lewis dealt with the problem of innocent suffering very persuasively. In his book, The Problem of Pain, Lewis says that God uses pain to get our attention and to help us grow up spiritually. Lewis stopped making that claim so boldly after he lost his dear wife, Joy, to cancer. In fact, for months after her death he sat in his rooms in Oxford and essentially howled with grief, very nearly abandoning the faith for which he had become so famous.

But I actually think he's right. Pain can make us grow up. I think it can deliver us to a more mature understanding of God. If we persist in believing that God is nothing more, and no bigger than, a kindly father figure whose sole job it is to protect and comfort us, I submit to you that we'll never attain a fully mature faith. We're left with a faith that is prone to breaking down under stress; or one that resorts to the sentimental theology of a Hallmark card to explain tragedy.

In this passage, Jesus had a perfect opportunity to outline for all time a God as Care Bear theology, but he did not. What he does do, though, is he stays absolutely on message, as they say nowadays.

Everything about Jesus' teaching and ministry affirms this one point: that he came to give us not just new life but abundant life. Everything he did and said pointed to that life -- healing people who'd been crippled by disease. Forgiving people who'd literally been paralyzed by sin and guilt. Liberating people who'd been oppressed by religion or politics. Feeding people who were hungry.

That's what he was all about, and that's what this passage is about. It's not about God, as such--again, God is not mentioned--and it's certainly not about fire and brimstone. I think it's ultimately about you and me and our response to his message, our response to his invitation to repent, to turn--and that's what the word means in Greek--from living fruitless lives to living abundant lives.

You see, whether it's by accident or from old age, everyone dies, eventually. There's no getting around it. It's sad when that happens prematurely, heartbreaking in fact.

But what is perhaps sadder is living life as though you were dead already, which an amazing number of people do.

Jesus doesn't say here that unless you repent you'll go to hell. He says unless you repent, you'll perish. If your life is dominated by fear or guilt or resentment or anger, and you don't turn around, then you'll likely waste away and die just like these people did, only slower.

He says as much in the parable that follows. Don't just take up soil, friends. Bear fruit! Don't waste your life, live it! Life is a gift and unless you realize that, you might as well have been under that wall when it fell.

I believe that's what this story and the parable that follows it are about. What on first blush appears to be an aberration in Jesus' teaching is in fact a deep affirmation of what he is fundamentally about.

But in a world like ours, we can't stop there. A couple of weeks ago a bus plunged over an overpass in Atlanta and five members of the baseball team it was carrying, along with the driver and his wife, died tragically and prematurely. Millions of Americans may have wondered why God let such a terrible thing happen to such innocent, undeserving people.

It is perhaps the hardest question in all of religion. For better or worse, this passage doesn't answer that question. This particular setting in Luke would have been a perfect place to explain why bad things happen to good people, but Jesus doesn't go there. Bad things happen to good people, and to bad, for no reason we can make sense of. They always have and they always will, and that's the plain, hard truth of the matter.

Another rabbi, the venerable Harold Kushner, is one person in our time who understands that as well as anyone. Many of you have probably read his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. He wrote the book to honor the memory, and redeem the loss, of his son, Aaron, who was born with a terminal illness.

Like Jesus before him, Rabbi Kushner rejects the idea that the bad things that happen in the world are tied to human sin. And he makes no effort to defend God, or come up with platitudes to help us cope with questions that have no answers.

Instead, he invites his readers to consider some questions that do have answers, answers that define and shape us, and that can deliver us to a more mature faith:

"Are you capable of forgiving and accepting in love a world which has disappointed you by not being perfect, a world in which there is so much unfairness and cruelty? Can you forgive [the world's] imperfections and love it because it is capable of containing great beauty and goodness, and because it is the only world we have? Are you capable of forgiving and loving the people around you, even if they have hurt you and let you down by not being perfect? Can you forgive and love them, because there aren't any perfect people around, and because the penalty for not being able to love imperfect people is . . . loneliness? Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when . . . [God] has let you down and disappointed you? And will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the [instruments] God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world?" (Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, pg. 147 ff.)

Like Jesus' enigmatic response to disaster in his time, I hear in Rabbi Kushner's words a call to repentance. I hear an invitation to turn from a life that's focused on what's wrong with the world, and to live instead a life devoted to seeing and doing good. I hear a challenge to give up blaming God, or our enemies, or even ourselves for the bad things that happen in life, and to get on with the business of living it.

Rabbi Kushner can say those things because he made that turn himself. He rose to his own challenge. It didn't happen right away, but he eventually realized he did not have to perish along with his son. He realized the tree of his own life could still bear fruit.

And so in the end we was able to say:

I think of Aaron and all that his life taught me, and I realize how much I have lost and how much I have gained. Yesterday seems less painful, and I am not afraid of tomorrow (ibid. pg. 148).

Amen