Comfort or Challenge? (Luke 13:1-9) Rev. Bart Cochran February 28, 2016 Are you ready for an honest-to-goodness Lenten sermon? I ask because today is that sermon. And (hopefully) I am going to begin this morning by saying some things that you may find completely offensive. God never gives us more than we can handle. Isn t that a lovely sentiment? You may find it stitched on a pillow, or maybe some of your friends have posted it on Facebook. God never gives us more than we can handle. I understand WHY people say it; I understand that people think that they are trying to help. This phrase is meant to console, to inspire confidence, to help us claim victory over illness or heartache or the wiles of the devil. It is said with the best intentions, but it is also completely untrue. Some people, lots of people, millions of people have more than they can handle and we all know it. These poor souls are overwhelmed, undone by sudden catastrophe; buried under crushing burdens related to debt, disease, death; drowning in a sea of unstoppable pain or white-hot grief. Some, miraculously, find a way out of the staggering misery, others don t. Some people, it is clear, have much more than they can handle. So as Christians, what does our faith say about such situations? What does our faith teach us about suffering, especially suffering that seems so out-of-balance and unfair? We must understand something about Christian theology; listen very closely to what I am about to say. God does not dump pain and suffering into our lives. God is not some sort of invisible personal trainer who causes pain in order to bring us around to correct behavior. And neither does God use suffering upon us as punishment. We must understand this point; God is a God of love and while he may direct us, God does not use suffering and pain to 1
strengthen our faith, we strengthen our faith to prepare for suffering and pain. If you don t believe me then I invite you to listen to Jesus Christ as he speaks in today s gospel lesson. Jesus uses two current events of his day to make this point; the first is the massacre of a group of Galileans in Jerusalem. On Pilate s orders, these Jews have been murdered for offering sacrifices in the temple, and their own blood has mingled with their priestly offerings. Jesus insists that such a tragedy is not punishment from God: Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you... His second example was a construction accident in which eighteen people had been killed when a tower fell. Jesus repeats the question: Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you... We expect something different from Jesus don t we? We expect that Jesus will be saddened and offer words of comfort, but he doesn t. You will all perish just as they did. Instead of the nice, soft Jesus that we want Jesus reminds us that we are all destined for the same fate. The truth is that most of us prefer a punishing God rather than a God who seems absent or unpredictable, even if we re the ones being punished. We prefer a God that punishes us for our transgressions. If THAT is the way God handled things then life would be so much easier. Something bad happens to us then it is God s punishment and (if nothing else) we would know where we stand and could change our course. But, that s not the way it is, like the title of a well-known book says, Bad things happen to Good people! The rain falls, as Jesus teaches elsewhere, on the just and the unjust alike. This goes against our sense of basic fairness but, as this week s reading from Isaiah reminds 2
us, God s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are God s ways our ways (55:8). This is one of the most difficult things for Christians to understand. If I am a good person then God will only give me good things in my life. If I live my life according to everything I understand about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the church, I should be ok because God will deflect evil and I will never feel pain or suffering. And that s just not the way it happens. So, in the midst of this disturbing revelation where is the Gospel? If we live for God and we develop our faith and we seek truth and compassion yet we are still left to the whims of fate then what has it all been for? Why do we worship a God that doesn t seem to help when we suffer? What does Jesus have to say about this? Well, now that Jesus has said to us, We will all face pain and death. Now that Jesus has said to us that God is a God of love and justice and mercy, he calls us to repent and to bear fruit. This seems kind of strange; doesn t this simply mean that Jesus is telling us to fall back into our old beliefs that if we are good then good things will happen to us and if we are bad then bad things will happen to us? No, Jesus cuts through that simplistic understanding the wages of sin is death. Jesus invites us to repent of that whole understanding. Jesus tells us to stop being selfish we do not strive for righteousness for personal gain; we don t try to be good so that we will somehow avoid suffering. We try to be good like God. We must stop trying to garner favor for ourselves from God, we have that favor; we are ALREADY loved by God. What Jesus is saying to us is that God doesn t rush in to save us from pain and death, rather God gives us something BETTER! God gives us God s self. God gives us God. Nothing is better than that. We want results but we continue to push God away. Jesus says we must repent; we must reorient our hearts and minds to understand that God wants a relationship with us, God 3
wants to know us, but more importantly God wants us to know Him. Comfort and suffering and even death will come and go but God promises us that we can know Him. That is a better comfort and a better life than we can imagine. I have lost loved ones in my life. I have cried bitter tears. I have shaken my fist at God and said This life you have given me isn t FAIR! but rather than God saying Oh, I am sorry, here let me fix your pain. God says, if you are hurt, then come and know me better. That isn t the answer we want is it? We don t want to know God, we don t want to be more like Christ; we want our hurts and our suffering to magically disappear. But I am here today to say that in the long run, God s way is better. Our poor beaten ragged hearts are beautiful to God and God will make us whole. God will make us whole when we repent and give ourselves to a relationship with God. We have a choice when dealing with suffering. We can turn and we can hide we can allow ourselves to become bitter and resentful. We can close the doors of our hearts and we can curse God and die and like the fig tree be cut down and thrown into the fire of our own self-loathing or we can bear the fruits of love. We can say, I trust love. And no matter how many times our hearts are battered and bruised we will come back for more. Have you ever lost a pet that you loved? I have lost many pets over the course of my life. Pets I dearly loved and it hurts. I could say to myself, Never again. I could stop owning dogs or cats or whatever but then, I see an animal that needs my love and my care and even though I know my heart will be put through the ringer again, I welcome that pet into my life. I welcome that pet into a relationship with me to know love and to know care. 4
We don t stop loving. We don t stop loving the world as evil and hateful as it is. We don t stop loving people as selfish and mean as they can be. We don t stop loving ourselves as hard as that can be sometimes. We risk, every single time, we risk it again. We bear fruit, because when we do we know God we know God s love in Christ we know that Christ is the Lord of our hearts and of our lives. It isn t an easy road, but it is the same path Jesus took to Jerusalem and he beckons us come and follow him. AMEN 5