“Theological Climate
Change”
Luke 13:1-9
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
March 7, 2010
Lent 3
Many
of the people in the days of Jesus believed, it seems, in a God who punished bad
people and rewarded the good. We
have in our gospel reading today the story of some unfortunate Galileans who
were slaughtered by Pontius Pilate while on pilgrimage to
It
was the question asked of Job by his so-called friends.
“What did you do, Job, to bring all this suffering on yourself?”
It was the question the disciples, when they encountered a man born
blind, asked Jesus – “Who sinned, the man or his parents?”
Today’s
televangelists and prosperity preachers are their theological heirs.
According to their figuring, if something bad happens to you, it is
because God accounts you a sinner to be punished.
You had it coming to you. You
deserve it. If, on the other hand,
you are healthy and wealthy and the sun is shining on your life, it is because
God acclaims you righteous. You had
it coming to you. You deserve it.
(At
this point in my preparation, Angus Watkins called me to say that his computer
just had crashed and that he had received a phone call telling him that the
place where he was scheduled to stay on vacation next week is now suddenly
unavailable for a few days because of testing at the White Sands Missile Range,
so, following the TV evangelists’ lead, I was able to warn him that he better
get right with God pretty quick because his life obviously is going down a
sinkhole.)
We
might think ourselves above or beyond such thinking, but I cannot tell you how
often across the years I have walked into a tragic or heart-rending situation
and the first thing a person says to me is, “I
know I haven’t been in church very much” or “I have not been a very good Christian” or “I don’t pray very often” as if the accident or illness is
God’s way of punishing them or getting even for some supposed offense or sin.
Most
of us have at least vestiges of that kind of thinking in us left over from the
time in human development (lasting from approximately 3000 B. C. to 1000 A.D.,
not coincidentally the period of history known as the “Bible times”) when
the human community believed that life was controlled by a Higher Power that
punishes evil and eventually rewards good works and right living.
Such a system was used to foster stability and order in life and society.
Future reward was held out as the carrot for present obedience.
It was a means of control and constraint.
There
are plenty of churches today that seek to bind their members with such
superstition, who promise divine and heavenly rewards for good and favorable and
benevolent behavior now (that also just happens to benefit the church).
Those churches often seem successful in statistical terms, but they are
spiritually bankrupt because they p-r-e-y on peoples’ fears and insecurities.
It is amazing how many people are willing to trade away their freedom for
a bowl of quid-pro-quo porridge.
To
believe that God lowers the cosmic boom on us or a loved one as recompense for
our misbehavior negates every intimation of grace the Bible contains.
Does a “get even God” sound like the One whose Christ responded to
the question, “How often must we
forgive? Seven times?” by
saying, “No, I tell you, seventy times
seven”? Does that kind of God
bear any resemblance to the prodigal’s father who loved his son home? And
doesn’t the ignominious murder of Jesus on the cross put to rest any thought
that suffering and death are payback for the guilty?
Conversely, to think that good fortune is a sign of God’s special
blessing on us for good behavior makes every righteous act potentially
self-serving since we stand personally to benefit by it.
When
Jesus asked the people if they thought that the Galileans who died at Pilate’s
hand were being repaid for their sins, as was commonly thought in those times,
he did not wait for them to answer: “No,
I tell you.” When Jesus asked
the people if they thought the eighteen who were killed when the tower fell on
them were worse sinners than others, he answered for them:
“No, I tell you.”
Happiness
and horror, mirth and misery are not divine dividends paid on whether we have
been naughty or nice. No matter that
Pat Robertson says, bless his feeble mind and fallow soul, that the earthquake
in
But,
and there almost always seems to be a “but,” does there not?
Just because God does not dole out punishments and petunias for our bad
and good actions, respectively, neither can we pretend that what we do does not
matter. Jesus, after telling the
people that massacres, accidents, and disease are not visited on people as
punishment for their sins, goes on to tell them that unless they repent, they
will perish just as surely as those Galileans and those who died in the tower
rubble did.
Not
as bodies. It is not that God is
going to “get them” or us. But
as persons we can decay and diminish, putrefy and perish from the inside out if
we do not live in harmony with divine wisdom that we Christians see evidenced in
the life and teachings of Jesus.
That
is why Jesus urges us to repent. To
repent means more than saying sorry. It
means literally “to go beyond your present mind and come into a new mind.”
Let
me digress for a moment in order to make a point.
In talking about the current “climate change” debate, theologian
Sallie McFague (A New Climate for Theology) writes that
“Global warming is not just another
important issue that human beings need to deal with; rather, it is the demand
that we live differently (my emphasis).
We cannot solve it, deal with it, given our current anthropology.
It is not simply an issue of management; rather, it demands a paradigm
shift in who we think we are (my emphasis).
This is certainly not the only thing that is needed, but it is a central
one, for without it we cannot expect ourselves or others to undertake the
radical behavioral change that is necessary to address our planetary crisis.”
McFague
says that we need to repent, to come into a new mind about who we are in
relation to God’s creation, if we are going to have a chance to act wisely
regarding the health and sustainability of our planet.
Tinkering and tweaking around the edges of existing law and practice is
not going to make much difference. Seeing
ourselves as “owners” of the earth with the right to use it and subdue it
for our own purposes will consign us to hubristic catastrophe.
But coming into a new mind about who we think we are in relationship to
the planet, walking humbly with God so as to see ourselves as one part of the
vast oneness of all life, as caretakers of the creation, will lead us to live
differently on the earth and thus to a different outcome.
Jesus
is urging on us a kind of theological climate change, urging us to come into a
new mind about God and thus also about the ways we think and live.
So, he teaches:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are the merciful.
You
have heard it said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
But
I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Do
not store up for your yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust
consume
and where thieves break in and steal; but store up treasures in the
kingdom
of heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves
do
not break in and steal. For where
your treasure is, there your heart will
be
also.
The
Samaritan, when he saw the injured man who had been ignored by the
others,
was moved with compassion and went to him, tending his wounds.
Then
he put the man on his own animal, took him to an inn, and took care
of
him. The next day he took out two
denarii, gave them to the innkeeper,
and
said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever
more
you spend.”
The
gospel is replete with stories and attributes of “the new mind” which is why we dig into it here Sunday after
Sunday.
And
speaking of digging in, the parable today makes it clear that God is not an axe,
but a trowel. God does not want to
cut us down for our impotence, insolence, impudence, or impertinence like the
impatient vineyard owner does the fruitless fig tree.
Rather, God prefers to dig around in the soil of our lives, fertilizing,
cultivating, nourishing, hoping, giving us every chance to come into the glory
of our right minds and, to use the words of David, “into
the joy of our salvation.”
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that
saved a wretch like me. I once was
lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.
That
is the old, old story waiting to be told anew of you and me and us.
Amen.
Copyright
© 2010 by First Presbyterian Church