03/18/01 Providence 01/08

Scripture: Isaiah 55: 1-9

Luke 13: 1-9

"Do you think that these Galileans were greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they have suffered these things? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish."

Luke 13:2.

On St Patrick’s Day the Irish forget for a moment the tones of their national history, mostly somber like their weather, and speak of "The Luck of the Irish." In my library at home I have an elegant inscription from a small press founded by the sisters of William Butler Yeats, of this quotation from the poet himself, "Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." Like most oppressed people the Irish clearly have a wry sense of humor. At present, however, the Republic of Ireland is far from oppressed. Their industry is booming; there are more Mercedes automobiles per capita there than in any other country in the world, and the value of their software exports exceeds that of the US. The Luck of the Irish has at last come to the Celtic Tiger. I wonder how their humor has held up.

Our texts for today invite us to think about luck, providence and just deserts, that is, about the divine justice and mercy in history. It is a meditation that takes us into deep waters where the winds of loss and the rocks of fear have wrecked many a faith. In the trade theologians call it Theodicy, the attempt, as we used to say, "…to justify God’s ways to man in the face of evil." We cannot mount a full meditation on the problem of evil so let’s just pay attention to the sayings of Jesus we have read and try to understand what he wants to teach us today.

People come to Jesus and tell him that Pilate’s Roman troops have murdered a number of Galileans in the very act of offering sacrifices in the temple. Pilate mingled their blood with the blood of their offerings, making them sacrifices too. Jesus’ interlocutors seem to want his opinion on the question whether these victims deserved their demise because they were greater sinners than all other Galileans. In his response Jesus adds another recent event, the death of 18 people when a tower collapsed on them in the Siloam section of Jerusalem. (Corrupt contractors are clearly not a recent phenomenon). Do you think that they were worse offenders than everyone else living in Jerusalem? The question assumes that God punishes sinners and that you can tell who is one by what happens to him/her. What shall we make of this assumption? Before we consider Jesus’ response to that question let us step back and consider some general points about history and meaning.

It has been a long time since our society in general has believed that God’s gives order to history, that God’s judgment and God’s mercy govern human affairs, which is the bedrock assumption of what we call providence. It has been perhaps 500 years since that was the general view. It was replaced by the doctrine of progress, that humanity not divinity is in control of history and that human ingenuity is steadily improving the human condition year by year. That view perished with millions of young men in the trenches of WW1, and since then the regnant view of history is that it is a realm of chance, or luck. This is by no means a new view. In the time of Jesus, Lady Luck was worshiped as a goddess.

It is an important clue that the earliest Christians claimed that Christ had set us free from luck. We are no longer at the mercy of chance but under the mercy of God. From this we learn that a view of history is not an intellectual luxury but a working assumption. Everyone has a view of history whether we articulate it or not. What we believe about history determines what we expect from life, because our life is determined by the nature of the world in which we live, and that world is an historical world. Go back in memory over your own life and you will appreciate how life is mostly history; I wager you remember people and relationships as the substance of your life, and places mostly as the settings for those relationships. The historical realm of relationships far outweighs the natural realm of places. So life is history and a theory of history is a theory of life. If you believe history is chance you will live one way, if progress another, and if providence yet another.

The providential view holds that God is at work in our world and that we can, therefore, rely on the divine justice, goodness and kindness. This faith rests on at least two fundamental convictions: the first and absolutely supreme conviction is that God creates us for fellowship with himself. That relationship with God is the beginning and the end of our humanity. It is incomparable, essential and utterly satisfying. The second assumption is that everything that happens in our world is an opportunity to realize and to deepen that fellowship. ("We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose" Rom 8:28). If history is relationship then the heart of our history is our relationship with God, and everything that happens, good and bad is an opportunity to deepen that relationship. With these two convictions in mind let us turn again to the sayings of Jesus.

"Do you think that they were greater offenders than all others that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish," (Lk. 13: 4-5). Jesus assumes the providential view that God works in history to reward and punish, but he denies that we humans can judge one another on the basis of our differing historical experiences. That someone suffers inordinately does not mean that he/she is particularly guilty. On the contrary we are all guilty and liable to punishment, unless we repent. The sight of the suffering of another should move us not to smugness but to repentance.

"Unless you repent you will all likewise perish!" We don’t want to hear that! It suggests that we are not "OK as we are," that there is something radically wrong with us, and that unless we take steps to deal with it we shall perish. This conviction is most difficult for us to accept, because if it is true then it is clear that we need help, beyond what we can provide for ourselves by moral effort. If it is true that we are all sinners in danger of perishing then it is also true that we need a revealer to tell us this and a savior to set us free from the bondage of our own pride and the accumulated garbage of our sin so that we might return to a right relationship with God. Jesus is that revealer and savior; not only does he teach us about our dire spiritual state but he also acts to sets us free, so that we may have another chance to enter freely into a saving relationship with God. Christ does all the mysterious work of his suffering and death to give us the opportunity once again to enter a living relationship with God. As the Apostle says, "Since we are justified by faith, we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1).

I am convinced that religious teaching without the savior to heal and deliver our souls from sin is dangerous. The teacher must also be savior otherwise the religion spawns despair in its many forms, from fanaticism to exclusionism. Unredeemed humanity will corrupt everything, and nothing is more poisonous than corrupted religion. The apostle Paul calls this kind of religion "the curse of the law," religions of instructions only, without the power to save from sin. Such religion merely makes sin more sinful by dressing it up in piety.

Our pride, therefore, which turns our shame into a spurious glory and prevents us from repenting, cuts us off from God. The repercussions of that alienation from life and truth are around us everywhere. Think only of the ravages of war, disease and famine around the world, of the violence and depravity in our respectable entertainment media, of the shallowness of so much personal life in our culture, and the triviality or fanaticism of religion around the world, attended by a fierce and defensive pride that resents any intimation that we might all be in imminent danger of spiritual death. I think many of us are already dead and just don’t know enough to roll over and lie still. That’s why Jesus’ words are so welcome; they tell us that we are already perishing, and they point us to healing and life through repentance and the renewal of our relationship with God.

History is providential, not in any sense that we can identify by labeling this or that misfortune as a sign of God’s judgment, but in the sense that we find there either spiritual life or spiritual death, that our soul is the stake in the game of life, win or lose, salvation or damnation, God or the howling void. And here is the final indignity; the default position is not life but death. We shall perish spiritually if we do not repent. That mysterious malaise that afflicts us, that original sin is our default position. We have to make and effort to get out of it; if we do nothing we are doomed. "You shall all perish unless you repent," says Jesus. Either he speaks the truth or he lies; if he speaks the truth we had all better pay attention and find the road to repentance, we had all better seek to renew, or initiate an intimate relation with God! If we believe he lies, we are in the wrong place, and had better not waste more time but simply hit the road, like the rich young man in the gospels.

The church becomes vastly less important and interesting if we ignore this word of Jesus and its challenge to decide and to act, "You will all likewise perish if you do not repent." If there is no threat of spiritual death the promise of eternal life is merely an interesting option; if there is, the promise is a lifeline for the drowning. It is this clear alternative that has given the evangelical Protestant churches in the US by far the greatest growth during the past decade, while mainline churches like our have steadily declined. And deservedly so! Most people can get better entertainment elsewhere, and are too busy to waste time on trivia. So I urge you, in the words of the traditional Ash Wednesday service, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Repent and believe the Gospel!"

Providence is the right view of history; salvation and damnation play themselves out in our lives. "You will all likewise perish unless you repent." Those are Jesus’ words not mine. I’m just the messenger; but I know what happens to messengers who bring news the recipients don’t want to hear, who bring bad news. But this is not bad news; it is good news. We have to be blind, deaf and devoted to ignorance not to acknowledge that there is something profoundly wrong with the human world. Jesus tells us that there is a transgression at the origin of history, against which we have all to struggle ("Behind every great fortune is a great crime"). Then he tells us that he has already fought that battle for us and won; and finally he invites us to share the fruits of his victory by surrendering our life to him in devotion and service. "Unless you repent you will all likewise perish!"

"Ho, ever one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy…Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live…" (Isaiah 55:1-3).

Amen.