For every complex problem there exists a solution that is straightforward, simple, and wrong. – H. L. Mencken
1.
To begin today, I would like to return to Dante and the Divine Comedy . It was with the image of Dante finding himself, metaphorically speaking, lost in the middle of a deep, dark woods that we began Lent.
This is a wonderful image, I think, to describe our Lenten journey. It is good to clear our head of pre-conceived notions, pre-conceived answers. To find ourselves, in a way, lost. This is, or should be, a journey of discovery.
As Dante begins his journey, his attempt to get out of the woods, things don't go so well. He finds the easy exits blocked – first by a leopard, then a lion, then a wolf. Lions and tigers and wolves – oh, my. Do you see how this story is planted in our heads? It's also the plot to the Wizard of Oz. Lost. Find the road. Set out. Find guides that help. Endure a series of tests.
A guide does show up for Dante, just when he thinks he has nowhere else to turn. He tells Dante that he has some good news and some bad news. He does know the way out.
Great! Dante thinks.
But in order to get out, he tells Dante, you have to go through hell.
Yea, OK. Dante says.
No, you're not hearing me, the guide says. I mean Hell. Big Capital H on this one. You're gonna see stuff like you wouldn't believe.
Dante takes a big swallow and says:
“Okay. Let's go. Leave the gun. Take the cannollis.” Oops, I'm sorry. That's Clemenza in The Godfather. Dante just follows. And he and his guide arrive at the gates of Hell. And there, over the gates of Hell is one of the most forbidding lines in all of Western literature:
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate'.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Over the next two weeks, we are beginning one of the hardest parts of our Lenten journey. I'm beginning, for myself, to think of this journey as a test. A test where every week we reach a marker in the road. And we are asked a question. The next two weeks are hellish questions:
This week, as you've probably gleaned, contains the question: “why do bad things happen to innocent people?” Next week, we'll talk about the Prodigal Son and the question of forgiving the unforgivable. Struggling with these questions is the essence of Lent.
2.
The story we read today appears only in Luke. There's no mention of these events in Matthew, Mark or John. Nor are there any historical references that corroborate these events. But it's not a stretch to see how they could have occurred.
Pilate was a ruthless administrator, even by Roman standards. It is not unlikely that he would have ordered suspected insurgents killed – even if they were in the Temple . Since the Temple was the place where animal sacrifice took place, it is quite possible that this remark refers to a specific event.
The same applies to the tower of Siloam . Siloam is the place, in Jerusalem , right inside the city walls, where the water from the Gihon spring was directed through a series of conduits. It is not hard to imagine that it would have been a gathering place; it is also not hard to imagine a wall collapsing there.
So what do we have here? We have an example of human evil and natural evil. And the people must have asked Jesus a question that seems a little foolish to our ears. The question is implied from the way Jesus answers. The question must have been: “What sins did these people commit so that they were punished in this way?”
What a strange thing to think, you're probably wondering. We're too sophisticated to think that way. But before we jump to that conclusion, let's think about this for a minute.
We live in a world of cause and effect, don't we? Show of hands. No Chaos Theory advocates here. Just common sense. Cause and effect?
For example, if I take this ball and let it go, what will happen?
It will fall, right?
If I speak into this microphone, my voice will get louder, right?
If I had a song by Ludacris as our final hymn, do you think the Worship Committee might want to have a little conversation?
I'm thinking yes.
All cause and effect. This is the caveman part of our brain. And even the cavemen needed an explanation when something seemingly arbitrary happened. A rock falls and hits you on the head? Well, you must have offended the spirits of the mountain. You drown while you're trying to spear fish? You must have offended the spirits of the lake.
This idea survived well into Hebrew culture, well into the Hebrew Bible – although it was becoming more sophisticated. There were no longer individual spirits in mountains and streams. There was Yahweh. The one and only. You know, one way of looking at the Hebrew Bible is the continuing saga of Israel ticking off Yahweh, Yahweh punishing Israel , Israel being sorry, and Yahweh forgiving Israel . It's like an abusive and enabling relationship where h same thing happens over and over and over again.
Job is the first person to seriously question this. If you remember back to the sermon on Job last fall, one of the ongoing arguments between Job and his friends goes like this:
“Job, you must have done something to deserve this?”
“No I didn't. I've been a good person.”
“Vat? The skin disease – hoy! – is just an accident.”
“I'm telling you, I am an innocent man.”
“No. Vat you are is a naked smelly man o a dung heap. Think about this, Job. Wrack your brain. Did you cheat on your taxes? Did you park in the handicap spot? Maybe you're not recycling correctly?”
That is, of course, a loose translation. But Job's friends are convinced he's being punished for something he has done wrong. Job 4.7: “Who that was innocent ever perished?”
Now that we have the context, do you see how radical Jesus' remarks are here? How strange this must have sounded to his audience?
No, the people Pilate slaughtered were not being punished for their sins. No, the people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell weren't being punished for their sins. Whether they were innocent or guilty is of no matter. That is not the lesson. The lesson is: repent.
Now repent is another one of those words, like “sin” that comes in very handy when you want to clean out a room. When I lived in New York , there was this guy who used to be at the corner of 6 th Avenue and West 4 th Street – the heart of Greenwich Village . Day in, day out, heat and cold, I would see him there, wearing this wool, Viking kind-of vest, no shirt, shorts about seven sizes to small (that made him look like he was pregnant), beat-up Converse high-tops, standing on a milk crate, spouting words from Revelations, holding his handmade “Repent” sign.
Now as crazy as this guy seemed, the message was right on the money. If we think about it in the right way. Repentance has these dark overtones which make us feels like worthless worms in the sight of God. The point is, some people should feel like worthless worms. I don't want to water down Christianity or morality to some therapeutic feel good message. There are real implications to what we do in life. This is not Christianity “Lite” that we're talking about.
However, the meaning of repentance which has been corrupted over the years is really this: turning back. Retracing one's steps to return to the right path. That's what Jesus is talking about. Retrace your steps. Return to the right path. Because you do not know the hour or the time or the place.
So is you can't find post 3 here on our Lenten journey, it probably means that you're finding this idea of repentance difficult to swallow. So loose the crazy guy on the corner with the sign. And simply think about retracing your steps.
3.
But we're not quite through with station three yet.
Once Jesus cuts the cord of cause and effect between sin and suffering, he opens a big ol' Pandora's Box.
[Read from New York Times:
People combed the city's major hospitals in search of family members who they thought were aboard the trains. "Oh, please, God! This can't be happening," said Carmen Gómez, 47, sobbing as she studied a patient list in vain at Gregorio Maranón Hospital , seven hours after the terrorist attack. "How could a human being do this?"
Most of the victims were ordinary middle- and working-class people and university students commuting into Madrid , though children were also among the dead.]
This is the question of why do bad things happen to innocent people? Oh, what we would give have an answer to that.
Kerry and I had a mercifully brief brush with this question on Thursday of this week. Our son, Mike, had just arrived in Madrid the night before, and we frantically called everyone we knew in an effort to track him down. We were finally successful, and he is fine.
How would I have answered that question if, God forbid, the result wasn't the same? I'm reasonably sure my faith would not have sustained me. I'm reasonably sure I would have called God every name I could think of. Would I ever have come to grips with God? After a long, long time. Perhaps. Perhaps not. I worked with a fellow whose son was a student at Syracuse University . In December 1988, his son was returning from a semester abroad, just four days before Christmas. On Pan Am Flight 103.
Up at Syracuse , there is a granite memorial to the Syracuse students who perished in that tragedy. There were quite a few of them – 25 or so – and their names are chiseled in the granite. I remember when Kerry and I took our daughter, Chris, to start school up there. I sat down at the Memorial and ran my hand along the young man's name. I never knew him. But I wondered how his father went on. And went on as a kind and gentle person.
The Good News.
I said, right at the beginning, that this journey would lead through hell.
These are hellish situations and hellish questions. Why is it that we so often find ourselves straying from the path?
We are human.
Why do bad things happen to the innocent?
There is no good answer. I am sorry. Our reason is capable of marvelous things. Figuring this out is not one of them. This third stop on the journey may, in fact, be the hardest. If we are to continue, the ticket is faith.
And by faith, I don't mean what you believe in. I mean how you act.
Can you repent? By that, I mean: can you retrace our steps back to God when you have lost your way?
Then you are ready to move on.
Can you live with the answer that there is no answer?
Then you are ready to move on.
And can you use the time you are given, like the extra year given to the fig tree, to act in this manner?
Then you are ready to move on.
Faith isn't in your head. It's in the way you behave.
