Sermons

Third Sunday of Lent
6.30pm Sunday 7 March 2010

David Paton-Williams

Readings: Psalm 63 v1-8, Luke 13 v1-9

Stories of human cruelty and violence, or stories of natural disasters are rarely out of the news.

And how often over a pint or a coffee is the problem of suffering discussed.

Many of us have our own tragedies - affecting us or our families and friends.

And the reaction can sometimes be - why me? why them? it is so unfair!

When I was a curate there was a hospital next door to the church and we used to visit the wards regularly as chaplains. And sometimes during the conversations the person would say something like: "What have I done to deserve this?"

It seemed that somewhere along the line the church's preaching about a punishing God has passed into the mindset of people who may not be practising Christians but who have internalised a view that if bad things happen to us, it must somehow be a punishment from God.

Or else it may just be a sense that if bad things happen we ought to have deserved them. A sense that the universe ought to be moral and fair.

If this is God's world and if God is moral and fair then the world and life ought to reflect that.

And despite all the sensitivities of the pastoral situation at those hospital beds, I tried to say to the patients that I did not believe in a God who sent tragedy and disaster, of whatever kind, as a punishment.

And I also thought (though I don't think I said it) that life isn't always fair, it doesn't always make sense, there isn't some sort of simple moral calculation that you can use to explain why things happen.

And yet the sense that the universe ought to be fair has a very long history.

It seems to have been there in the Israel of Jesus' day, where it seems that natural and human tragedies were explained, by some people at least, in terms of sin and punishment.

If the Romans had killed some Galilean rebels in or near the Temple, then was this because they were especially sinful, rebelling against God as well?

Was this all too common example of human cruelty and violence in fact God's doing?

And what about tower of Siloam which had collapsed just a few hundred yards from Temple Mount, killing 18 people - maybe it was shoddy building work, or an earthquake, or just old age.

Was God behind this - punishing the unfortunate people under it (and presumably saving all the others who were near it a few hours or days earlier)?

Jesus' answer to this kind of theology is an emphatic "No!"
God is not like that.

For Jesus in Luke's gospel, God is like a waiting father who longs for the return of his prodigal children. God is like a good shepherd who goes off into the wilderness to search for his lost sheep and bring them safely home.
God is like a generous king who throws open the doors of his banqueting hall to the waifs and strays, the sinners and outcasts of society.
God is like a mother hen longing to protect her chicks under her wings.

These are the sort of pictures Jesus gives us of God.

This is not a God who visits the ungodly with a plague of AIDS and with famine in East Africa, with earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, or with war in Afghanistan - that is a vision of God that Jesus clearly rejects.

Similarly in John's gospel there is a debate about whether a man born blind was being punished by God for his sins, or the sins of his parents. Jesus rejects this vision of God - no he said - God is at work to heal and save and set free. God is there in the midst of suffering so that his glory will be revealed.

Having said that Jesus follows up each of the news items of his day with a warning:

"Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did."

What does he mean?

Well it was a time of rising tension between many Jews and the Roman authorities. Rebel movements like the Zealots, like the groups of Galileans who had been killed, were taking small-scale guerrilla actions against the Romans.

And Jesus clearly saw that if they went on that way then the Romans would come down on the whole nation like a ton of bricks and they would all suffer.

And of course that is exactly what happen in AD 70 the Romans put down a revolt in the most brutal of ways, and destroyed the Temple as a symbol of Israel's religious and political identity.

If you do not repent says Jesus - if you do not change your ways - then there will be consequences - not because God is punishing you, but because that is the way his creation works.

We cannot look at our lives and in some simplistic way assume that a comfortable easy life is a sign of God's blessing and a hard life full of suffering is a sign of God's punishment.

God is the waiting father, the good shepherd, the generous king, the protective mother.

However, actions do have consequences and if we do not change our ways, if we do not turn our lives and our societies around, we will suffer the consequences - just as true today as it was then. This week there have been reports in the media of the horrendous birth defects and handicaps among children in the city of Falujah in Iraq. They may well be the consequence of the toxic chemicals in the weapons used by Americans in their assault on the city some years ago.

They are not punishments from God. But they are a graphic warning to us that if we go on in the same way - with a callous isrespect for the environment and human life, then dire consequences will happen for us all

Actions have consequences - so ultimately we do live in a moral universe.

And alongside all the pictures of God that Jesus gives us, he does also use the image of God as a wise judge before whom, one day, we will stand to give account for the way we have lived our lives.

Before whom the consequences of our lives will be revealed both for better and for worse - the consequences for us, or for others, or for the planet we live on for.

Unless you repent, says Jesus, unless you repent.

So not everything in life makes sense, but one day it will.

And Jesus gives us one last and supreme image of God - not in his parables but in the way he lived and died.

In Jesus we also see God sharing with us in the suffering and the mess and sin of our world, in the tragedies and the cruelty, in all the heartfelt cries of "My God, my God, why?"

And we see that God bringing Jesus through all the darkness to the light of the resurrection.

And so if Jesus the prophet warns us of the consequences of our lives, Jesus as the human face of God shows us the hope we have in him.

He shows us that whatever happens to us, or how ever much we make a mess of our lives, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Nothing can separate us from him because God is a God who comes right into the depths of our sin and suffering, who takes hold of us and who says: I will never let you go.

This does not take away the call to repent, the need to change.

But it does mean that no matter what we do - to ourselves, or to others, or to the planet - and no matter what tragedies or disasters befall us - God will not let us go - not in this world, or in the world to come. And that is our hope.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay