Several years ago, on National Public Radio, Scott Simon interviewed James Martin, a priest of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. Father Martin is associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, and author of a book on applying Jesuit principles to everyday life. The two discussed simplicity and poverty, two vows the Jesuits keep, and Martin was witty and funny, but when Simon asked his last question, the talk turned serious. “I’ve saved the hardest question for last,” he said. “If there is a God, why do little children suffer?”
“That
is the hardest question,” Martin
said. “And I think the answer is ‘we
don’t know.’” Which is an honest answer,
at least … he didn’t trot out the latest Christ-o-babble, he didn’t give his
pet theories, or Aristotle’s pet theories, he just answered quite simply “we
don’t know.”
The
ancients in Jesus’ day and before, thought they knew. They thought that bad things were God’s
punishment for sins. God visited
punishment upon people for doing things God didn’t like. Things such as, oh, invading countries for
their natural resources . . . keeping a vast segment of their population in
poverty to support the upper class . . . dating foreigners. Stuff like that. And for these offences, God would visit
plagues and famines and invasions, and visits from your in-laws. And bad things for seemingly-innocent people
like the “little children” of the radio host’s question were explained away by
this as well: you see, the ancients didn’t have the same concepts of
individuality that we do. (Which is why
those of us in modern Western societies need to take care in interpreting stuff
in the Bible, much of which applies to groups of people—nations, peoples or
tribes many times—we need to be careful how we take concepts in scripture and
apply them whole-hog to the faith and spirituality of the individual. They often just don’t fit.)
Anyway,
the ancients had an answer for the question of why bad things happen to little,
seemingly innocent children, and that was that they weren’t really innocent. Remembering they had no concept of the
individual, the sins of the group they belonged to—the peoples, the nation, the
tribe, whatever—were thought to be imputed onto all of its members. Thus, they
could say “the sins of the fathers is visited upon the sons,” etc., etc., never thinking at the time
how that let women off the hook.
Of
course, this idea of God punishing one’s sins by doing bad things to one hasn’t
completely died—witness the fundamentalist nut-jobs that blamed Hurricane
Katrina on Bourbon Street (which Katrina, ironically, missed)—and come on,
admit it: we all, from time to time, ask: why me? And this idea of calamity as punishment for
sin, is at least a coherent, straightforward answer for Scott Simon’s question
to Father Martin, and it informs the first part of this rather difficult
passage. Jesus is teaching a crowd of
people, as he was wont to do, and somebody tells him about some Galileans that
Pilate had—apparently—slaughtered. They
said Pilate—who was notoriously brutal—had mingled the blood of these Galileans
with their own sacrifices. And Jesus
says: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were
worse sinners than all other Galileans?”
And he answers his own question:
“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they
did.” And now I bet they were sorry
they brought it up, because he goes
right on: “And what about those eighteen
others killed when the Tower of Siloam fell—bang!—right on their heads? Do think they were worse than anybody else
living in Jerusalem?” And again, the
answer is “not on your life … and unless you repent, you will all perish just
as they did.”
We
need to stop right here and acknowledge that all this talk of sin and
repentance makes a lot of us modern Christians—myself included, if you must
know—really nervous. What do you mean,
repent, we want to ask Jesus. What do
you mean, we’re gonna perish just like they did if we don’t turn our lives
around? Where’s the grace? Where’s the forgiveness? For that matter, where’s the God-is-love
business that we all like to quote?
Seems a little harsh to me, and a little un-politically-correct as
well. How we gonna pack ‘em in the pews
we keep reading about stuff like this?
Good
question. Almost as good as the one
about why bad things happen to little children.
And notice that Jesus doesn’t debunk the notion of suffering as a
consequence of sin—though he doesn’t support it, either—he simply tells us that
the ones who died in those sudden slaughters—some by accident, and some by
cruelest murder—the ones who died in those incidents aren’t any more sinful
than anyone else in Galilee or Jerusalem.
They were sudden, unexpected, and maybe that’s the key: maybe Jesus is saying the same thing he says
elsewhere. Don’t wait to repent, don’t
wait to turn your life around, because death can come at any time, whether by
the knives of bloody Pilate or the simple cracking of a tower stone. It’s consistent with his teaching, and that
of his follower Paul, who warns us to keep awake, lest we be caught napping
when the end times come.
And
so, the force of Jesus’ argument seems to be not that his listeners will perish
without repentance, but that they’ll perish, as he says, “just as those
Galileans and Jerusalemites they did.”
That is, in the same, unrepentant state, without having experienced the
fullness of life on earth of those who are turning theirs around. Be careful, Jesus says, to do this while you
can, because if a tower falls on you, or a homicidal maniac like Pilate gets
hold of you, it’ll be too late.
Now
I know that, as in most places we see it in Scripture, we tend to read “perish”
as “go to hell,” where the fire will lick your bones, crackle, crackle,
crackle, and ol’ Scratch will stick you in the behind with a pointy fork, but
that’s not what Jesus is talking about here … he’s not talking about heaven or
hell, but plain old death—really perishing—and living life fulfilled and to our
greatest potential before we do.
Remember how the Apostle Paul sliced it … he separated justification—the
one time making-right-with-God effected by Christ on the cross, that many of us
think of as “salvation”—from sanctification, the ongoing conforming of our
lives to that of Christ. And I think
that that’s what this repentance is of which Jesus speaks. We are called to sanctification, turning our
lives around—that’s what metanoia, Greek
for repentance means. We are called to
holiness, to set-apartness, and that holiness comes from God alone.
But
now, he launches into another parable, and it’s not much more promising than
the pronouncements about repent or perish.
The owner of the vineyard has a fig tree planted in his vineyard, but
when he came looking for fruit, there wasn’t any . . . which is understandable: room in a first-century vineyard is limited,
and if a plant doesn’t produce, the livelihood
of the farmer dictates that it be gotten rid of replaced by one that will
produce. Only natural, only right. Gotta be productive if you’re a fig plant, or
else you’ll get ripped out.
And
he tells the gardener—the one who planted the tree in the first place—he tells
him “Cut that puppy down! I’ve come here
for three years running, and no fruit!
Why waste the soil? Cut it
down!” But the gardener sticks up for
the poor little plant, saying let it alone for just one more year and let me
tend it, let me aerate the roots and pack a little manure around the base, and
if it doesn’t bear fruit in a year, then by all means: cut it down!”
And
our tendency is to try to treat this allegorically, like we’re used to doing
with parables: our tendency is to assign identities to each player. Let’s see now: the owner represents God, the
fig tree is a recalcitrant nation, or is it an individual, or a tribe? But if God’s the owner, then who’s the
gardener, who is it supposed to be who intercedes for the poor little
plant? Jesus? The Holy Spirit? And notice that it isn’t the plant’s fault
that it doesn’t bear fruit . . . even the most ignorant farmer of the day would
know that some will produce, some won’t, them’s the breaks, Jake.
And
I wish I could tell you exactly what it means—that’s kind of my job, you
know—but it’s just a little too . . . irregular for that, a little too out of
round. On the surface, it’s the same:
the plant better turn it’s life around before it’s too late, silly plant, but
then what’s all this about the gardener?
What about this entity who helps and nourishes the plant in its efforts
at sanctification? Well . . . maybe
Jesus is allowing as how in this, we will not be alone.
On
NPR, after Scott Simon asked Father Martin that embarrassing question, why do
bad things happen to innocent little children, and Martin admits he does not
know the answer, he says this: “for the
Christian, there is the person of Christ, who has gone through suffering
himself, and who understands our suffering.”
Christ, he is saying, is with us, along for the ride, and he’s been
there, and thus . . . gets it. He
understands. He has suffered about as badly as any human can, and understands,
deeply and fully.
But
more than that: we are nurtured along the way, in our Christian life, we are
helped and taught and supported . . . our roots are aerated and we’re watered,
and manure is spread around our base.
Paul put it this way: “the Spirit
helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that
very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” We are not alone on our journey of
repentance, on our travels toward Christ.
This sanctification business, as daunting as it may seem, is not up to
us. It is under the direction and guidance of God the Holy Spirit, and we
are accompanied along the way by our brother through adoption, Jesus
Christ. And to that I say, Thanks be to
God! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment