Sermon for Lent 3C, preached by the Rev. Daniel Ulrich on Sunday, February 28, 2016.
Jesus said, “Unless
you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Lk 13:3, 5).
We’ve
all heard it asked before. We’ve contemplated it ourselves. As we
watch the nightly news, as we read the headlines on the internet, as we talk
with co-workers around the water cooler, we wonder at its answer. WHY DO
BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? This question is usually one of the
very first ones asked when tragedies strike. When the unthinkable
happens, we want to know why. Why they
always happen to good and decent people?
This
question is a difficult one. People have been wrestling with it for
thousands of years. However, this isn’t really a good question. As
one of my seminary professors liked to say, this is a wrong question, because
it is a question that is built on false assumptions.
First,
it assumes that life is governed by Karma, the idea that you get what you
deserve. If you’re good, then life will reward you with good things.
You’ll be blessed with happiness, health, and wealth. But, if
you’re bad, if you’re selfish and unkind, then life will punish you with bad
things. Your life will be filled with all sorts of difficulties,
disappointments, and struggles.
Karma comes from Eastern religions like Hinduism
and Buddhism, but it’s made its mark here in the west. It’s even
influenced the way we think about God. When bad things happen, we assume
God is punishing us for specific sins. This is what the people in our
Gospel reading today thought.
They came to Jesus and told Him about people who
were killed by Pontius Pilate, their blood mixed with their sacrifices. Obviously these victims were being punished
for their sins by dying such a horrible death! But what did Christ say?
He asked, “Do you think that these
Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they
suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent you will all
likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and
killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others
who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will
all likewise perish” (Lk 13:2-5). The victims of Pilate and those who
died in the tower collapse weren’t being punished for specific sins they had
committed. They weren’t greater sinners than anybody else.
We like Karma because it makes sense. We
can understand it. It’s only fair that you get what you do. We like
it because it puts us in control. If we’re good and do right, then we’ll
be rewarded. We’ll have earned the blessings we get. We can make
God give us good things by being good, by being outwardly righteous.
Of course, this is a false assumption. We
see that life doesn’t work out like that; you don’t always get what you
deserve. We all know of good and honest people who’ve suffered great
tragedy, and dishonest people who seem to have it all. God doesn’t reward and punish us for what we
do.
The second assumption that this bad things to
good people question makes is that there are actually good people. We all like
to think that there are good people in this world, people who are considerate
and who put others before themselves, people who genuinely want to always do
the right thing. And we can point to
people like this. They obey the laws,
the help neighbors out when they’re in need, they consider others and their
feelings, the donate money and volunteer hours.
We see their good works and consider them good. We look at those sitting in the pews next to
us and we know they’re good; they’re in church after all.
But do these things make us good people? Before men they do, but not before God. Our “good” outward actions don’t make us good
people in God’s sight. Nothing we say or
think or do makes us righteous before God.
The prophet Ezekiel spoke God’s Word saying, “The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he
transgresses…and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness
when he sins” (Ez 33:12). The good
that we do counts for nothing before God.
It can’t cover our sin.
All of us have fallen short of the glory of
God. Every day we sin, and we sin
much. All of us can l point to
unrighteous actions. We’ve all hurt the
feelings of loved ones. We’ve abandoned
responsibilities given to us. We’ve said
words that aren’t perfectly uplifting.
We’ve had vengeful, hateful, and lustful thoughts. Even our motivation for doing good things
have been tainted with selfish desire.
Before God, no one is good.
Finally,
the last false assumption of this difficult question is that God doesn’t know
what He’s doing. This is the ultimate
form of idolatry. It places us in God’s
place, above Him. We think we know more
than God. We think we could manage life
and creation better than Him. If God
really knew what He was doing, He wouldn’t let bad things happen. He wouldn’t have allowed Pilate to kill those
Galileans, and He wouldn’t allow terrorists to attack. He would’ve kept that tower from falling, and
He would keep natural disasters from destroying communities. He wouldn’t let those who we think are
innocent suffer, especially young children.
We’re like the people of old who say, “The way of the Lord is unjust,” but in reality, it’s our ways that
are unjust (Ez 33:17).
When
tragedies occur, we feel like God’s abandoned us, that He’s punishing us. This is the farthest thing from the
truth. Even when the bad things happen,
God is still with us. He is still
faithful and merciful to us.
He
mercifully calls us to repentance. God
hates sin, but He doesn’t delight in the death of a sinner. As He said through His prophet Ezekiel, “I have no pleasure in the death of the
wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ez 33:11). God doesn’t want us to continue in our sin,
on the path to destruction. He wants us
to turn from it and repent. That’s why
He allows tragedies to happen, so that we might see the punishment that awaits
are sin and be rescued from it.
Remember
what Jesus said in our Gospel, “Unless
you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Lk 13:3, 5). When people came to Jesus and told Him about
Pilate’s victims, Jesus explained that this tragedy wasn’t a sign of God’s
punishment and judgement of the specific sins of the people. Instead, this was a sign of God’s judgement
on all sin, on all our sin. All
tragedies, whether they’re tragedies of violence, natural disasters, terrible
disease, or anything else, they’re a judgement against the world’s sin. But God mercifully uses these tragedies and
bad things to call us back. He allows
them to happen so that we’re reminded of our personal sin and our need for a
Savior, a Savior who mercifully intercedes for us and saves us from our
sin.
When
the people came to Jesus, He told them a parable. It was a story about a fig tree that didn’t
produce any fruit. The owner of the
vineyard told the vinedresser to cut it down, but the vinedresser pleaded with
the owner. He asked for more time, to
let the tree be for another year so that he could work on it in the hopes that
it would produce fruit in the future.
This may seem like a strange story to tell immediately after hearing
about a mass murder, but it fits with Jesus’ words.
This
parable is a story that illustrates God’s patience with us. Like the fig tree, we don’t produce the good
fruit that God expects. He comes and
comes and comes and we have nothing to offer.
All we have is our sin, and like the tree, we deserve to be cut
down. We deserve to have towers fall on
us; we deserve to have our blood spilt and mixed with our sacrifices; we should
suffer all sorts of temporal punishments because of our sin. But thanks be to God, because of His mercy,
we don’t. This punishment we deserve is
stayed by His hand, and instead, He punishes His Son, so that we might be
spared, just as the fig tree. We’re
spared so that we might repent, so that we might flee from our sin and trust in
God, receiving His gifts of forgiveness and everlasting life in Christ.
Jesus is
the only truly good and righteous person to ever live, and yet He suffered the
ultimate bad thing for you. Sentenced to
death under Pontius Pilate, Jesus suffered God’s full wrath and judgment
against sin. Even though He was
innocent, He took your punishment on the cross.
He did this willingly, so that you wouldn’t have to suffer this
death. He did this out of perfect love
for you. He had no alternative
motive. This was a perfect
sacrifice. God gave up His Son so that
He can mercifully forgive you your sins, so that He can mercifully give you
everlasting life through water, through word, and through bread and wine. Even though we don’t deserve it, God is still
faithful to us. He still mercifully
loves us and doesn’t want us to die. He
wants us to live with Him forever, and that’s why He sent Jesus Christ to be
your Savior.
When
we look around the world, we see a lot of bad things happening. We look at our friends and family and we see
them suffering. We look at our lives and
point to tough times and we ask, “WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN?” They happen because we live in a sinful
world. But even when tragedies strike,
God still loves you and is faithful to you.
He uses these bad things to call you back in repentance, to call you
back to Him, so that you might escape everlasting death and have eternal life
in Jesus Christ. In Jesus
name…Amen.
I have two problems with this sermon. First, penal substitution. “Sentenced to death under Pontius Pilate, Jesus suffered God’s full wrath and judgment against sin. Even though He was innocent, He took your punishment on the cross.” The idea that one member of the Most Holy Trinity would punish another member, even though that other member was totally innocent, for the sake of “justice” is a total perversion of the Gospel. It also trivializes sin. The punishment for sin is eternal death. Nothing less. No verbal manipulations, such as “Christ went through hell on the cross,” changes that.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that God, the Father, poured out His wrath on His Son is abominable. Both at our Lord’s Baptism and the Transfiguration, the latter occurring just prior to His suffering, the Voice from Heaven spoke of the beloved Son – and God does not change. The fact is that, 1 Peter 1:20, “He was destined before the foundation of the world …” So from eternity, the Father and the Son loved each other, but for one day, the Father, in a fit of rage poured out His wrath on His Son, and then became loving again? This is the fabrication of people who view God as a super human being, not a God Who is infinitely greater and different from us.
Our Lord’s death was the culmination of all sacrifice ordered under the Old Testament. Yes, it was innocent, yes it was substitutional, in the sense that Christ offered Himself for us, yes it was perfectly atoning, but it was not penal. There is no precedent in the Old Testament where a sacrifice was both penal and sacrificial.
Secondly, from Walther’s Law & Gospel, Thesis XII, “One of the principal reasons why many at this point mingle Law and Gospel is that they fall to distinguish the daily repentance of Christians from the repentance which precedes faith.” We should understand that in Baptism we repented, and “turned around.” This repentance cannot be repeated, because it is effective for the rest of our lives. This is the repentance to which our Lord called when He walked on this earth, because, as yet, He had not “opened the Kingdom to all believers.” Anyone in that Kingdom has contrition for their sins, but this is not the same as that first repentance. We confess this in the beautiful words of Luther’s explanation of the Third Article of the Creed, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith; in which Christian Church He forgives daily and richly all sins to me and all believers, and at the last day will raise up me and all the dead, and will give to me and to all believers in Christ everlasting life. This is most certainly true.”
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart