Change Your Thinking

Why did they tell him about those Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices? Jesus was now on the way to Jerusalem, ready to face his own trial. It’s true that he had been teaching his disciples and others about God’s judgment, and he had healed some people, but why did his questioners want to know what he thought about those Galileans, of all people? Were they just curious about what this Galilean teacher would say about something that had happened to his own people? Since Jesus had been talking about judgment, were these questioners looking to Jesus to validate their sense that surely these Galileans had done something really bad to bring such disaster on themselves? Were they trying to see if this teacher knew why such bad things happen? Did they think that God punishes people for their sins by bringing disaster on them? And were they also hoping then that they could keep bad things from happening to them by avoiding whatever the Galileans had done, and by keeping an angry God appeased through the right sacrifices and beliefs?

Don’t we also ask the same questions when disaster strikes? When the earthquake struck Haiti, didn’t we ask exactly the same question? Didn’t we come up with plausible answers about what the Haitians had “done wrong?” “The government is corrupt,” we said. “They have no building codes. They deforested the land, so they have to build with concrete.” Did you agree with Pat Robertson, who told us that the Haitians had made a pact with Satan during their freedom struggle two hundred years ago, and that’s why God was punishing them now? Do you believe that’s why all those Haitians died, because God was punishing them? Or how about when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans? Didn’t we blame the Army Corps of Engineers for not building good enough levees? Or did you agree with the commentator who said that God used Katrina to punish New Orleans because of the sin of abortion? When a student is assaulted in the parking lot of her apartment complex, do we ask why she was there at 12:30 at night? Was God perhaps punishing her for having sex with her boyfriend? When personal tragedy strikes, many of us do say similar things. When I was a chaplain-intern at Children’s Hospital, I stood with a mother as her young son was being wheeled into surgery. “It’s all my fault,” she said. “God is punishing me for my sins by making him sick.” “No, no, no,” I said. “God isn’t like that.”

In some ways, tragedy would be easier for us to bear if we truly thought that God is vindictive and vengeful. We want to have a God whose world operates the way we think it should operate, i.e., in which every effect has an identifiable cause. We want to see bad people punished, and ourselves rewarded for not doing whatever it was that they did. Ultimately, we want to be in control of what happens. We want to have a reason why bad things happen, even if it’s our own weakness and sinfulness. That’s better than no reason at all.

How does Jesus answer those who asked about the Galileans, and, by implication, us, since we ask similar questions? Just as I answered the mother at Children’s Hospital, Jesus says, in effect, “No, no, no, God isn’t like that.” Jesus doesn’t go into a long theological discourse on God’s nature or on why bad things happen. Instead he pointedly asks them if they truly think the Galileans, or the people on whom the Tower of Siloam fell, were especially sinful. Then he tells his questioners to “repent.” Actually, the verb used in the Greek, although often translated “repent,” also means to change one’s thinking. “Change your thinking,” he answers them. There isn’t a quid pro quo in the universe. God doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t punish people that way. Bad things happen, and they happen to both bad and good people. Bad things happen even to innocent people. There’s no magic or sure-fire way to avoid disaster. Even going to the Temple every Sabbath or offering all the prescribed sacrifices won’t keep disaster from striking or accidents from happening. We can search out all the reasons for tragedy. We can point to human free will that allows people to hurt each other. We can suggest that natural disasters happen, because creation is still incomplete. We can even point to the ways in which human actions may make natural disasters even worse. But we can’t always understand why bad things happen. Nor can we understand why one person is struck, and another escapes. In the end, we have to accept that suffering and death are mysteries. We have to accept that human life is fragile: we never know when disaster will strike, accidents will happen, or people will get sick.

“Change your thinking,” Jesus tells us. Understand that we’re all under a death sentence. Understand that in this broken and sinful world bad things happen to everyone, that no one is immune from disaster, not even if you pray every day and come to church every Sunday. Realize that life is fragile, and that bad things can happen at any time. Knowing that life is fragile, and that we can return to the dust from whence we came at any time, and without any notice, be prepared. Treasure your families, loved ones, friends, and acquaintances. Never miss an opportunity to express your love, admiration, care, and concern for them. Forgive old hurts, let go of old resentments, and restrain your anger. Continue this Lent and always to re-examine your choices in life. What is more important, whatever your age, whether you’re in your twenties or your eighties, put your affairs in order. Get out of debt. If you have dependents, buy life insurance, even if all you can afford is reducing term insurance. Make a will – it’s the best gift you can give to your family. Indeed, the Book of Common Prayer reminds me that, “The Minister of the Congregation is directed to instruct the people, from time to time, about the duty of Christian parents to make prudent provision for the well-being of their families, and of all persons to make wills, while they are in health, arranging for the disposal of their temporal goods, not neglecting, if they are able, to leave bequests for religious and charitable uses (445).” Consider yourselves so instructed. Since modern medicine can prolong our lives beyond anything the ancients could have imagined, have advanced directives. Name someone to function as your health care power of attorney, i.e., someone who can make decisions about your care, if you are no longer able to do so. Put your wishes in writing, and be clear about what they are. Don’t end up like Terri Schaivo. Do you remember her? She collapsed in the hallway of her St. Petersburg apartment and spent the next fifteen years in a vegetative state, while her husband and her parents wrangled about what her wishes were for the end of her life.

At this point, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Where’s the good news, Mo. Leslie?” Here’s the good news. This week, Jean Zaché Duracin, the Episcopal bishop of Haiti, reminded the rest of the church that the situation is still very serious in Haiti. Many still have no homes, many children have not yet returned to school, much of the infrastructure of the country has been destroyed, and many famous churches, including Trinity Cathedral in Port au Prince, are gone. Nevertheless, many parishes are growing, because people are turning to the church for spiritual, moral, and social help. What is most important, the church in Haiti is committed to rebuilding all its communities. Calling for the rest of the church to continue to remember and help Haiti, Duracin proclaimed that,”The earthquake on January 12th was our baptism, now is our new creation.”

And so, we remember that human life is fragile and can end unexpectedly. We try to prepare ourselves as best we can, asking God, as we do in the Great Litany, to deliver us “from dying suddenly and unprepared.” And then, having done all that, we turn back to God. We remember how much God loves us. Every time you say the Lord’s Prayer remember that God does not punish us for our sins, but willingly forgives us, even before we acknowledge our shortcomings. Remember that the life you have is a gift from God. Remember that God has graced and gifted you for God’s work in the world. Remember that, just as God heard the cries of the Israelites in Egypt and sent Moses to lead them out, God hears our cries of pain and leads us out of suffering and despair. Remember that God came among us in the flesh and experienced death alongside us. And most of all, remember that in Jesus the Christ God brings forth healing and hope from ruin and disaster, God brings forth life from death.