Exodus 3:1-15
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Psalm 103
Little Dominic was only 14 months old when he died. His father faces murder charges........ A Navy training bomb kills six, by mistake........ Katrina, a 23-year old mother, is diagnosed with breast cancer. People are murdered during worship, a tower falls on bystanders...... You only have to hear the news, today or in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, to find out that "bad things happen to good people." The normal response is that agonizing question, "Why? !"
When I'm faced with this question, I feel inadequate and I want to avoid it. I want to respond like Moses when faced with an apparently impossible project: "Who am I that I should have to deal with this?" How can a Christian respond to that agonizing "Why?" question? In the midst of seemingly unjustified suffering, how do we live out our baptismal promise "to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Jesus Christ"? Innocent suffering just isn't good news.
It seems that either we have a terrible God who inflicts suffering on innocent people, or we have a good and loving God who is absent or unable to prevent the suffering.
It looks like either God is not good, or God is not all-powerful. Our choices seem to be either to decide that God does not exist or to blame God for the suffering. None of that sounds like good news to proclaim either by word or example.
Oh, I know all the big theological words and arguments around this one; there are hundreds, probably thousands, of books written about this problem of unjust suffering, beginning with the Bible itself, in the Book of Job.
A few of the ideas make some sense, like:
But some of the other ideas about suffering sound all wrong to me, like: that it was just God's will that a child should die; or that God punishes people for their sins with disease and tragedy.
In today's gospel reading, Jesus himself seems to be rejecting these ideas about punishment and God's will: He says that the people who died in those disasters in Galilee and in Jerusalem were no worse sinners than any others; the disaster and suffering happens to everyone. Suffering, it seems, just happens. I expect you've all seen bumper stickers to that effect: "Suffering happens!" though usually they use another "S" word..
It happens. Jesus says so. And it is not God punishing anyone. But there is still no satisfactory answer to that question, "Why?" Jesus himself chooses to answer a different question. Jesus, it seems, doesn't think that "Why" is the question to be asked in the midst of suffering. Jesus refuses to answer the "Why" of unjust suffering. What he does instead is tell us how to get through it.
Listen to Jesus' response to the stories of suffering: "Do you think those who suffered were worse than others? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did."
Ouch! This is not good news either, this talk of "repent or perish." I was hoping for something I could say to people who are hurting. I was hoping for something I could hold onto when I myself am hurting. I want some way to share or live the GOOD news, like baptized Christians are supposed to do.
Jesus' advice is to "repent" – to turn toward God. But Jesus still leaves us the freedom to choose: Turn toward the loving God or stay in the suffering, until we perish.
Perhaps what little good news we can find here to share is that no one ever needs to suffer alone. We can always turn to God and find God there with us in the suffering. And those times when it feels as if God is absent, and the words are hollow, we, who call ourselves Christians, can still proclaim the good news by example: by simply being with the person who is suffering, embodying Christ's presence in our own presence and prayer; or, when the hurting person needs solitude, by waiting nearby and praying
The Bible is pretty clear that people cannot thrive and grow alone. Jesus reminds us that for every fruitless fig tree, there is a gardener – a gardener who, when the unfairness of our world cuts us down, takes that suffering, that shit, and uses it to give us new life.
Notice that God the Gardener does not cause the suffering – it just happens. (Though sometimes we do make it for ourselves). But if we turn to God (that's what repentance is) the Gardener comes into our messy suffering, digs around in it, and makes it holy.
Every gardener among us knows that this takes time. Every sufferer among us knows that this takes time. God, who is both sufferer and gardener, knows and waits for us to turn – to repent rather than to choose to perish in our suffering.
It's our choice. God IS with us, still burning and unconsumed beside the road, waiting for us to turn aside. For it is only after we, like Moses, turn aside that God speaks to us.
It is only when we turn to God that we can stand on holy and fertile ground and begin to grow and live again.