At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish like them. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish like them.’
To the question ‘does shit happen to sinners because they have sinned?’ Yeshua answers, No. There is no necessary connection between nasties that happen to us and the moral quality of our antecedent behaviour. That is already a huge thing to say. Because what it implies is that Shit Happens. Sometimes it’s an Act of Nature: a woman I knew was killed climbing in the Rockies when thaw dislodged a stone 1200 feet above which fell and cut her rope. Sometimes it’s somebody’s fault: that tower in Siloam may have had a fault in the foundation because of somebody’s negligence. But it is not the victim’s fault.
Moreover, Shit Happens, and when it does it is not God’s fault. This is much harder to conceive. God does not micromanage this or, we may assume, any other planet. God knows when every sparrow falls; but He does not stop its falling. Why not? Because, first, the whole life of the planet is based on mortality and replacement. We need to die to make room for our grandchildren. The tree bears seed so that a new tree can replace it. So why, then, not make mortality such that each human dies in a kindly and harmonious way? Because even when a loved person dies at the right moment, for those around, weeping, it is still a trauma, the moment is never right. And finally, we forget Satan at our peril. His presence – tempting us to sin and busily collecting our IOUs -- ensures that much that might have been harmonious will not be.
Then Yeshua goes on to say, ‘but if you do not turn your mind around, you will perish like them.’ My daughter, in her sermon, elaborated that beautifully in saying that we need to turn from our pages and screens and news cycles to ‘bask in God’s love’ – which will necessarily make us pass on that love to others. But what also intrigues me is the ‘perishing like them.’ The point here, I think, is that we all die, whether peacefully in our beds, painfully in a hospital, horribly in a car crash or a fire, or among many in a natural disaster (see Leonard Cohen’s moving song ‘Who by Fire’, based on a Day of Atonement text). So why does He say ‘unless you turn around’? Will that exempt us from mortality? No – we know that. But if we have turned definitively to God – which means turning to the Anointed One – we will die, but not like them. We will die differently. We will die in the warmth of God’s love, and whatever awaits us on the other side will be a form of that.
Photo: New York, September 11, 2001, by Detective Greg Semendinger, New York City Police Aviation Unit.
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