Jesus challenges us to see beyond asking why things happen and toward what we are called to do in light of it.
The allure of good/bad thinking
Lent 3C | Luke 13:1-9
“At that very time” is a most pregnant phrase. That’s what we start with today. Chapter 13 of Luke begins with that phrase: “At that very time”. What time? Aren’t we curious about what is happening?
So if we we go back a little bit, we can see that Jesus is teaching crowds of people about hard things: a brother who won’t share the inheritance; life, death and property; urgency and preparation; division and reconciliation.
He’s talking about noticing the moment. He refers to it as seeing the signs of the times, but we might call it “reading the room.” In here and out there. And then going and working things out.
This is what the reading from Luke 13 interrupts.
“And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.”
Luke 12:57-59
And then:
“At that very time…”
This interruption comes in the form of “news”. People coming to Jesus to give him info they assume he’ll want. That the Roman tyrant has murdered and desecrated. Which, of course, is always interesting to see people of faith who are less bothered by the murder than where it takes place.
And yet, I suspect these heralds had no idea that Jesus would respond like he does. Of course they expect he’ll be outraged at the Roman occupiers and the sacrilege. But I’m also not sure if they truly expected any action from Jesus. Perhaps some performative anger before political prudence dials it back. And then maybe some thoughts and prayers to round it out.
After all, he’s the “love your enemies” guy, right?
Given the situation, Jesus does something truly remarkable. He tries to help them see what is behind their own motivations. Because their motivations are built on a bunch of assumptions. Assumptions about God. And they’re wrong.
Jesus isn’t just digging below the surface. He’s going way deeper. And that’s why we are thrown as we read it. He’s not following their line of reasoning to where they want it to go. He jumps back and says the foundation all of this stuff you’re coming to me with is completely off. So it is naturally disorienting. But he does this for two reasons.
- To get them right about God.
- To get them right about themselves.
One of the most enduring questions of faith is referred to as “The Problem of Evil”. How do we deal with the fact that bad things happen and that evil exists. If God is good and God created everything, then how do we account for evil? This question continues to bedevil us thousands of years after it was first asked. But there is a particular variation that Jesus obliterates here. Why do bad things happen to good people?
Jesus’s response:
Why do you think bad things wouldn’t happen?
The reason this is all particularly jarring is that we assume there’s a balance between good and evil and that if you do good, then good things happen. Then we take that idea and we stretch it further. Doing good makes you good. And then we stretch it further to say that good people do good things. So by then we are just assuming that anything a “good” person does is good.
Then, of course, the flip side: bad begets bad people who only do bad stuff.
Which means that by the time we get to Jesus telling us to love our enemies it either doesn’t compute at all or else we think we are turning “bad people” into “good people” if we love them enough.
Hear all of these assumptions!
And this is complicated by the fact that some of Scripture encourages this. But not all. Not the majority. And not the arc of the story! Read the sucker through and you don’t get this impression! Bad things are happening to the good guys all the time! And let us not forget to mention how frequently the “good guys” do evil and the “bad guys” do good! It’s a constant.
Jesus undermines the principle behind all of these assumptions. What he’s getting at is this: stop dividing people into “good” and bad” and stop thinking of death as a punishment. Living and dying is what we do.
This teaching underlines the teaching he was giving in chapter 12.
Because the assumptions we make prevent us from reconciling. We divide the world into good and bad and amplify that division with our rhetoric. And then we avoid the hard choices and hope a strong leader will come and fix things for us. Or we think the laws will just work on their own without human involvement whatsoever.
This should sound familiar. Because we do this in our relationships, in our churches, and in our governments.
So the move Jesus is making is really the only one. Because they’re headed in the wrong direction. But the choice doesn’t arrive as “right and wrong” or “good and evil”. It comes as continuing on a predictable path that will lead to a dead end or taking an unknown path that is headed in the direction God wants us to go in.
Our ability to pick between a right path and a wrong path is compromised by our sense of comfort, predictability, tradition, history, and culture.
Jesus was just telling them about facing hard choices.
And the reason we have a hard time is we think every choice is between right and wrong. And sometimes both of our options are wrong! Or sometimes it is right by wrong means or right means leading to wrong outcomes!
That’s the one that has us the most mixed up these days, isn’t it? A lot of our fights right now are good outcomes by bad means versus bad outcomes by good means. And we think it’s a choice between good and bad, but either way we get both!
Can we see the problem in our own way of thinking? That our individualistic either/ors aren’t going to cut it?
But more importantly, none of these choices is truly for us alone.
And this is the sneaky problem of self-help thinking; thinking “what can I do?” is the only question. It not only makes us think we can fix ourselves (and do so without God). It also encourages us to wait for the right book to show up. A guru with the secret knowledge to appear in our lives.
There is something ironically inactive about self-help.
Hard Choices and Helping Hands
As we continue on our journey this Lent, exploring the the questions the pandemic has invited us to wrestle with, there should be no surprise that we would pass through this pairing Mark Edington offers up: “hard choices and helping hands.” Hard choices about money, expectations, and how we order ourselves as a church. And the necessary role of offering our hands in help and needing the help of others.
I trust we will take to the “right and wrong” questions easily. And we’ll certainly want to address the financial future of a congregation we love. We’ll trot out ideas we were thinking about before the pandemic and searching for magic beans to ensure our salvation. I have heard much of this over the last two years. Be assured this will get covered.
Edington’s second question, however, I’ve heard far less.
Is self-help the only option?
A question as easily asked of us as individuals as it is about our congregation as a whole; our diocese; and our church. And of our city, county, state, and nation.
Is self-help the only option?
This, of course, is a leading question. Jesus offers more than a resounding no. For Christians, self-help is never the option, because we are never the only source of our help. We all have personal work to do, but it is never done in isolation.
So how do we break away from only self-help thinking?
How can we be of greater help to one another?
These are the questions for our moment. And this a great opportunity for discovery: of self and community. And it’s one we should give each other more time (one more year?) to discover.