Life Is Uncertain Luke 13:1-9 March 14, 2004, Year C Lent 3 The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Life is uncertain, eat your desert first. One of the most frequent but difficult questions I am asked as a priest relates to the uncertainties of life, to the pain and suffering that are part of living but always catch us off guard: why a young, innocent child with so much to live for dies, abruptly ending those opportunities while someone in pain and suffering continues to live. The problem of suffering is more than existential. It tests the very core of faith. Why does God allow so much suffering in the world? In trying to make the creation which God has given humanity more predictable, we often falsely accuse God of atrocities. Whenever there is a natural disaster such as a tornado - which insurance companies unfortunately define as "acts of God" - I witness unfounded theology. I'm sure you've seen it too, some guy stands in the street as the news crew films him. In the background his neighborhood leveled by a massive tornado and some neighbors lean on one another trying to console the grief while an emergency crew member finishes zipping the body bag shut over the face of their kin. Then this guy says, "Yea, God was watching out for me." Wait a minute. Were God's eyes closed as the rest of the neighborhood was scattered over a 5 mile area and a ceiling collapsed on a cowering child? Based on some of the folks I see making such statements, I'm thinking, "No, if God were such a God, then he just blinked and missed you." Even worse, I hear comments as I did from a pastor in Columbus after last year's tornado devastated much of Columbus. Because, according to this pastor, the neighborhood most damaged by the tornado was known for drug use and prostitution, God had sent this tornado to wipe out this blight from the community. The pastor had similar rationale as to why the Math and Science School and the W were damaged. However, I was so annoyed by that time, I had quit listening. This theology reaches far and wide and takes many forms. 'God is punishing me because I am sick' - not uncommon and not helped when the sickness has drained the energy to think of alternatives and compounds itself. 'They are always having problems; if only they would turn to the Lord.' It transfigures into prejudices: the unemployed just need to pull themselves together. People in poverty are there because there is something wrong with them. It is a tempting equation that solves a lot of problems. (1) It answers the riddle of why bad things happen to good people: they don't. Bad things only happen to bad people. (2) It punishes sinners right out in the open as a warning to everyone. (3) It gives us a God who obeys the laws of physics. For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Any questions? There is a serenity in being able to affirm: it was meant to be. 'What great faith!' - is one of its rewards. 'Things go well for the good; things go poorly for the bad.' This is order and security. It is also a vehicle for control. It is also a lie. It's so easy to say, "Life's great, and God sure is good when things go our way." But what about when they don't? This theology says God is either punitive or absent and capricious. Jesus' own story contradicts such theology: the cross came to the righteous one. One of the reasons Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has captivated Christian audiences is that far too many of us want to overlook the price which true love may require. Even the resurrection is not the reversal but the affirmation of the crucifixion: this love and vulnerability is God's way. This is the life Jesus lived and reminds us of in today's Gospel and, paradoxically, only by affirming it do we find life. "No," he tells the crowd, "but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did." In the South, this is what we call giving with one hand and taking away with the other. No, Jesus says, there is no connection between the suffering and the sin. Whew, that's a relief. But unless you repent, you are going to lose some blood too. Oh well, it sounded too good to be true. There is no sense spending too much time trying to decipher this piece of the good news. Most likely, it is meant not to aid reason but to disarm it. Jesus touches the panic they have inside of them about all the awful things that are happening around them. They are terrified by those things - for good reason. They have searched their lives to identify anything that might bring disaster drifting their way. They have lain awake at night making lists of their mistakes. While Jesus does not honor their illusion that they can protect themselves in this way, he does seem to honor the vulnerability that their fright has opened up in them. It is not a bad thing for them to feel the full fragility of their lives. It is not a bad thing for them to count their breaths in the dark - not if it makes them turn toward the light. It is that turning he wants for them, which is why he tweaks their fear. Don't worry about Pilate and all the other things that can come crashing down on your heads, he tells them. Terrible things happen, and you are not always to blame. But don't let that stop you from doing what you are doing. That torn place your fear has opened up inside of you is a holy place. Look around while you are there. Pay attention to what you feel. It may hurt you to stay there and it may hurt you to see, but it is not the kind of hurt that leads to death. It is the kind that leads to life. Life is uncertain, death is capricious, and judgment is inevitable. The Gospel is grounded in this randomness. We need to embrace God as comforter and let go of God as controller. Depending on what you want from God, this may not sound like good news. I doubt that it would have sounded like good news to someone watching the lifeless body of a loved one pulled from a collapsed home. When our "Why?" becomes more than a cry of anger at God and becomes more of a whisper of helplessness, when we can see more about ourselves than we can accept, more about the brokenness of others, more about the chaotic nature of reality, or more about God, when we begin to discover we cannot make life safe nor God tame, it becomes gospel enough. Then we can turn our faces to the light. That way, whatever befalls us, we will fall the right way and while there is no cause and effect between what happens to us and our good or bad behavior, we will, at least, be challenged to behave in a better way.