1 Corinthians 10.1-13, Luke 13.1-9
Sourton, Bratton Clovelly, Germansweek, Third Sunday of Lent, 3/3/2013
How often have you heard it said of someone’s misfortune that they must have done something wrong to bring it on themselves? Worshippers murdered by armed soldiers whilst in the very act of worship - they must have done something wrong to have brought that on themselves; civilians caught in a falling building - there must be a reason why this happened to them.
In this day and age we might be surprised to hear people talking about God intervening in the world, but often it is in this sort of conversation - God must have allowed this to happen to those people to punish them for something they’ve done. The question for us is, is that the sort of God we know? And are these the sort of questions he wants us to be asking of others?
These are important questions to consider because they address the way that people speak of each other today. You will recall how, when AIDS was first identified and thought to be an affliction unique to gay people there was no shortage of Christian preachers to identify it as a divine judgment on sexual perversion. Now that we know the disease afflicts people of all sexual orientations, it has become a judgment on promiscuity. Or on Africa.
‘It’s their fault, they’ve brought it on themselves’ - whether victims of state terror making themselves open to the assaults of government forces, or victims of natural disaster caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether people who some years back, bought houses on the edge of East Devon clifftops, or whether the single mother whose child is born disabled, society is always quick to judge, to look for a reason for these people’s affliction, a reason to blame people for their own troubles, a reason to assert that this situation is what is to be expected, it is the way things are, it’s God’s will, so nothing need be done about it, we can leave the victims to suffer.
Is society’s way the Christian way? In our gospel reading today we found Jesus asking those around him, ‘The Galileans Pilate murdered in the very act of bearing sacrifice to the temple - do you think that they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?’ And asking, ‘Those eighteen people the tower in Siloam fell on and killed - do you think that they were more guilty that all other people living in Jerusalem?’
The answer to these rhetorical questions, is, ‘Of course not!’ and having recognised that answer the judgement now falls on those who have made the accusations against the victims in the first place.
The judgement forces us to reflect on how we automatically and unconsciously blame others for our own unhappiness, and feel better when we can transfer blame, transfer to another the behavior we hate in ourselves.
Therapists can tell us a lot about this transference. We assume that if only the person we’re blaming will go away, then everything will be fine again. Jesus warns us of this and teaches us to include ourselves in any judgment we may pass on others. They are not greater sinners than we are, whatever misfortune may befall them. We are all in this together, and we must all repent together. [1]
And so, repent, Jesus says, of your judgmental attitude towards the victims. Repent, he says, of saying that people have brought their misfortunes on themselves, repent of saying that this must be God’s will, repent of withdrawing from any involvement in the victims’ lives, of doing nothing about it, of leaving the victims alone to suffer.
Repentance means turning away from easy judgements to face the realities of the situation. Repentence is liberating for all concerned. Repentance brings healing to the victims, and to those who repent. It empowers us to change our attitudes so that we are no longer passive and detached, observers of a world which we hide from, but active in that world, and involved in bringing goodness and difference into once hopeless situations.
The repentant person no longer hides from the realities of war with the attitude that war’s victims somehow deserve their fate, but is energised to deal with the real issue of imperial war crimes against civilians, to play their part in bringing international law to bear on them.
The repentant person no longer denies the realities of disease with the attitude that AIDS sufferers bring it on themselves, but is empowered to work out ways of dealing with the real issues of prevention and cure.
And when they see a young single mother struggling to make ends meet, the repentant person resists the urge to judge her, and instead tries to give that person help and confidence.
And when they see an elderly neighbour alone and lonely, having lost their lifelong partner, rather than saying, ‘they’ve brought their loneliness on themselves by being so close as a couple’, the repentant person knocks on their door, invites them around, brings them along to church....
When Paul described the behaviour of the Israelites in the wilderness he insisted that all the ancestors, without exception, experienced the blessings of God - and most of of them displeased God too.
But whether stable and faithful, or disobedient and displeasing, Paul says, ‘All our fathers were guided by the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses, all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink, since all drank from the spiritual rock.’
‘All’, ‘All’, ‘All’ - no one is exempt, no one excluded, from the life experiences we live under God. So there is no sitting life out, no way of avoiding our involvement with others.
The point in living on planet earth is not to spend our time distancing ourselves from others, blaming the victims for disasters or distress that befall them. The point in living on planet earth is to work out how to stand together with other people, how to spend our days encouraging and strengthening each other under the guiding hand and generous heart of God.
Thank God that he is generous-hearted enough to give each of us second chances to get right our attitudes and behaviour towards others. We may feel like the barren fig-tree in the story Jesus told, incapable of doing well, incapable of bearing fruit; but in the story the gardener pleaded with the owner, ‘Give it another year’. We give thanks, for God always, always, gives us another year, to work at our repentence, to work at our faith, to work at our witness to the world we are in.
Notes
[1] This sermon generally, and this passage particularly, owes a great deal to Robert Hamerton-Kelly’s sermon, All of Us, preached on March 14, 2004 (Woodside Village Church). I am indebted also (as so often) also to the Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, for the link and for other stimuli on the Lent 3C page.
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