Poolesville Presbyterian Church
Rev. David Williams; 03.03.13
We all like to know the causes of things. We like to see clear linkages between X and Y, between one action and a clear reaction. It’s just a basic aspect of human nature. It helps us have a sense that we’re in control of our destinies. It helps us have a sense that we know why things happen, and how things happen.
I think that’s one of the reasons we as a culture are so obsessed with watching reality shows and following the sprawling, disastrous trainwrecks of celebrity lives. Watching individuals make flagrantly bad decisions, and then gossiping about them? It keeps us amused.
The word for that is schadenfreude, a German word that means “finding amusement in the suffering of others.” It comes from schaden, the word for suffering, combined with freude, the word for joy. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Of course the Germans would have a word for that.” But they’re not alone. The Danes and Norwegians call it skadefryd. The Swedes call it skadegladje. The Finnish vahingonilo, the Russians zlo’radstvo, and the Greeks epichairekakia.
And Americans? We call it America’s Funniest Home Videos. Man, I love that show.
No matter what our culture, watching a disaster in the making allows us to feel superior and good about ourselves.
It’s why we watch those reality shows in which they gather a bunch of dysfunctional, self-absorbed egomaniacs together and just let nature take its course. There are countless shows like this. Flip through the three hundred and seventy channels, and it’s an amazing percentage of what you’ll encounter. There’s Jersey Shore, or Buckwild, or Honey Boo Boo, and lately, pretty much anything on CSPAN.
As we move deeper into our lives, though, the challenging reality is that more often than not, suffering and loss and hardship often seem completely decoupled from the neat and clean predictability we like. Death and disease and loss defy our desire to find clear linkages between things.
Take that absurd, insane story that came out of Tampa, Florida this Thursday. You’ve heard it, perhaps. Here you have this guy, just sitting in his bedroom. He’s just a guy, a person like any other person. He’s probably watching TV in his room in the evening after a long day. Suddenly, the earth opens up, and the floor of his bedroom collapses, and he’s gone. Swallowed up.
And sure, sinkholes are common occurrences in that area of Florida, as the limestone geology of the area produces caverns and chasms that cause the sudden collapse of the ground above them. But what in the life of this one human being caused that to happen? What could he have conceivably have done that might cause the earth to just devour him?
The answer, of course, is nothing. He was a mortal being, like all of the rest of us, no different at all. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and now he is most likely gone to rest in the heart of our Maker. He did no more to bring that on himself than those poor souls in that Egyptian hot air balloon that exploded this week. What did those eighteen souls do to deserve that fall, thousands of feet of terror and fire and death? Nothing.
We don’t want this answer. We want to think that somehow these people deserved it, that they are different from us, because they have to be.
And we’re not different, as Jesus so pointedly reminds us in today’s lesson from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus has been teaching the crowds, and we hear that as he taught, some folks came to him to ask his opinion about some of the wilder rumors that were circulating. It was a challenging time, with Rome in charge, and what is brought before Jesus was evidently a story that was making the rounds.
What do you think about the story that Pilate slaughtered some Galileans who were in the midst of making sacrifices, asked folks from the crowd. Jesus doesn’t respond direct to this, but instead challenges them right back in return.
What he’s challenging is something called “retributive justice.” Retributive justice is the theological idea that suffering in this life is reflective of God’s punishing us for wrongdoing. That theology undergirds much of the book of Proverbs, for example. There, God’s will plays out like the logical operators in a spreadsheet. IF you do this, THEN that will always happen. If you are righteous, then you will prosper. If you are wicked, then you will fail. If you are wise, then you will do well. If you are a fool, then you put your life savings into Best Buy stock early last year.
It’s a simple, binary, cause-and-effect approach to existence, and on some level, it works. Wisdom does create certain probabilities, even if the results may vary. But presented with a story of woe and misfortune, Jesus takes it in a very different direction. His listeners probably expected a tirade against Pilate and corruption and Rome.
Instead, Jesus takes apart the distinction between those telling the story and the people they were describing. You think you’re better off than those poor souls, he asks. Well, you’re not. He then tells another story, one otherwise lost to history, of a building collapse that took the lives of eighteen in Jerusalem. Are you any better than those folks who died? You’re not.
Jesus spins both stories to make them Kingdom challenges, pressing his listeners to make the radical change of life that embracing his teachings would require, no matter what their worldly condition. If you’re doing well in life, it’s easy to assume that you do not need to change or be changed by what Jesus taught. Why would you need to be? Things are going well. You’re obviously doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
There’s a reason that this particular story was remembered in Luke’s Gospel and in none of the other three stories of the life of Jesus. Of all of the Gospels, Luke’s was most clearly written for an educated audience. As a formal Greco-Roman history, it was meant for the literate, the elite, the merchant class.
They’d have heard this little tale in much the same way as those around Jesus would have heard it...as a reminder that the suffering of others were no mark of their inferiority in God’s eyes. He was correcting their tendency to assume that their success and their attainment meant that they were in any less need of turning themselves towards the transforming grace of their Maker.
Our human tendency to assume superiority is exacerbated by our culture, which celebrates the big and the rich and the powerful. If you’re small and struggling and helpless, our society tells us that the problem is ours. We suffer because we aren’t pullin’ ourselves up by our bootstraps the way we oughta do.
And, hey, have you ever actually *tried* to pull yourself up by your bootstraps? I have a pair of motorcycle boots, with straps, and I’ve tried it. Assuming you don’t throw out your back, it’s a great workout for the quads and the core. But no matter how hard you pull, you ain’t goin’ noplace.
As Jesus came into encounter with this reality, he offered his listeners...in first century Judah, in the early church, and us right now...a different way to think about the suffering encountered in the world.
First, this teaching tells us not to stand in judgment over the suffering. When we encounter people who’ve lost work, or who are struggling with addictions, or who can’t seem to get their lives together, our job as disciples of Jesus of Nazareth is not to smack them down. When we hear stories of people who have made unwise decisions, and have had those cascade into ruin, we can take no pleasure in their suffering. God loves them no less than God loves us. That is true if they are strangers, but it is more deeply true if they are enemies. There can be no schadenfreude in the heart of a disciple. In this age of snark and sarcasm, that reality might be hard to grasp. But schadenfreude is the enemy of the Spirit.
Second, Jesus reminds his listeners that they are mortal and fragile beings. Age reminds all of us of this reality, but we somehow allow ourselves to forget it. Our lives in these bodies on this earth are not long, and they are...as we perceive them...finite. When we encounter others who are broken, we need to see in their brokenness both ourselves and the Christ, who showed us that God’s love extends even to the most shattered places of human existence.
Third, time is short. This life matters, and it is not endless. Jesus follows the stories of loss with a parable about a fig tree, one that has not borne fruit for years. The owner wants to destroy it, but at the pleading of the gardener, he gives it another year, just one more, before it will be uprooted. It’s a reminder that God does give us second chances...sometimes. And in the face of that offer, what matters is repentance, the act of turning ourselves away from ourselves and towards the transforming power of God. There, we find strength for the times of trial we all endure, but we also find our best and most gracious self.
Do not judge, or celebrate. We are mortal, so stand in compassion. Remember to turn towards that transforming relationship with God that offers life.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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