The
insurance industry has a term for when disaster strikes – act of God. Your barn gets struck by lighting and burns
to the ground at no fault of your own.
They call it an act of God. A
meteorite slams into you while you’re asleep in bed. They also call that an act of God. It’s amazing that the insurance lingo for a
disaster is an “act of God.” You break
both legs while jumping out a second floor window singing “I believe I can
fly.” That’s not an act of God. That’s a Darwin Award nomination, but OHIP
will still pay.
The
insurance industry’s rationale seems to be that since disastrous events come
without warning or explanation, the only plausible rationalization one can find
is that for some reason God did it. Therefore,
since God does such terrible things at a whim, the only thing we can do is
protect ourselves from the after effects of these “acts of God”. Hence, sales gimmick number one of the
insurance industry: protect yourself against God – buy insurance.
Moving to
this passage from Luke, we find what also appears to be a very troubling
teaching on the topic of why tragedy happens and this one coming from Jesus. Converse to the insurance industry’s
explanation for disaster, that it is a whim of God, Jesus’ answer at first
glance appears to be “blame the victim”; that it is human sin that causes these
things. Humanities inward turned and
selfishly bent nature has so twisted the way things are that we cannot but expect
bad things to happen to us. In this line
of thinking tragedy does not come as a whim of God. Rather, it rears its ugly head as a result of
the chaos that our human sin-diseased state has brought into the cosmos. Try what we may everybody still dies, some
more tragically than others.
Jesus
gives what also appears to be a solution for protection against tragedy. He says, “Unless you repent you will perish
just as these did.” But, we have to be
careful how we hear this. Jesus is not
saying, “Get things right with God so that this whimsical, wrathful God won’t
smite you for your sin.” People do
interpret this passage this way and it is quite appalling. Let’s not do that. Rather, let’s dig a little deeper.
This
passage comes at the tail end of Jesus teaching his disciples to watch for the
end of times and not worry or be afraid of the end because it is the Father’s
good pleasure to give us the kingdom when it hapens. In response, some people brought up the
tragic event of Pontius Pilate martyring a group of Galileans as they offered
sacrifices to God wondering whether this tragedy might be a sign of the end. You see, Jerusalem Jews often looked down on
Galilean Jews as being less holy and so were suggesting that God might be
starting his end of the age housecleaning by using Pilate to smite a bunch of
“hypocritical Galilean sinners.”
Jesus then
sets out to correct their prejudiced beliefs by bringing up an incident when
the Tower of Siloam in Jerusalem just happened to fall on a group of Jerusalem
Jews. To paraphrase Jesus’ response: “No
one is any worse a ‘sinner’ than anyone else.
We’re all ‘sinners’ and unless we all ‘repent’ we will all perish just as
tragically and needlessly as those Galileans and those Jerusalemites who
appeared to die tragically for no reason”.
Jesus’
saying that we will all perish just as tragically as victims of tragedy unless
we repent leaves me feeling a bit uneasy especially in the wake of several
centuries of the Hell-fire and brimstone preaching that the Church has used so
effectively to coerce conversions and grow wealthy. We need to unpack what Jesus is saying and do
so by looking at two terms: “Repent” and “perish”.
Let us
first take a look at what it is to perish.
If you look back through the Gospel of Luke at the other places the
Greek word shows up you will find it translated as to kill, murder, destroy,
perish, or lose. Apparently the word has
something to do with death, particularly the futility of life being needlessly
wasted. Ultimately, it’s meaning goes
beyond simply dying a tragic, accidental, or undeserved death that serves no
meaning to mean wasting life in general as we live it. Perishing is living with a sense of
hopelessness with respect to God and of having not fulfilled any God-given
purpose and it all just culminates in death.
To perish is to waste the life God has given to each of us. Perishing is not God’s punishment. Perishing for us is like what happens when a
plant wilfully removes itself from the soil – if you can imagine the absurdity
of that. So, it is when we turn from God
to ourselves to live life according to our own whims. We perish.
Jesus
offers a solution to this universal problem of perishing. He says, “Repent.” We have to consider what Jesus means by
“repent” within the context of the Gospel he proclaimed. The Gospel that Jesus proclaimed was not a
matter that concerned what happens to us after we die. His Gospel concerns life right now. He proclaimed, “The Kingdom of God is at
hand. Repent and believe this Gospel.” Our response to that Gospel involves what we
do with our lives right now in the present.
“Repent and believe” is a compound phrase of two things that go together
to make one inseparable whole like “pizza and beer”, “burgers and fries”, or
Dr. Seuss’s “Thing 1 and Thing 2”. To
repent is to pick up and start following.
The
Greek word for repent literally means “be with-minded”; become of like
mind. Unfortunately, our English
understanding of the word repent comes to us through the Latin language and the
theology of the Medieval Roman Church which defined repent as “remorseful” so
that “repent and believe” meant “be remorseful about your sinfulness and obey
the Church so you won’t go to Hell”.
Luther and the Reformers turned it into, “Be remorseful for your sins,
stop sinning, and believe you are forgiven because of Jesus death on the cross
on your behalf so you won’t go to Hell.”
Somewhere along the way the Joyous News that the Kingdom of God is at
hand was simply forgotten (actually it was replaced by the Holy Roman Empire. Topic for another day.).
To
repent means to be “with-minded” and to believe is to actively engage one’s
loyalty. In short, to “Repent and
believe” is to turn away from perishing in “self-mindedness” to being an active
disciple of Jesus. It is the changing
of one’s mind from one’s self-interested mindedness to sharing in the humble
and compassionate mind of Christ freely given to us by the Holy Spirit as we strive
to know Jesus personally and follow in his way. This “with-mindedness” with Christ will bring
about in us the fruits of the Spirit which are the virtues of love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control and
not to mention the capacity to turn away from the old life of self-interest as
he leads us to live according to the cross, by laying down our lives for others.
I use
the word fruits above which comes from the book of Galatians because it fits in
with the parable that Jesus told on what repentance is. We as individuals and as a church and
humanity as a whole are that fig tree that does not bear the fruit that it is
supposed to bear. That is the problem
with sin. Because of our self-mindedness
we have alienated ourselves from God and thus cannot possibly bear the fruits God
desires of us. God would do well to put
an end to it all and start over. But,
Christ in his love for us fertilizes us with the Holy Spirit, with the grace of
his very own presence, who works in us to bring forth the fruit that God
desires. All we need do is yield to his
work and we will grow in him.
In
closing I would just like to briefly say how to repent. Repenting involves more than simply not
doing what you know you shouldn’t do.
Repenting is also more than simply feeling remorse for that which you
have or have not done. Repenting begins with
a devotional life. It is making and
taking the time to pray and to read the Bible.
Moreover, it requires committing ourselves to a small group of followers
who are striving to live as Jesus’ followers. Jesus’ call to discipleship is a call to
fellowship in him. Repenting is becoming
“with-minded” – “with-minded” with Christ while with one another. Repenting is something we do together. Christ-filled fellowship is the antidote to
perishing. Amen.
