It happened during Hurricane Katrina. It also happened during Superstorm Sandy. It happened even earlier, after September 11, 2001. These happenings are news reports that I remember after this times of disaster and attack. Certain leaders within the Christian community, whose soapboxes were big enough to attract news coverage, stood up and proclaimed these events to be punishments from God for the sins of New Orleans; of New York City; and, in the case of 9/11, of NYC and the entire United States of America.
Those are particular instances that I can bear witness to. I have to say that the condemnations of New Orleans, when they were set alongside the pictures and the video footage of the absolute devastation were particularly offensive to me.
This is not new, not by any stretch of the imagination. I would doubt that there has been a natural or manmade disaster in the history of the Christian community that has NOT been interpreted somewhere in the community as punishment for our sins.
In Sunday's passage, there is two particularly poignant events that Jesus references. One is an act of state terror. Pilate is accused of perpetrating this terror, attacking and killing Galileans in the process of offering sacrifice in the temple, going so far as to add their blood to the blood of their animal sacrifices. The second is a building collapse. Eighteen people died when the tower of Siloam fell on them.
The question Jesus answers with a resounding NO is that these people were not worse-type sinners singled out for a particular kind of death because they somehow deserved it more. In broader terms, disasters do not happen as God's punishment for sin. Disaster can be a consequence of sin. The attack on the temple was Roman power extended to preserve the 'peace' no matter who had to die. It is almost a cliched experience, it has happened so often, that buildings collapse because greedy builders use substandard materials. I cannot say if that is what happened at Siloam, but it is one possible 'consequence of sin' explanation.
In both cases, Jesus' analysis of the situation is that if people do not repent, they will perish as the victims of these two disasters did. The key to understand is that these people perished, this is not about the details of how. "Unless you repent, you will perish..." There is little 'gray area' here. Someone is not 'punished more' in time of disaster. On the flip side, someone who has repented can still die in a disaster.
These verses do not explain why disasters happen. "Where was God in all of this" will not find a direct answer here.
Rather, the takeaway of this passage comes in the form of a parable. A fig tree that produces no fruit is a stand-in for us. No fruit for years. So it needs to be ripped up according to the owner of the garden. It needs to perish. But, in the parable, the gardener, the stand-in for Jesus, comes, offers to do everything he can for that fig tree to allow it to bear fruit. Only after the gardener has done all that can be done will the judgement of perishing be revisited.
That opens up a whole new, far greater 'gray area' for us, Jesus comes in for us, transcending how we might perish, to open up all the opportunities for repentance as our Lord and Savior. For Jesus, it is not about trying to explain the reasons for how we die, but rather how we should never die.
Peace,
Pastor Peter
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