Jesus Calls Baloney--March 25, 2025

Jesus Calls Baloney--March 25, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them--do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." (Luke 13:4-5

Jesus has a way of preventing people from punching down.  You know what I mean?

Jesus often will intervene in a situation when someone who is already in a vulnerable situation or marginalized position is getting ganged up on or picked on by others who have more power, clout, or status.  He steps in to stop the bullies and to silence the ones who use their situation to look down on others (or hold them down).  

It's the scene with the lynch-mob and the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus shuts them all down with the proposal that the one who is without sin gets to throw the first stone... until they all walk away.  Or it's the time when the disciples assume that a person born blind is being punished by God (or that his parents are being punished) by the blindness, and Jesus tells them that their thinking is all wrong.  Or when the Respectable Religious people grumble that Jesus is at the much-hated tax collector Zacchaeus' house, Jesus silences them all by insisting that Zacchaeus, too, is a child of God worthy of redemption.  That's just Jesus' thing: he's always putting himself in the middle of the bullies and their targets, and he makes it clear that God has no part in kicking people when they are down. And I have to tell you--this is one of the things I have come to love most about Jesus--even though it also makes me uncomfortable at the same time, because I am so often a coward who isn't brave enough to speak up like he does.  Jesus never joins the side of the bullies; he always speaks up for the ones who are belittled.

This is one of those times, even if it's hard at first to see what's being said here.  Let's unpack this verse that continues along in the reading that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  Yesterday we looked at the case of some Galileans whom the Roman governor Pilate had executed without trial or due process while they were in the act of worshiping in the Temple, and Jesus insisted that this terrible thing wasn't a sign that they were worse sinners or being singled out by God for wrath.  Now as the scene continues, Jesus goes further and offers another example--this time without the complicating factor of the empire.  He pulls an example from the headlines of the day--apparently a tower had fallen in the city of Jerusalem, and eighteen people were killed in the accident.  Now, the conventional wisdom of the day would have said, "Well, when an accident like this happens, this must have been God's punishment for the ones who were killed."  The unspoken assumption of a lot of folks in the world is still basically the same: when a bad thing happens in your life, it's a sign of God's disapproval.  So now not only are you hurting, but you've got a truck-load of guilt piled on top, too, pinning you underneath.  Talk about adding insult to injury!

That's basically what Jesus is dealing with in this conversation: the people who have come to Jesus in this story picture a world in which suffering is translatable to sin.  Therefore, in their view, the people who were killed by the collapse of a tower are not victims to be mourned, but evildoers to be scorned.  They see God taking sides against those eighteen who died beneath the rubble, and presumably they would say the same about whatever other natural disaster might happen tomorrow, or whatever accident might happen next week. This perspective sees everyone who suffers, from rain on your wedding day to the terminal cancer diagnosis, as recipients of divine retribution, and therefore, not worthy of our compassion or empathy, but only our condemnation.

And to all of that, Jesus definitively calls "Baloney!"

"Do you think those victims who died when the tower fell were worse offenders than everyone else in the city?" he asks sardonically.  "No, I tell you!" That's not how it works--the accident that took their lives was not God's laser-guided precision judgment on them, and for that matter, those who weren't affected by the accident don't get to say that they are perfect and pure in God's sight, either.  Jesus is dismantling the mindset that pictures God heaping on insult to add to injury when people suffer.  He is rejecting the worldview that allows those in positions of strength and stability to punch down at the people they see struggling beneath them.  And he is tearing down any theology that says, "When you suffer in life, it is a sign of God's wrath against you." 

The implication, of course, is that God--<gasp!>--just might choose to stand with the victims, the sufferers, and the sorrowful.  Jesus wants us to see God, less as the Cosmic Referee handing out lightning bolts like penalties, and more as the empathic Comforter of Those Who Grieve, the Lifter of Those Bowed Down, and the Vindicator of Those Who Have Been Stepped On.  God is not absent from the victims of tragedy in the world; Jesus insists God is particularly present for them.

And in a sense, this is only the logical continuation of the perspective of the Beatitudes.  If Jesus can announce, "Blessed are the poor, the hungry, and those who mourn," without blushing or crossing his fingers, it is because Jesus sincerely believes that suffering is not evidence of God singling you out for your egregious sin.  Jesus tells us that's simply not how it works, and thereby opens us up to the possibility that God is present especially for those who suffer, not merely rewarding good behavior with convenient parking spaces and sunny weather.  Jesus, in other words, shows us a God who crosses the line to stand with those who are troubled, those who are victimized, and those who endure tragedy, rather than a distant deity perched up on the cloud tops doling out disasters left and right.  This is how God's love works.

Taking Jesus seriously will probably overturn a lot of what we took for granted about how God operates in the world, especially if we have ever been the ones explaining some natural disaster as God's judgment on "those people" (the way Respectable Religious talking heads so often do when there is an earthquake or a hurricane).  It is always tempting to view someone else's tragedy as a punishment from God, because the mere fact that you didn't have to deal with a fire, or a tornado, or a tsunami can make you feel like you are better than those who did.  Jesus puts a stop to all of that.  He just outright calls baloney on that whole program of bad theology, in order that we might come to recognize God crossing lines and choosing to side with the sufferers rather than the ones who are punching down.

Maybe we could stand to actually listen to Jesus, even if it calls us to a new kind of bravery or forces us to re-think what we thought we knew about God, and to see the presence of God among all who are hurting on this day. What might that do to the way we spend our time, our energy, and our love today?

Lord God, help us to see you where you are among those who hurt, and to let go of our old assumptions about your ways in the world.