In today’s Gospel, we hear of two very unfortunate incidents that are brought to Jesus’ attention. First, Roman soldiers killed some Jews who were offering sacrifices in the temple and then mixed their blood with the blood of animals the priests offered to God. The second incident involved 18 people who died when a building collapsed on them. The talk of the town was that God was punishing the victims for sins they had committed.
Because pain and awareness of death became a part of life when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, many people in Jesus’ day thought there was a cause and effect relationship between sin and suffering, believing sickness and death were God’s punishment for sin. This conclusion sounds logical but Jesus quickly rejects it.
In the story of Adam and Eve, pain became part of life not as a punishment for sin but as a consequence of their wrong doing. The difference between punishment and consequence is crucial if we are to understand this gospel passage. Perhaps this story can illustrate the difference.
Driving his new luxury automobile, a drunken driver speeds down the street at 80 mph, fails to stop at a red light and runs into a power pole as he swerves to avoid a pedestrian. The alcoholic suffers a broken leg and totals his new car. A judge suspends his license and orders him to pay a $500 fine. The broken leg and the totaled car are consequences of this drunken driver’s actions but the fine and loss of his license are the punishments. Consequences naturally flow from an action while punishments are imposed by someone else.
Likewise, we can say that suffering and death flow from living in a sinful world. They are not punishments from God for something we did. Thus, God was not punishing the victims of the two tragedies because of a particular sin they committed.
When my mother died, some people attempted to comfort me with the line that her death was God’s will. I came to realize that her untimely death was a consequence of poor choices she made that impaired her health, but not a punishment from God. We believe that God knows everything, but since we have free will, a requisite if we are to freely love, God cannot decide the manner or the time of our death. For the victims of any disaster, I can hardly believe that a loving God would want people to suffer such a fate. Death strikes them unexpectedly because people choose to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
None of us can predict our future. That death can happen unexpectedly is rarely considered by most of us but it could happen. Don’t dismiss the possibility that you might die as suddenly as the many victims of the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti did. If death were to greet you so unexpectedly, would you be ready?
That is the caution Jesus airs, not once, but twice while reflecting on the tragedies brought to his attention. His concern isn’t the fate or judgment of the victims but of the living. Many of his listeners, he fears, have the mindset that the absence of misfortune in their lives implies that they are living virtuous lives pleasing to God. Instead of commending them, Jesus warns, “I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
The examples which Luke uses of people dying in unexpected ways are are a sobering reminder that our time to respond to Jesus’ warning is limited. In his letter, Paul cautions that not all the Israelites made it to the land of milk and honey. Instead, they “were struck down in the desert.” We too are on a pilgrimage to the Promised Land, that place we call heaven, but unless we acknowledge our sins and repent, we too may fall short of our desired destination.
The bottom line is this: where we spend eternity depends on our response to Jesus’ call to repentance. The most obvious advice I can offer is for you to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation during this season of Lent. But there is more to reconciliation than a sacramental encounter with a confessor. Reconciliation also means setting ourselves right in our relationships with others as well as God.
The fig tree’s failure to produce fruit brings to mind something else. Jesus’ call to repentance is not merely a call to turn away from evil but also a plea to produce the fruits of good living. In other words, is our love of God evident in our treatment of others? To answer that question, begin at home and consider how you treat your spouse, your parents, your children, and your siblings. It is easy to take members of our family for granted and forget that they are individuals who deserve our respect.
Outside of the family circle, there are so many ways of showing love in the community. We can meet God by caring for the poor, the sick, the lonely and the elderly. Just think, we have received in our lifetimes a tremendous amount from others, but how concerned are we about giving something in return? How appreciative, how respectful, how loving are we toward others in our lives? Are we takers and not givers? The warning about the unfruitful fig tree is not given to frighten us but to remind us that our time for doing good is limited. We can’t keep putting off good works indefinitely for someday, there will be no tomorrow for us to get our act together.
Lent is an opportunity for taking a hard look at our lives and asking how we stand before God right now. If we have placed spiritual things on the back burner, then we have forgotten the real purpose of why God gave us life. Like the fig tree, we are expected to produce good fruit. It isn’t too late to change our ways, but someday it will be.