"Accidents Happen, Chances Exist"

Political repression and natural disaster are not punishments laid on people presumed to be worse sinners than we. These are some of the risks we face in a world in progress. Victims merit our compassion, not our judgment.

Accidents Happen, Chances Exist

            Today’s passage finds Jesus being closely questioned by people — unnamed disciples — who seem to be trying to come to terms with the severe images of judgment Jesus just presented them with in the immediately preceding passages:

●      “... the master of the [unfaithful] slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and put him with the unfaithful.”1

●      “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!”2

●      [settle with your accuser or] “you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny!”3

            Immediately following these imprecations — “At that very time,” — some of Jesus’ listeners ask him about Galilean worshipers martyred by Pilate. It is reasonable to suggest that they are throwing this out as a concrete example of the judgment Jesus has been talking about.4

            Jesus responded, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. 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 other people living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.”

We will all perish

            There is a part of us that — almost in spite of ourselves — still wants to see disaster striking as the judgment of an angry God. What did I/they/we do to deserve this? Oh, we may say this with tongue in cheek now, in these modern times; we don’t “really” believe it, of course — the accident was just that: an accident. It was chance. Could have happened to anybody. It was human error, not God zapping them for some hidden fault or other.

            These understandings are all wonderful, a step in the right direction — but still we cling to our intimations of judgment. And Jesus is as quick as any to kick such notions to the curb. You think they suffered because they’re worse sinners? No!

            “No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.”

Thanks ... I guess!

            The first example of suffering given here — referring to those Galileans — resulted from political repression by Pilate. The second example — a tower collapsing on 18 hapless souls — was a case in which people happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. These bad things that happened, Jesus seems to be implying, could have happened to anyone. So is Jesus letting those poor sufferers off the hook — and us, too, if we take seriously this hint that bad things happening are as much a function of chance as anything else?

            Well, there is still Jesus’ statement on repentance: “... unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did” — there seems to be some heavy judgment implied there. We will all perish just as they did — what does that mean?

            In the world God has created and called “good,”5 accidents happen. Chance exists. We are all vulnerable to terrible things that can happen, not only through inevitable natural disasters, but also disasters that result from human failings: cost-cutting shortcuts in construction, abuse or neglect by people wielding every sort of power — parents, politicians, kings, queens, wicked dictators and dictators benevolent-until-they’re-not — we are all susceptible to abuse and tragedy if we’re in the proverbial wrong place and time. Do we think victims suffer in these many ways because they are worse sinners than all the other Christians? Than all other Americans?

            Protesters who were struck by cars, shot, dragged off to jail ... do some of us think that their suffering means our own political opinions, or our indifference, is better? That victim of crime who was supposedly “asking for it” by not taking the same precautions we take? The people who build their houses in flood zones, and then get flooded out? The victims of the Key Bridge collapse? The people who don’t believe in climate change, and then lose their homes because of climate change — are they worse sinners than we are? Are they being “punished” because they don’t have the same marvelous insights we do? They might be suffering some consequences for their incredulity, but are the worse sinners, being directly punished by God?

            They’re not!

            Unless we understand that we tend to be as hard of heart as they, that we, too, have our blind spots, we will end up taken by surprise just as much as they were. We will “perish just as they did” — we will be taken by surprise by consequences we thought only happened to other people.

            Death will come upon us all, eventually; suddenly, unexpectedly; we are never really ready for it, no matter how much we think we are. It is not a punishment for sin.

Fruitless trees and the patience of God

            God doesn’t zap us with natural disasters as judgment for bad decisions or wrong directions. God does not raise up venal politicians as judgment for our sins, to punish us with repression and judicial murder. No — Jesus gestures toward how God truly works in his parable of the fruitless fig tree.

            Imagine with me, if you will, a vineyard. Imagine a fig tree in the vineyard. A fig tree that refuses, as it were, to bear fruit. Jesus isn’t talking about an actual vineyard and a physical fig tree, of course. The fig tree is often a metaphor for Israel, but for our purposes it could be a metaphor for something else — the human soul, perhaps; a disciple who does not bear fruit. And then there is the owner of the vineyard, and the “man working the vineyard.”

            Why this parable now, rather than, say the one about a good Samaritan, or — insofar as we’re talking about judgmental people convinced that hapless victims are somehow being punished for sins — the one about the tax collector and the Pharisee? Who, after all, is assuming that the dead in the previous passage were “worse sinners”?           

            The focus here is on a single fig tree, not the vineyard as a whole. The concern on the vineyard owner’s part is that the recalcitrant fig tree is wasting the soil, but the first move is not immediate judgment, uprooting and casting into fire. No, the man working the vineyard, this tiller of the soil in this vineyard we call earth is saying, give this poor soul a chance. Don’t judge it. Baby it. Pamper it. Water it. Nurture it. Care for it. Don’t demand that it either work or starve: feed it even more of the stuff fig trees love.

Works in progress

            So who are you? Who are we? Where shall we locate ourselves, in these stories of unwitting victims and an unfruitful tree? Shall we be the owner, ready to cut the fig tree down? Shall we be the one working the vineyard?

            Dare we presume that we are not, as often as not, that poor unfruitful fig tree?

            Jesus seems to be saying that everyone is a work in progress. People who die suddenly don’t die because they’re worse sinners who are not bearing fruit. We are all sinners, not bearing all the fruit we could bear. If we think we’re not, we’re kidding ourselves.

            The people Pilate slaughtered were not necessarily worse sinners than anyone else in the vineyard. It is Pilate who was the worst sinner, and he was able to get away with it ... for now. The people upon whom the tower collapsed were not worse sinners than all the others in the city. They were fragile and vulnerable embodied souls in a world in which, let’s face it, bad things happen to good people. They, and the families and loved ones they left behind, are not worse sinners who only got what’s coming to them; they are fellow pilgrims in this vineyard called life, who deserve not our judgment, but our compassion.

            Oppressors get away with it because God is patient. God reaches out to their victims, to all victims, with compassion and healing, and we are called to be nothing less than the presence of God in such circumstances. Do we assume that they’re worse sinners? Do we assume that they’re any different from us — victims of any circumstance, accident victims, people suffering undeserved punishment, people suffering deserved punishment, people in prison, people “sick through their sinful ways,”6 people suffering anything at all — will we presume to write them off as worse sinners than we? They are not! They live with us in this vineyard, drawing from the same soil.

            Or, to change the metaphor: We are all in the same storm-tossed boat! Let’s climb in the boat with them and help them get it righted and back on course!

1 Luke 12:46.

2 Luke 12:49.

3 Luke 12:59.

4 So says The New Interpreter’s Study Bible New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Abingdon Press, 2003), p. 1880.

5 Genesis 1:31.

6 Psalm 107:17.