One More Year

Death toll rises from Bronx blaze

18 killed in Baghdad suicide bombing.

New Climate Report Warns of Drought and Disease

 

 

Our scripture passage today starts off with a group of Jesus’ followers talking with him about some recent headlines, albeit from first century Jerusalem. They’ve heard of the misfortune of a few Galileans who were killed in a scuffle with Pilate’s soldiers at the Temple in Jerusalem. They talk about a tower’s collapse that claimed 18 lives. A piece of the conversation here may well have included some speculation over what these poor folks did to deserve such tragic fates.   In the ancient mindset, painful experiences like these were often seen as signs of God’s judgment.   Not surprisingly, Jesus has something to say about this. He asks: “Do you really think that the Galileans suffered because they were worse sinners than other Galileans? Do you really believe that those killed at the Tower were worse offenders than anyone else who had been in Jerusalem that day?”  

 

A row house fire in the Bronx on Wednesday took the lives of 10 people, 9 of whom were children. With the exception of 9/11, it was the deadliest fire in New York City in 17 years.  I trust none of us would dream of asking the question, ‘do you think those who were killed were  worse offenders than all the other families living in the Bronx?’ The question alone makes us wince.  Similarly, when we hear the first part of our passage from Luke this morning, we are quick to dismiss the disciple’s questions. We think we know better. We think we’ve moved beyond this archaic ‘blaming the victim’ mentality especially when it comes to things like fires, hurricanes, accidents or terrorist attacks.  And yet . . . when we hear news of a great tragedy, who among us has not heard our hearts cry out: “But they’re innocent people!” “They did not deserve this tragedy.” As we ponder headlines, the tapes may even start running in the backs of our minds without our knowing it:  They were “good Americans,” “good Christians,” “good soldiers.” “They were hard working people”.  In the case of the fire, they were good West Africans and Muslims.  When tragedy strikes, we so often feel the impulse to elevate the moral lives of those who suffer, do we not?   We may think we have moved beyond judging victims of tragedy, but when we call victims innocent or good, we are still placing judgment. I suppose there is something natural and human about this response to tragic news.  Perhaps it’s a way we express our compassion.   Whatever it is, it inevitably brings to mind that best selling question: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” 

           

When we read between the lines of the first part of our passage, Jesus responds with a decidedly different question, and a more aggressive one at that. He more or less says to them “Set aside the ‘bad things’ for a moment . . . where do you get this idea of ‘good people’ or ‘bad people’?” When he raises the rhetorical question, ‘did they suffer because they were worse sinners”, Jesus fires off a categorical “No!” Their sin, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with their suffering. A merciful and loving God does not punish us with random acts of death and violence. Jesus then delivers an even more aggressive, and indeed confounding, statement: “But unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Can’t you just hear his followers muttering to themselves “Jesus . . .where did that come from. We were just having a casual conversation about current events. Repent? Who, us? We didn’t do anything. Lighten up, already.”         

             

            3 years ago this morning, 191 people were killed in the Madrid train bombings. 10 bombs exploded on four trains in three stations during the busy rush hour commute. I remember a newscast a few days after that cited one of the signs held by a mourner standing vigil near one of the sites. The sign read: “We were all on the same train.” In my mind, this sentiment expresses at least a part of what Jesus is getting at in this first part of our passage. We were all on the same train!   There is no reason in God’s logic why tragedies like these should befall some of us but not all of us. There is no reason why some should bear more tragedy more than others do. How much we sin, or how well we sin, is not the question. How much we suffer, or how well we bear it, is not even the question. How much we acknowledge that we are all equals in God’s eyes is. The sign was not merely saying that it could have happened to any one of us. The sign said it did happen to every one of us. There are no distinctions being drawn that would say some people are more or less deserving of suffering than others. In a very real way, we were and are all on the same train, and not just because we are all going to suffer loss and tragedy and death, eventually. The truth is the more we try to run from that train, in distraction or denial, the less we will know about the meaning and mystery of our shared humanity and the less we will know of God.  Jesus answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people could well be, “what do you mean good people?”   “No one is good but God alone.” As for the rest of us, he might as well say, “all aboard!” 

 

Mayor Bloomberg, who was criticized on Wednesday for not cancelling a trip to Miami when he first heard news of the fire, did make it to a prayer service on Friday where he met the grieving fathers of the two families that were killed.   Their names are Moussa Magassa, who lost 5 of 7 children and whose wife was still in critical condition and Mamadou Soumare, who lost his wife and all four of his children . [Like many immigrants, Magassa and Soumare] "came to the United States to pursue the great American dream," Bloomberg said after their meeting. "And (they) now find themselves sharing a great American tragedy with us." It seems like Bloomberg, however imperfectly, was reaching for the same sentiment that was on that sign in Madrid. He might have said to them “we were all in that same house!”

           

            I need to switch gears now, as Jesus does, when in the second part of the passage he puts a new spin on the old vineyard metaphor. He tells a story about a vineyard owner who notices a fruitless fig tree on his land. “See here” the man says,” For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree and still find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” But the gardener, a.k.a. God, says “give it one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good, if not, cut it down.” Though it’s tempting to joke about what kind of hi-test manure God may have in store for our gardens, we’d be missing a key point of this parable, namely, that God is patient. In the typical cycle of a fig tree that produces fruit 10 out of every 12 months, three years is already a long time to wait. Yet God says, give it “one more year” before you cut it down. Alas some good news amidst all of this scary talk about repenting and perishing. Not only will God will give us a year, but also you’ll notice, the good Gardener is even willing to get dirty by digging in at the very roots of our souls. The question is: Are we?

 

            The parable spared our thinking about repentance for a moment, but its time to return to it. Indeed a proper understanding of repentance is the key to making sense of this passage. Repentance is one of those scary words, isn’t it?   It doesn’t n eed to be. Repentance is not simply about making amends for particular wrong doings. Its not about 50 lashes with the wet noodle. As Rabbi Or Rose told many of us this past Tuesday as part of our interfaith forum, the Hebrew word for repentance, teshuva, literally means a “turning back”.  It’s partnered with an understanding of sin as separation from God and from one another. When we have chosen to turn away from God, to keep ourselves separate from God, we find ourselves walking away from God in thought, word and action. Our repentance comes then whenever we can turn ourselves around and turn back towards God, towards our neighbors, towards our true selves, even and most especially, in moments of life’s intense joys or sorrows. You can bet Jesus would have known these concepts. He also knew that we need to be told to repent. Without a constant reminder, we spend much of our time turning, but in the wrong direction.   Out of jealously, we turn away from encountering the joy of others. Out of fear, we turn away from the suffering and sorrow of others.  When Jesus says “repent or perish,” he is saying, in essence, turn your lives toward what is true, turn towards the living God, the very ground of our being, or you will not know what life really is!  I find it fascinating that when Rabbi Rose was asked on Tuesday to pinpoint the moment of turning, or repentance, he shared that in his own experience, he finds it happens around moments of tragedy. In both Christianity and Judaism, perhaps a common thread is that a call to repentance is a call to recognize our shared humanity, however broken and limited, and to do so in the light of God’s compassion for all of us.

           

             The parable about the dying fig tree is ultimately about our repentance and the patience of God’s mercy. We are reminded by the text, and by the church that reads this text together, that the soil, and the garden is not ours alone. God’s garden is more like a community garden where we come to grow together, where we mix our soils and turn each of our individual purposes, into a common purpose. The church is that place where we find common ground amidst our differences, where we share and bear each other’s joys and tragedies as if they were our own. It is where we find that very common ground of our being which is God.  Moreover, God waits for us to recognize this common ground and helps us along the way.

           

When we read headlines that touch us deeply, that move us to tears, or anger, or that push us down the why-do-bad-things happen-to-good-people road, we would do well to wonder if God is digging around in the dirt of our lives. With each gut-wrenching headline, we can choose to believe that God is distant, that God no longer cares, or worse that God is punishing victims of immigration raid, of terrorist explosions, of anti-gay violence. We can choose the ways of hatred and judgment. Or, we can see that when tragedy strikes one of God’s children, it strikes us all. We can hold up a sign of our own that acknowledges that we are all on the same train. We can let God dig into our hearts, and even on occasion, let the tears flow when we hear tragic news. I’ve begun to think for myself that if I don’t have a good cry in the shower after reading the headlines, at least once every few weeks, I may not be human. The current state of this country, how far we have turned away from God’s loving ways, I’m telling you, it’s plenty to make a big manly guy like me cry like a baby. 

 

            And yet . . .and yet, God is patient. God is not as quick as we are to lose hope, and to cut things down. …“I’ll give you one more year.”   “One more year!” God says.   I for one am grateful to know that God will give me one more year to learn the truth of my commonality with all of humanity. I’m grateful that God is patient with me as I discern in my mind and heart that odd affirmation that I also was on that same train, that I too was in the Bronx neighborhood of West African and Muslim immigrants, that  I was in the doctor’s office when the diagnosis came through, that I was and am in Bagdad. The idea here is not that I know the pain or loneliness of people in these places. I wouldn’t dare tell someone that “I know your pain”. The idea is simply that I’m not going to turn away in the face of it. To maintain our humanity, is to turn towards these people and places, to stand with them, and to affirm our common ground. God gives us all one more year to turn from our denial and distraction, and to turn towards what is real, including tragedy. Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t say whether that’s a year on our watches or on God’s.

 

Friends, no matter what the headlines, the good news of our faith assures us that the bad news that happen to good people, and the bad news that happen to bad people, is never the last news. God is always willing us to give us one more year to learn how to turn our lives towards our common humanity and towards God’s endless mercy that we may never perish. God is always ready when we are to dig into our lives and our world, and to wait patiently as the fruits or justice and mercy blossom. This Lent, this spring which is almost upon us, may we bear these fruits of God’s love together, standing in our common ground. Amen.