We’ve been on a journey this Lent about suffering. So far we’ve watched Jesus care about foreign neighbors who suffer and prophetically announce that love must be extended to them and not merely our own and in response they tried to throw him off a cliff. Last week we watched Jesus encounter a woman bent out of shape because of a domination system that privileged men. She suffered physically because of a lesser-than-theology which pushed her down and made her ill and we noticed that Jesus didn’t simply heal her but called her forward, straightened her up, and set her free from an unjust system that bent her over and its unsabbathlike reading of scripture that kept her bound. Today, we are going to see that Jesus doesn’t just heal suffering or stand the marginalized up but also wants to cure how we think about suffering by calling us to adopt kingdom-thinking about it.
“Do you think?” - Thinking about the Biblical journey of suffering
I want us to begin with Jesus’ opening, twice stated question: “Do you think?” As we listen and watch Jesus engage suffering, I want to invite us on a journey that demands that we explore the topic, our Bibles, and our lives and the lives of others thoughtfully and critically because Jesus demands it. Jesus invites us to think! Will you?
Let’s quickly back up for some context. Just prior to this passage, Jesus spoke to crowds following him, telling them that they are good about interpreting the weather, and then asked them, “Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Luke 12:56). Some in the crowd quickly rose to the occasion, stating a case of suffering and hoping that Jesus will interpret its meaning. They told him about some Galilleans that Pontius Pilate had murdered in a ghastly event. No question is stated explicitly, but a question is surely implied. Did those Galileans deserve it? Was Pilate an instrument of divine judgment and wrath against them? Do the wrong get their just desserts? There’s nothing wrong the question – but getting the answer wrong has serious consequences. These folk seem to believe that there is a reason for human suffering, and that it usually has to do with something a person has done. The assumption is that we live in a moralized universe where God actively rewards and punishes and when bad things happen – the one suffering is the one to blame. This assumption can be found in the Bible itself – what “do you think”?
The logic of their question is supported by the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. The earliest Jewish worldview described God directly blessing and cursing our virtues and vices by sending health, good weather, and abundant crops on the righteous and sending disease, droughts, and plagues on the wicked. This kind of thinking about direct intervention into secondary causes comes though in the Deuteronomic Covenant (Deut. 28-30). But fairly quickly within the OT, various Biblical authors began to think about and even challenge that worldview. They understood that it doesn’t always work that way and seek to distance God from it. The foolish friends of Job who see the world as a moral order are rebuked by a thinking Job and God for saying that Job suffers because he’s done wrong. Even David, who loves the law will think to asks, “Then why do the wicked prosper? And why are the righteous afflicted?” (Psalm 10; 73) Later prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel, while still using some of the Deuteronomy rhetoric will begin to distance God from actively punishing people for sin, and will speak of sin as self-punishing. And from all that Jesus will step in and think, Jesus the very image of God, Jesus the one who reveals who God is, what God wants, and what God does. He will address the covenant logic of a good=blessing and bad=cursing image of God with an emphatic, “NO!” No, God is not like that. No, sin doesn’t work that way! He will say “no” and call us to repent.
Repent from a moralized universe – “unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
Repentance becomes toxic when people mistake it to mean moral uprightness or only as expressions of regret. If that were true that Jesus’ call to repentance would simply be restating the logic of the crowd (“Unless you act right, you too will perish.” But repentance literally means to change one’s mind or “go beyond the mind that you have” [meta – beyond; nous – mind] For Jesus it means adopting kingdom-thinking about who God is and what Jesus is doing. It means widening one’s vision and seeing the world in a new way, particularly through the lens of “good news” (Mark 1:15, “Repent and believe good news”). Friends, true repentance should make you think bigger thoughts and not smaller ones. It should widen your gaze rather than narrow your sight. And what is that good news? We repent toward the good news that doing good or being right don’t make God love us or become acceptable for God’s grace and attention but wake up to the fact that grace, blessing, and love, are who God is and always has been, even when we suffer. So what particular ideas about suffering might need repentance?
1. Repent and believe that God is gracious and not a death-dealer. If you assume that we live in a universe of rewards and punishments you will see no grace and wrongly envision a punishing God. You will imagine that good fortune is of your own making by being good and that any trouble is a wrathful God being ticked off. Jesus, however, will speak of God’s ever-present graciousness and love by appealing to a natural argument which reveals that God is seeking to bless and love all people at all times. In Matt. 5:44-46, Jesus will call the crowd to repentance and see the enemy as a person to love, even if they’re evil. Why? Because, Jesus says, “God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”
2. Repent from making the suffering suffer. In John 9, unwitting disciples make this mistake and ask Jesus: "Who sinned that this man should be born blind? Him or his parents?" Implication, Sickness, disease and disability are God's punishments for sin and that blame or guilt is the appropriate Christian response for those who suffer. Jesus denies it. Wrong question. Wrong worldview. His response is that when we see sickness, disease and death, we don't know for sure if sin was involved except in the sense that we've all been part of a cosmic bus crash and some people had worse seats. You just can't judge whether an individual is righteous or wicked, blessed or cursed by God, based on their struggles. Rather, we should see all suffering as an occasion for God's mercy and healing. Thinking Jesus reminds us that causation is always mysterious and that those who suffer aren’t simply bad decision-makers and those who seem blessed aren’t always those who do right.
3. Repent from stinking thinking and death-dealing. If we return to Luke 13 - Pilate's Temple Massacre and the Fall of the Tower of Siloam: Here we have people dying at the hands of the Romans and in a tragic collapse of a local highrise. Jesus addresses how we should see the victims. Were they any more wicked than the survivors? No. You can't judge that because God is not the death-dealer. In one case, it fell to human wickedness and in the other, it was probably a random tragedy. We cannot infer anything about the victims' standing before God and we shouldn’t attribute these deaths to God. Jesus calls us to repent from “stinking thinking” which believes that God’s love is conditional based on our choices. In response, he says, "Worry about your own hearts. Stop pointing the finger. Turn to God for mercy. Ask God for deliverance, Everyone is perishing.” Repent from an "apollumi" (ἀπόλλυμι) worldview. That word “perishing” tis a weird word. It isn’t about some hellish destiny after you die but refers to a sinful, judging mentality of blaming and guilt, which leads to spiritual death in the present (the Greek word doesn’t necessarily mean “destroyed” forever or beyond repair but can be a state of destruction that can be healed or reversed, e.g. Luke 15:4). The Gospels reveal that stinking thinking masquerades as justice and righteousness, that comes from people hurting others for the sake of the moral order. Sin, broken people, and the Devil are death-dealers. Remember that it was good moral people who put Jesus to suffering and death. God in Jesus Christ came to give life – repent and remember that! We are the toxic and wrathful gods. We are the ones who harm others, ourselves, and the planet and assume God is punishing us.
When suffering happens – friends, repent and let go of blame, let go of judgment, let go of punishment. When suffering happens – to you or others remember Jesus, the Man in black, who became like us and for us, and who entered into solidarity with us and voluntarily suffered underserved pain and human wrath so that we might encounter a God who loves us and wants nothing more for us than life.
Don't blame God for directly sending death and stop sorting the righteous from the wicked by measuring who was hit hardest and who got off lucky. All places of suffering are meant to be places for mercy and grace.
That’s why a Christian view of suffering demands a crucifixion and not merely a cross. We need a visible, bodily reminder that God’s redemption of suffering was through solidarity and not merely victory. Jesus was willing to mercifully and voluntarily suffer for us when we were at our death-dealing worst. When we too quickly move to an empty cross away from crucifixion, we can easily think that suffering has a simple victory that doesn’t require us to do anything. But the way of Jesus, is that suffering must ultimately be resisted by our willingness to enter into it. And because Jesus did so, and was victorious, we can enter into suffering without fear because even there – God loves exist, even there God can be found, even there, all is not lost.
Where is God in suffering? He's digging through rubble and hard at work in ICU through people who manifest his love and grace in the world. We partner with his ministry of redemption rather than siding with the accuser of the brethren. We repent and even voluntarily suffer in order to carry each other’s burdens and become the change we want to see. We must become crucifix and not merely a cross. Amen.
