by Michael Danner
Epistle Reading: Luke 13:1-9
For Sunday, March 3, 2013; Year C—Lent 3
Two observations and an initial question…
Observation #1: Good things happen and bad things happen.
Observation #2: Some people are good and some people are bad.
How are these two observations connected, if at all?
It’s only fair
In spite of the book of Job, the most common way people connect them, both then and now, goes like this: Good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.
People believe this in spite of the facts. No matter how many good people suffer, people still believe this. No matter how many bad people prosper, people still believe this. Why? Because people really, really, really want the world to work like that. In a world where that is true people have a say in the matter of suffering. In that world, if people are good, they can avoid suffering.
A God who pulls the strings
In order to have a world like that, there has to be someone/thing pulling the strings. This someone/thing pulling the strings has to agree that this is the way the world should be. This someone/thing has to have the power and knowledge to make it happen. And this someone/thing has to intervene in, and control, the world.
Enter Jesus
Our Third Sunday of Lent Gospel begins when some people tell Jesus a story about some Galileans who were murdered by Pilate as they were worshipping. This was a bad thing done by bad people. Does that mean that those murdered were bad people, too?
Jesus answers with a critique and an invitation. Were these Galileans worse sinners than all the others because they suffered? No.
Jesus then speaks of a tower that fell and crushed eighteen people. Were the eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell guiltier than the others? No.
What Jesus says is straight forward. These people didn’t suffer under Pilate’s terror or an engineering disaster because they were bad people. They are just like everyone else. What happened to them could happen to you.
What Jesus doesn’t say is also telling. Jesus does not defend God. Jesus refuses to act as if God was supposed to pull the strings, ensuring that only good happens to the good and only bad happens to the bad. Jesus refuses to act as if this is a failure on God’s part. In doing so, Jesus undermines the ideology underneath the people’s question. In effect he says the world doesn’t work like that.
The Invitation
What Jesus does do is call people to repentance! Yet, this is where it gets tricky.
Having rescued us from the notion of a "God who pulls the strings" and "works good things for the good and bad things for the bad," it is tempting to use repentance as a way to re-enter that "prison we know." We are tempted to view repentance as that act which resets the ideology back to its default. If you just repent, some argue, then God forgives you, you're on God's good side again, and everything will work out for you, you can avoid suffering and death. That move just defines "good" as "those who have repented" and extends the benefit of God's blessing to the "good" as redefined. It misses the mark.
However, what Jesus invites us to repent of that whole paradigm. Stop deluding yourselves and repent of the idea that you can avoid suffering and death if you are good enough.
The Hardest Question
What's so hard is if God is supposed to work in the world in such a way that only good things happen to good people and only bad things happen to bad people, it seems God has abdicated power.
Is it time to repent of a view of a “God who pulls all the strings” so we can get about the business of following Jesus starting now?
Michael Danner is an ordained pastor of the Mennonite Church USA. He serves as Lead Pastor at Metamora Mennonite Church, a rural community on the outskirts of the empire (easy to miss unless you live nearby). When he is not actively engaged in husbanding, fathering, pastoring and blogging he confesses to spending far too much time trying to move objects with his mind...a practice he picked up at church as a kid. To date, it has not worked...but he isn’t giving up. His blog can be found at http://provokelove.net and he can be followed on Twitter @michaeldanner
