Lent 3 C

Isaiah 55:1-9; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

People are meaning-making creatures. It’s really one of the things that makes humans human: that we look at the world around us, and the things that happen, and we ask ‘why?’ We are especially interested in why terrible things happen. And you can be assured that any time a disaster strikes, there will be people — including religious leaders — who will publicly proclaim the meaning behind the disaster.

Some of the most cringeworthy responses to tragedies have been from Christian leaders who quickly place the blame on a certain population of people or a certain behavior of people. “Those” sinful people.

It has to be someone’s fault, right? And usually, if you think about it, the people being blamed are the least able to do anything about the situation, and the least able to defend themselves against the claims.

And now we know that this is not a new tendency. Jesus himself deals with this kind of thing in the Gospel that we’ve heard today.

A group of people question Jesus about the current events of their day. One such current event apparently involved a group of religious folks who had made the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem for the Passover. While they were there, Pilate had them brutally killed during their worship. In another example from that time, 18 unfortunate souls were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them. When asked to respond, Jesus seems to sense the real question was, “what did those people do wrong to deserve what happened to them?”

I have to tell you that for a religious leader, this question is almost irresistible…it’s intoxicating…it’s the chance to get on the soapbox.

And it plays right into the way we’re programmed to think. You see, most of us live with a mental framework that psychologists call the Just World Hypothesis.

• life is fair
• what goes around, comes around
• if you do something bad, it will come back to you
• worse: if something bad happens to you, you must have done something to deserve it

When we don’t realize that we’re thinking this way, humans can be very prejudiced in the way we respond to tragedies. Our first instinct is to blame the victim.

Out of all those that worshipped in the temple, there must have been something those Galileans did that caused them to be killed. Maybe they weren’t true believers. Maybe they should have been more polite. Maybe they shouldn’t have gone so late in the day. Maybe they shouldn’t have taunted the Roman soldiers. Who knows?

Four years after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in this state, our nation is still struggling with how to respond to the all-too-common tragedies that take or diminish the lives of black and brown folk in our country. From a distance, it’s easy to remark, ‘they shouldn’t have been out so late.’ ‘They shouldn’t have been standing on the street corner.’ ‘They shouldn’t have been wearing a hoodie.’ We have the same impulse to blame the victims of tragedies. But this is not what Jesus does.

Instead of getting on his soapbox, Jesus responds to a tragedy of his time by saying, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Jesus does not allow us to cast judgment on our brothers and sisters when tragedies befall them. This can be hard for us to hear.

On the one hand, Jesus rescues the dignity of those who are victims of disasters and suffering in this life…but on the other hand, Jesus reminds us that we’re all in the line of fire. We are all standing in the shadows of falling towers. We are all called to repent of our sin.

If Jesus were simply to lump all of us humans together as sinners and stand in judgment of us, well…he’d be right. But Jesus does something different.

Where others react to tragedy by pointing fingers, Jesus responds by stepping into the line of fire. Where others talk about justice from on top of soapboxes, Jesus lives out justice in the shadow of disasters. Where we are tempted to blame the victim, Jesus becomes the victim for us.

The world, as we experience it, is not fair. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. Any meaning we might make of the tragedies we encounter are sure to be deficient. But in the cross of Christ, God has already shown us how to respond to tragedy in an unjust world:

With love.

As we survive the personal tragedies in our own lives, and as we try to respond faithfully to the larger scale tragedies of our world, we can either climb up on our dangerously precarious soapboxes…or, we can find ourselves with Jesus. On the ground; among those who suffer; sharing love from one sinner in need of repentance to another.