QUAKES AND FLOODS Is. 55:1-9; 1 Cor. 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9 Earthquakes are caused when tension is released from the rocks in the earth s crust and upper mantle. This tension is due to friction between what scientists believe are large plates floating on magma on the earth s surface. Scientists believe that the earth is made up of four main layers, the outermost layer being the crust, then the mantle, the outer core, and at the center of the earth the inner core. The crust is made up of hard rock, mainly granite. The mantle is mainly molten lava on which the crust is floating. The core is mostly iron, with the outer core being liquid and the inner being solid. The mantle is continually moving. It is also believed that the earth is divided into more than a dozen plates, which are floating on the mantle. The plates often rub together, pull apart, collide or dive under one another. These movements cause earthquakes and also volcanoes. Earthquakes usually occur in places where two plates meet, called faults. Earthquakes are mostly generated deep within the earth s crust, when the pressure between two plates is too great for them to be held in place. The underground rocks then snap, sending shock waves out in all directions. The point at which an earthquake originates on the surface is called the epicenter. (library.thinkquest.org.) Earthquakes are the kind of things that people have described as acts of God, if for no other reason than because they are so clearly beyond all human control. To this day, earthquakes are unpredictable by science. And once they start, they are utterly unstoppable. It is no wonder that credulous people have seen earthquakes as having a supernatural cause and often as an instrument of divine punishment. We have some 1
small sense of the feeling of impotence in the face of such a force of nature in the spate of snowstorms that have recently hit the Northeast. One begins to check the weather forecasts with a sense of foreboding, dreading the arrival of more storms. And if there are more storms, there is no stopping them. All one can do is cope with whatever snowfall there is. And it is not uncommon to hear people joke at least, I think they re joking about these being the action of God, often referred to as the man upstairs, because the snow comes from above and the storms are so clearly out of human control. At the origin of religion is the terror of our distant ancestors in the face of the overwhelming forces of nature. These forces were obviously beyond their control, unless they could find and appeal to more powerful forces, the gods, for example, to protect them and hold the forces of nature in check. Religious rituals and sacrifices were developed for the purpose of getting the gods on the side of those who offered the sacrifices and performed the rituals in order to ward off disaster and cajole prosperity in the form of good crops and healthy livestock and children. In the history of human evolution, more and more people have abandoned this view of nature and the gods, though it is by no means absent in the world today and apparent even in the most technologically advanced and sophisticated places on the planet. Such superstitions die hard, even among people who should know better. They tap into deeply-rooted fears about the thinness of the thread by which our lives hang. In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus addresses the question of calamity, and he is fairly clear in denying that disasters are punishment for sin. He makes reference to a case where apparently Pilate had killed some Galilean Jews who were in the process of making sacrifices to God, thereby mixing their blood with that of the sacrificial animals. 2
To this Jesus adds the case of eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed on them. Some commentators have proposed that the eighteen may have been engaged in building a tower for Pilate s aqueduct, which was being financed by confiscated temple funds and were thus thought by some Jews to have suffered for their collaboration with the Romans, again suggesting that calamity is a means of God s punishment for sin. Jesus rejects this notion sort of, saying, No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did. It seems he still believes that disaster awaits those who do not repent of their sin, though perhaps the difference is that he is thinking that this will be a spiritual calamity rather than a material calamity. But the logic of God punishing sinners nevertheless remains intact, whatever form that punishment may take. The parable of the fig tree is added here to indicate that God is merciful. The unproductive fig tree, which stands for sinful humans, will be tended further by God to see if it can t be made fruitful after all. Three years is a long time, suggesting that God is patient. Let s go back roughly 700 years, where we find the prophet Isaiah addressing the subject of divine punishment and reward, and in the voice of God, saying, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Sovereign God. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. In the present context, we might understand Isaiah to be saying that we must not presume that God judges according to some system of rewards and punishments to fit our sense of justice. This presumption is, of course, everywhere in the mists of ancient religion, including biblical religion, and for many it has come to be religious common sense. But it is presumption that presumes too much. We may 3
believe that God s judges and judges perfectly without supposing that these judgments result in any specific reward or punishment. It may be and the direction of the gospel of Christ suggests as much that God s judgment is always gracious, even as God s will is that we be gracious, and that God is not keeping score, that God s judgment is not as we make our judgments. Moreover, it may be that not only is God not directing events from on high to punish misdeeds and reward virtuous behavior, but God is not directing things from on high at all and is instead making the world in such a way that the world makes itself. In the case of the making of the planet earth, earthquakes are a by-product of the making. The shifting plates below the surface of the earth are part of the creative process that makes our lives possible in the first place. Could the process be different, earthquake free, for example? We can answer that question if we know what it takes to create a world. But we don t! January was unusually cold in much of the United States, but from a global perspective, it was the second hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago. The last decade was the hottest ten years on the planet since modern records have been kept. Climate scientists have found that human-made pollutants, especially carbon dioxide, trap heat from the sun and thereby increase atmospheric temperatures. The consequence is that almost all the ice-covered regions of the earth are melting and seas are rising. Storms and droughts are becoming more severe. The global climate system is showing the affects of changes that have already taken place, the destructive consequences of which are inevitable long before they actually appear. And the consequences of climate change could make the devastation of earthquakes seem mild by comparison. There is evidence that such changes are 4
happening. But there are still things that human beings can do to address climate change and prevent catastrophe. If we will: if we, as a species, will act rather than continue in a state of denial or wishful thinking, giving ourselves over to the hands of fate, or treating the changes that are occurring as acts of God which cannot be countered. In the setting of this worship, we should remind ourselves that climate change is not an act of God any more than are the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. These are the workings of nature, intensified by the decisions we make and the way we live. The bad consequences of natural disasters are not divine punishments. That is not God s way. Nor is it God s will that we perish. But many will perish if we do not repent of the arrogance of thinking we are somehow above the rest of nature and not subject to its laws. Our faith teaches us that God is endlessly gracious and merciful. Nature, however, is not. Amen. Third Sunday in Lent, March 7, 2010 Emanuel Lutheran Church 5