Whose Fault is it Anyway?

 

1 Corinthians 10:1–14 Flee from idols

Luke 13:1–9 The parable of the barren fig tree.

Can you imagine hearing these scriptures from the pulpit in a  church in L'viv or Mariupol?  I don’t know if these readings are in the Eastern Orthodox Church’s list of what to read in Lent, but it would be heard very differently again in Moscow.  Two different ways of hearing the scripture, when there’s a war going on.  And how might Syrian Christians hear this passage?  Or the tiny group of Afghanistan Christians whose very existence is illegal in that country?

It is easy to look for a simple interpretation of these passages, like Robbie our river dragon did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pn7aA0y_GM, but easy is not best.  Both passages struggle with one of the most difficult questions Humanity asks.  If God is so all powerful and good, why do bad things happen to good people?  There’s no easy answer to that question.  It assumes a duality of human nature, either a positive or a negative.  And while that might work with motivating soldiers and civilians, it does not work in the long run for the benefit of Humanity. 

Paul says in this scripture that worshiping false priorities brings disaster.  And I totally agree with him on that.  When we put our faith and trust in something other than God, whether it’s stocks or a union or big business or the shopping channel, our lives can get messy and our priorities mixed up.  We can lose the drive to care for each other, lose our ability to see another’s viewpoint, lose our courage, lose our commitment to building a better world, and be only focused on surviving as best as we can in the day-to-day struggle to pay our bills and have a little fun now and then.  We forget about old-fashioned values like kindness, respect, empathy, hope and so on.  But Paul goes on to say that God never gives us more than we can handle.  Tell that to the Ukrainians, the people in war-torn countries like Nigeria or Yemen who aren’t getting the media that Zelensky does.  Tell that to the Russians who woke up to find large ‘z’s painted on their doors to intimidate them into compliance.  Tell that to folks here who have lost a loved one.  This is not helpful, Paul, and despite it generating a lot of t-shirts and coffee mugs, when life gets messy, this scripture does not comfort and inspire those who are hurting and desperate.  They feel blamed and overwhelmed.

An easy interpretation that God hurts only the unfaithful causes more harm than good.  And it ignores something that we Canadian Christians have tended to ignore, even though it is also embedded in our scripture.  That is the fact that evil exists.  I’m not talking about a laughable cartoon character in red tights with horns, tail and pitchfork, or even a handsome bar owner who works with a detective when he’s not playing the piano and forcing confessions out of people.  Evil exists.  Putin’s hunger for power is evil.  Trump ‘s arrogant superiority complex is evil.  Black marketeers concocting chemicals that eat away people’s brains and leave them dying on Edmonton streets from overdoses is evil.  Angry djs’ plans to infect their community with outrage and devotion is evil.  Cyberhackers and scammers disruption of society, steal money from seniors and destroy banks and hospitals alike for their own gain is evil.  The actions of ultra right-wing conservatives challenging common sense protocols to protect people’s health, and people more interested in profit than caring for their neighbor, try to undermine our health and education.  Actions and attitudes like this are evil.

God may never give us more than we can handle, but evil can give us so much that we need to reach out to others for help.  And if we think that coming to church will spare us from the messiness of life and death, we are wrong.  I think Jesus was clever in his response.  He confronted that kind of easy thinking – ‘they died because they were bad’ or ‘they died because they weren’t religious enough’, by challenging the Galileans around him to mind their own spiritual business!  Rather than pointing fingers or claiming the lives lost were because of weak faith, he said, fertilize your own soul before you start judging the worth of other people’s devotion to God.

That is a helpful word in Lent.  We are called to fertilize our own souls, to add manure to our own faith journey, and let God sort out the rest.  Not as an insurance policy to protect us from messy deaths.  Jesus and Paul both, even Peter for that matter, had messy deaths, despite their devotion to God.  But as a motivation to build honorable, inspiring and trustworthy lives that can be a beacon for all to see.

An analogy can be seen in a simple electric plug.  It has two prongs, hot and neutral, and both must be used to turn on a light.  We need both the current and a place for the excess current to go, both positive and negative flowing through the two prongs to have light.  But when we add a grounding prong, we can handle a lot more.  We can be a bigger light, we can shine farther and stronger when that ground is plugged into the outlet.  It doesn’t mean we are protected from a lightening strike that hits the circuit, but it does mean that we will handle the normal fluctuations and challenges to come our way.  When  we are grounded in God’s love, we will light the world with hope.  Hope is not a simple solution or an easy fix, or an insurance policy.  Hope is doing the possible, leaving the impossible to God.  Hope is when we honestly see the world in its complexity, and trust that in the messiness, in the complexities and simplicities, in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone.  Thanks be to God!