March 7, 2010
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

Let us pray.  Lord, you are the One who calls. You call each one of us in a different way, naming us uniquely beloved in your eyes. Help us to follow you faithfully, that we may know your pleasure in us. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

          In our gospel lesson for this morning, it is apparent that people have not changed much over the 2,000 years since Jesus’ crucifixion.  Then, as now, people debated and discussed the latest news of death and destruction and tried to understand its significance.

          We do not know what the tragedy was that some people were telling Jesus about on the day that this reading originally took place; all that we do know is that several Galileans were killed in or near the temple by Pilate's soldiers as they prepared to offer their required sacrifices to God.  Nor do we have a record of the tragedy that is described as the collapse of the tower in Siloam that killed eighteen people.

          All that we know for sure is that then, as now, a tragic event occurred and people died and still other people talked about it, and tried to make some sense of it.

          It is inevitable that whenever bad things happen, whenever senseless things happen, our human instinct is to try to make sense of it.  We ask questions like:  “Why did my father have to die now?  Why did that gunman go on that shooting spree?  Why did God allow this terrible earthquake to happen that killed so many innocent people?”

          We all want to make sense of the senseless; we want to know why certain things occur.  And in many instances, that is and can often be a good thing.

          For example – when buildings collapse, like the tower in Siloam collapsed, investigations are done to find out why it collapsed, so that, perhaps, just perhaps, such a tragedy can be prevented from happening again.

          For the most part wanting to know why is not a bad thing, but on occasion the urge to figure out why something has happened leads us astray; it leads us into assigning blame and guilt to people that do not deserve it, or who at the very least do not deserve it any more or less than we do ourselves.

          For example, I remember a young man who was killed outside a bar in back in 1976 when I was in graduate school whose brother was a friend of mine.  He had simply been out with his girl friend for a quiet evening, and they were minding their own business when he got assaulted.

          Afterwards I heard people talking about the incident saying things like:  "Well, if he hadn't gone to the bar he wouldn't have been killed;" and, "People who drink deserve everything that happens to them."  Some people, in their quest to understand, reveal that they have all the compassion and sensitivity of a brick.  Blaming the victim is one of the easiest explanations that our limited minds can come up with.  Or blaming God.

          The implication was that my friend’s brother somehow deserved what had happened to him – just as in today's reading, the implication is made by the people talking about the Galileans killed by Pilate that they somehow deserved to die.

          Why else would Jesus have replied "Because those Galileans were killed in that way, do you think it proves that they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?  And, What about the eighteen people killed when the tower fell on them in Siloam?  Do you suppose this proves that they were worse than all the other people living in Jerusalem?  No indeed, and I tell you that if you do not turn from your sins, you will all die as they did."

          There is a way to make sense of the senseless, but that way is not to blame the victims by suggesting that somehow God brought about their death because they deserved it, or whatever other mishap has occurred to them was some kind of punishment.

          If that were true, by that standard not one of us would be alive today, because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

          Jesus suggests that we make sense of the senseless, not by condemning the victims of tragedy for their complicity in their own deaths – but by considering our own mortality, and our own sinfulness, and working to produce fruit befitting our salvation before we are called to account for our lives before the throne of God.

          The message of Jesus, like the prophets before him, is that all of us deserve to experience the wrath of God, but that God does not seek our deaths, nor does God delight in our suffering.  Instead, God calls us to live by God’s gracious law and by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we might be able to stand before the Judgment Seat at the last day as one whose work in this life has been well and truly done.

          As the parable of the unfruitful fig tree in verses 6-10 of today's reading tells us, God expects us to be fruitful.  God expects us to produce that which is pleasing, or else we might be cut down and perish like those we think have somehow deserved their deaths.

          That same parable, is in fact telling us that God is in the business of giving us second, third, and indeed even fourth chances; chances to get it right and to do those things which are pleasing in the sight of God.  However it is also saying that when all is said and done, there will still be a time of reckoning that we must all face.

          That same parable also tells us that God actively works over us and with us, endeavoring to help us be fruitful before making the final judgment.

          Not only are we given the time to get things right, we are also given the care and attention that a good gardener gives to his or her plants – the raking and the fertilizing and the nourishment that any and all things require they are to be fruitful.

          Neither I nor anyone else can tell you why some people die at certain times and others do not.  We are not able to make sense of the senseless in this fashion.  But I can and do tell you what Jesus had to say about our making judgments about those who have died, and judgments about God's intention in allowing those deaths to occur as they did.

          I can tell you that all of us are in need of the gracious forgiveness of God, that all of us deserve to die as much as anyone else deserves to die, to die without hope of redemption,   without hope of seeing the face of God smiling at us and giving us eternal life in God’s realm.

          And I can also tell you that I do not believe it is God's purpose or intention that this should happen to us – but rather, through the life, death and resurrection Jesus that God works to make us into all that we can and should be in this life, and that God gives us every chance we need.

          God gives us time to repent on one hand and what we need to become productive for him on the other.  Jesus calls us to make sense of the senseless by giving our own lives meaning before we die.

          Here are some questions for us to meditate upon this morning.  Do our lives count for anything?  Are we fruitful for God?  Do we make a difference, or are our branches bare and our limbs naked?

          There is an old story told about a young boy who was going home one day past his grandfather's house with a couple of his friends.  As they passed the house they saw the old gentleman out on his sun porch in his rocking chair with a big black book on his lap reading rather intently.

          "What's your grandfather doing", asked one of the boy’s friends.

          "Oh – grandpa?  He’s cramming for his final exam,” he replied.

          Jesus is always patient with us my.  He cultivates us and tends to us, even when we ignore him, even when we fail to trust him, even when we produce nothing for him.

          But none of us can put off the day when we are called home for our final exam; called to account for what we have done and what we have left undone.

          The question before us should not be whether or not other people's death make sense, whether or not they have deserved their deaths at a particular time or in the manner that they came to them, but whether or not our lives make sense, whether or not our lives are fruitful for God, and are we ready to greet our Lord on that last day.  Amen.