“Of Faith and Fig Leaves ”

• Scriptural Reference: Luke 13:1-9
• March 11, 2007

When preachers want a rip-rousing sermon to jerk the tears and motivate the troops, the first few verses of Luke 13 never come to mind. Consider it. In the midst of his teaching, a group of concerned people ask for Jesus to consider a very tender subject. They've seen Pilate's troops move into a worship service of unarmed Jews, evidently, and kill them in the midst of their worship. That's what's meant by "mixing blood with their sacrifices." This had evidently caused these people great distress, as we might well understand. It was like reading in the Washington Post back in 1994 about how some Hutu soldiers in Rwanda had surrounded a Tutsi church where hundreds of people had sought refuge and had summarily opened fire on them. When the ammunition ran low, they walked in among the bodies of the dead and wounded and hacked away with machetes until around 300 had been slaughtered. I read this with great disgust and felt a sharp, spicy feeling of rage in my gut toward the perpetrators. It would have been much like that, I imagine, on the part of these people who had approached Jesus in these opening verses of Luke 13. "What about that Jesus?"

Understand that these people, evidently, were not like others who posed questions to Jesus. These were not his theological or political opponents threatened by his popularity and personal power who spun silly scenarios for him to comment on in an effort to trip him up with words. These were genuinely concerned people, in the crowd following Jesus because they felt like here might be someone who could adequately address that age old question that burns in the gut of any serious person of faith: why, in a world with a good and loving God, do innocent people continue to suffer? They felt the same kind of raging righteous indignation and craving for justice that hits most of us when we see innocents oppressed or tortured or murdered. "Tell us Jesus, what does this mean? When will Pilate get his due? When will the war criminals be prosecuted?" Or, “when will Bin Laden be brought to justice? When will the terrorists get their due?”

Jesus' answer seems harsh. "Do you think that these Galileans were any worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you no! But unless you repent, you too will perish." And then he adds something they evidently didn't know about: "Or those eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them -- do you think they were guiltier than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you no! But unless you repent, you too will perish." How would you like it if you came to me and said, "Pastor, why didn't God do anything about it when those airplanes flew into the twin towers? Why did he let all those innocent people die?" And I answered, "Hey, do you think they were any worse people than you. Well they weren't. And I'll tell you, if you don't clean up your act, you're gonna die, too. And by the way, do you think all those innocent people who’ve died in Iraq were worse sinners that you? Nope, they weren't, but unless you get right with God, you're gonna die too!" If I routinely treated ya'll that way, I wouldn't last long as your pastor. So what's going on with Jesus here?

I've got a good friend, Chris Sanders, who's an attorney and a very dedicated Christian -- the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. He got his degree from the University of Louisville School of Law and one day Chris invited me to join him at a downtown bistro in Louisville as he talked with a friend of his about a very deep spiritual issue, or so Chris called it. Since I was a pastor and a PhD student in theology, Chris thought I could help his friend with some theological insight. When I arrived the other friend was razzing Chris both about being an attorney and about his alma mater. Said the friend, "You know why they don't let University of Louisville graduates take coffee breaks where they work?"

Chris rolled his eyes and looked at me and said, "No. Why?"

"Takes too long to retrain them."

I just laughed. Then the other friend said, "Chris, you know why sharks don't eat lawyers?" "No. Why?" "Professional courtesy!" O, this guy was good. I laughed again. Chris just stared at me.

Chris introduced me to his friend, "Here's my friend, Drexel. He's a Baptist pastor in Meade County." His friend looked at me, said, "Nice to meet you," then said, "Hey, you know what they call a Baptist preacher with half a brain?"

"No," I said, feeling just a little uneasy. "What?"

"Gifted." Chris just laughed and I wondered what this guy's spiritual issue was: lack of personal tact?

Well, the guy ran out of jokes, thankfully, and Chris steered him toward the issue in question. The young man had become deeply depressed and in the course of counseling to deal with the depression, traced its beginnings back to the week after 14 members of a Kentucky church youth group had died in a fiery bus crash when a drunk driver had gone the wrong way on an interstate highway and collided with their bus head-on. The young man looked at me sort of sideways, and with anger apparent in his voice, said, "How could a good God allow such things to happen to innocent children?"

The question had plagued my thinking, too, over the few weeks preceding that meeting. The youth group involved had been from a church in Radcliff, Kentucky, just down the road from Muldraugh. Several of our youth had been hitting me with the same question. I looked at the young man Chris had brought to me and just sighed. We commiserated for a while, and then Chris said something which stuck with me. He said, "Well guys, all I can say is, the world doesn't function on the basis of quid pro quo."

I said, "What do you mean?"

Chris said, "Think about it. Jesus said that he came so we'd have abundant life. He never said that he came to make life fair."

The young man looked thoughtful for a second, then said, "You know, when I think about it, there hasn't been anyone who got treated more unfairly than Jesus, has there?"

After that point in the conversation, the young man's spirits seemed to have lifted considerably, and he reverted to telling a few more jokes. I had to admit to myself that my attorney friend had had a very good insight concerning the abundant life. When I took my leave, Chris shook my hand and said, "Thanks for your help, Drexel."

When I read this passage in Luke 13, I think of that conversation. Jesus wasn't being harsh with those people. They had a very legitimate, age old theological problem, the same problem ol' Job had, one of the oldest books in the Bible. In effect Jesus was saying that the nature of the world you and I have constructed is such that life will never be fair. There is no cosmic quid pro quo, where everyone gets treated exactly according to what he or she deserves, not in this life. In fact, much of the unfairness we experience in the world stems from political and economic arrangements which favor some people over others and if Christians would just have the courage more often to buck the cultural systems where they live, fewer people would be victimized. I wonder what the world would have been like, for example, if the Christian community in Germany prior to 1933 would have had the courage to say, "We will not accept economic recovery and national patriotism if it means that any minority must be persecuted." If only half the Christians in Germany had done that, Hitler would never have succeeded. And don’t think that the same things couldn't happen in this country. I think Jesus is telling these people, and us, "You have far more control over the conditions that lead to victimization than you give yourselves credit for. Examine your lives. Change your ways. Because the kinds of attitudes and lifestyle choices you make which result in some people getting neglected and oppressed will eventually cause you to suffer, too."

When my sister was dying of cancer, she had a visitor that asked her how she could continue to believe in a God who would let such a good person get such a terrible disease. Maxie responded that it wasn't God's doing, she was certain. "In fact," she said, "I have a feeling that we'll discover some day that something we take for granted every day causes these kinds of things." The visitor engaged my sister in theological speculation at that point and said, "But why doesn't God do something to let us off the hook? To tell us what to do and what not to do?"

My sister looked at her very tenderly and said, "God can't give us free will and free minds and at the same time save us from the consequences of our thinking and our choices. He simply tells us that he loves us, sent us Jesus to show us the way to live, and assures us that if we follow Jesus, no matter what happens, no matter what mistakes we make, we'll live eternally with him."

Follow Jesus. That's the answer to these difficult questions. If you examine this passage in its context, you'll see what point Jesus is trying to make, according to Luke. In chapter 12, he's been exhorting his disciples to be watchful, be active, and carefully consider what they treasure. Then he tells the parable of the fig tree immediately after these people ask the good-God-evil-world question. "Rather than preoccupy yourself with unanswerable ivory tower ruminations, do your best to produce good fruit. A fruitless tree only takes up space and a fig tree doesn't even provide good shade, beyond a little garden style modesty." In fact, it seems to me that the more the disciples understood Jesus, after the Lord's suffering, the less the disciples were concerned with life working out fairly for them. Evidently, the deeper our relationship with God becomes, the less concerned we are that we get a fair shake out of life.

I will always wonder why certain things happen which I judge to be unfair and don't make sense. I have a lot of questions I'm dying to ask God -- no pun intended. But to be preoccupied with the fairness issue is to miss the point of the Christian message and the purpose of Christ. Again, Jesus did not say, "I have come that life might treat you fairly." He said, "I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly." The abundant life is not a life that's been treated fairly: it's a life that's been lived faithfully. If God had treated us entirely fairly, he never would have sent his son to die for our sins. That's a point we often miss.

Julie and I went to see “Titanic.” It's a fine flick, a good story about how decisions they didn't have anything to do with break the hearts of two young lovers. Talk about fairness! Do you realize that only one percent of that movie's budget would build all of our renovations!? Anyway, after the movie ended and the credits were rolling, I heard a young boy behind me talking to his parents. He said, "That was a cool movie. My favorite part was all the frozen bodies."

He was responding to the flick the way most ten year old boys would -- interestingly not mentioning the unclad woman -- but nevertheless, I think it's safe to say that the kid missed the point. The whole story of the sinking of the Titanic drips with pathos, with the message that disasters like that bring out both the best and the worst of humanity. But it's also interesting to note that even though the disaster was brought on by the elite, the people who died were primarily those who had no role to play in the decisions that led to their deaths. Better decisions by those who had responsibility and power would have not led to the long list of drowned victims. In one poignant scene, the owner of the White Star Line which owned the Titanic and who had ordered the captain, against his good judgment, to light all the boilers and go slashing at full speed through a sea full of ice bergs, is shown sitting safely in a lifeboat, rowing away from the thousands of drowning victims his arrogance has just killed. I hear Jesus saying, "Be careful to produce fruit that your Master will be proud of, not that life give you your due."

There's something else in the story of the Titanic. You and I who have recognized that our society is a sinking ship and have found Christ to be our savior, our lifeboat, as it were, do not have the option of rowing away from those freezing in the water. If the survivors in the lifeboats had taken action to lash themselves together and had gone back for survivors, many more people could have been saved. Why didn't God pluck those people out of the water? Why didn't the people in the boats do the bare minimum they could have done rather than shrink back protecting themselves? You and I can't just sail away on Jesus from the wreck of our civilization. If we cannot hear the cries, or worse, ignore them, we have no right to wonder about a fair world when we ourselves perpetuate injustice. "Let me dig around this tree," the Lord says, "fertilize it, and give it some more time to produce some fruit." "Produce fruit," he says to his followers. "Don't fret over abstracts."

And finally, it doesn't really matter what deck you're on if the ship's going to sink. We all share the same fate, we all have a common humanity, we all, like sheep, have gone astray. Our civilization has hit an iceberg, so to speak. Our culture has proven that it cannot float our souls to meaning and spiritual peace. It will not do that for the rich. It cannot do it for the poor, no matter how much money they may devise to make, or how many times they may win the lottery. We must not place our hopes in the fine technology of the ship of our society and in arrogance assume that it is unsinkable. For certainly there are icebergs out there and we will be humbled. So, let us keep good watch. Let's be humble enough to slow down. Let's be sure we're not trying to impress anyone but God. For us, there's still time to turn this thing so we don't gouge out a hole beneath the water line.