Where do your sympathies lie? When you open your morning newspaper or catch an early broadcast on the way to work, upon hearing of a residential shooting or an earthquake generated tsunami devastating villages and towns, how quickly does the blame game start? Who is guilty, deserving of punishment? Who is responsible for the loss of lives and livelihoods? Was it gangs competing for turf, or lax gun control that allows too many guns in private hands? Was corruption in government involved, or were greedy partners promoting shading business dealings? Or perhaps the underlying problem is a lack of individual responsibility to care for oneself, family and neighbors. Surely an investigative reporter will dig in to discover and disclose all the dirt. Indictments will be forthcoming. Justice will prevail.
That sort of thinking pattern is all too common. It is served up to feed our daily diet for news. And in the end it is about as helpful as the professorial tone taken by TV meteorologists declaring what today’s actual temperature “should” have been according to their almanac averages. Don’t they understand that an average is not real?
Still we can tell by the intensity of the report in Luke’s gospel that many people were all worked up about another of Pilate’s atrocities perpetrated on Jews, and that the shoddy workmanship of the builder or the neglect by an absentee owner caused the tower to collapse on innocent people in Siloam. Crimes have been committed. Someone must pay, whether that means regime change in the case of the Roman occupiers or compensation for the victims’ lives. A righteously indignant populace demands justice.
Jesus responded to the news differently than expected. All the public energy to blame those untouchables who made the lives of others miserable masked the common presumption that the victims deserved punishment for their sins otherwise their deaths would have been avoided. But Jesus firmly says the victims’ were no worse sinners than anyone else. More importantly unless everyone who was a witness to the outcome of the events repents, their life will end as hopelessly.
Jesus got very personal. He repeated his assessment after each of these news bites: Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did. Repentance is a word American culture avoids. Even Christians avoid it. First we’ll make a caricature of the ragged preacher on the street corner jabbing a crooked finger in your direction while announcing that you must repent because your ways are evil. Then we’ll quickly say that moral absolutes are a thing of the past; that sin is equally old fashioned and no longer helpful. We’ll make a quick evaluation of ourselves and declare ourselves not as bad and others, so Jesus’ admonition must not apply. All of which is to say we don’t need to repent.
Knowing the human propensity to dodge such a provocative issue by our powers of reasoning, Jesus offered a parable, a word picture to lodge in and work on the mind from a different perspective. A fig tree had no fruit so the landowner gave orders to have it cut down and the stump removed. The gardener asks for mercy for the tree for a while longer to see if fertilizing and TLC will encourage fruitfulness. There the parable ends with hope as a possibility that the tree will fulfill the purpose for which God created it. The non-judgmental ending suggests that God will grant more time to his wayward creatures to come to their senses rather than summarily destroying them for their evil deeds.
And what is the issue? What is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching and ministry? First it will be helpful to consider the word repent itself. Luke uses the Greek word metanoeo which basically means “change your mind.” Whereas repent often is taken to mean, “Stop what you’re doing and say I’m sorry,” Jesus uses it here in opposition to, “Do you think…” at the beginning of his comments on these two tragedies. “Do you think these victims were any worse sinners than other folks, well you must change your mind or your lives will end without hope in God’s mercy?” That is to say that we generally view the spiritual life as an ethical tug of war between the good and the bad. Work valiantly and the good will outweigh the bad. Work is righteousness at its best.
Were we to review how metanoeo fits in the context of the preceding chapter, “Change your mind” would be a more accurate translation than the popular notion that repentance will defer God’s judgment on bad behavior. In that lengthy chapter (Luke 12) Jesus encouraged his disciples to be fearless in the face of danger, to be unconcerned about worldly prosperity, and to prepare for the in-breaking of God’s kingdom regardless of the friction it will generate between believers and non-believers.
For the insidious sin of idolatry is at the root of Jesus’ teaching. The sin that clings to humans so closely is idolatry- preferring or honoring or placing anything before God in one’s personal or corporate life. Mention idolatry and the children of Israel instinctively recall the wilderness journey and Moses at Mount Sinai bringing down the law of God. The law of God begins with the Decalogue we recite during Lent. It was expanded to cover particular situations and needs, but the Decalogue or Ten Commandments is at its core. Trouble is we often assume we know what we’re talking about with the first four commandments and move on to our ethical faults in the last six.
When Jesus said, “Change your mind” he meant seriously address the way you look at who God is. Don’t presume you know God until you stand in the cleft in the rock with Moses and observe even the backside of God’s majesty. The “how shall we behave” portion of the Decalogue derives from the who question. Unless you address the who question there is nothing particularly special about the other stuff. You can find that ethical piece in any law code, Hebrew, Christian or otherwise.
Who is God? This is not just any god. Very specifically and personally [note the repeated use of I and you], God is the One who has earned the honor of being God by having been responsible for your freedom. You are no longer slaves because God heard your distress call and came to your rescue. This God is beyond categorizing or limiting in any way the human mind may try. In other words, God transcends every attempt to be trimmed down to size to become a lackey or good luck charm for human desire. God’s name and character are worthy of respect. Never presume to make the holy name ordinary, conventional, or allow it to be disgraced. Then, honor God’s place in your life, keeping Sabbath to reserve time to be in harmony with God, the others God made for companionship, and the whole natural order. This God who gave you your freedom must come first. How we relate with others naturally grows out of the first four commandments.
“Change your mind,” Jesus says and return to looking at the world as God does because God is the source of true knowledge, wisdom and service. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and in Luke’s gospel, that means everything he says is colored by his intention to give up his life for the sake of others. To change one’s mind is to adopt the mind of Christ, to join him in establishing God’s kingdom on earth, to conform to his way of living among others, to radically reorder one’s life as a witness to the true freedom enjoyed in the reign of God.
The blame game stops because it is unnecessary and ultimately a silly waste of time and energy. The justice of God is discerned in relationships that benefit everyone which takes everything we’ve got to give without getting bogged down in the distracting elements of fixing blame on others. What are you doing to make life better for those around you? That is not to dismiss the importance of investigations to determine the cause of a fire that killed firefighters and destroyed property. But if all our energy goes into condemning the perpetrator of a crime and seeking human justice, the evil in which we engage may consume and poison our souls. As Paul admonished the faithful in Thessalonica to respond to wrongdoing in positive ways, See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. (1 Thess 5:15) In so doing God is honored, goodness blooms, love flourishes, and God’s kingdom advances.
May you live centered in the mercy and peace of Christ. Amen.
