* Isaiah 55:1-9 * Psalm 63:1-8 * 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 * Luke 13:1-9

I’m sure like me, there will be times in your life when you have heard about someone, maybe even a member of your family or a close friend, who has been struck down with a sudden serious illness or who have been injured in some kind of accident. In the past few months, I’ve met with a twenty six year old young mother who has received a diagnosis of kidney cancer, I’ve shared tears with another mother whose thirteen year old son has lost the sight in one eye following a freak sporting accident and in the last week I’ve prayed for a friend whose brother was killed in a night club shooting.

More often than not, when faced with these sudden and unexpected happenings in our lives, we ask this question.

What did they do to deserve that?

Jesus knew that questions like this were on people’s minds whenever  they came to tell him sad or alarming news. The Roman Governor, Pilate (yes, the same Pontius Pilate who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus) had ordered that some Galilean Jews be slaughtered. And what’s more, making Pilate’s appalling action even more offensive is that he did this terrible thing while they were offering their sacrifices in Jerusalem.

It’s Jesus who asks the questions on everyone’s minds: Is it because those Galileans were worse sinners than other Galileans that this happened to them? Did they do something to deserve such an awful death?

And it’s Jesus who gives the answer: No.

Or what about when the tower of Siloam fell and eighteen people were killed, crushed because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, is that because they were sinners?

Jesus says no.

Behind all this is a deeper question.

Is God keeping track in some gold-leafed book about who’s been naughty and who’s been nice and whether to respond with earthly punishments or rewards?

The answer is no.

Does God allow tyrants to kill people or tsunamis to drown people because they’ve done something to deserve it?

No.

You might remember the time when some people ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither.” says Jesus, and he cures the man of his blindness.

Jesus flatly denies any correlation between the man’s problem and someone’s sins.

Yet, it’s a persistent question. And it goes with a persistent assumption, that somehow what people get in life is what they deserve – we’re tempted to think that there must be a connection between the sorts of people they are and the bad or good things that come their way in life.

We’ve heard people say, “I wonder what he did to deserve that?” or make pronouncements, “this plague/natural disaster/fill in the blank is God’s punishment for how they have behaved.”

Jesus clearly tells us that this is not how it works.

Sometimes of course, we do suffer as a direct result of something wrong that we have done, some bad decision, some action we’ve neglected to take and we suffer the consequences. Mistreat your body, and you will get hurt. Mistreat a friend, and you may damage your friendship. The negative consequences of our actions can be clear.

But sometimes we’re confused, not when we can see how a mistake or bad action has led to suffering, but when we’ve been good, when we’ve done the right thing, we’ve tried so hard, and still, nevertheless, we suffer.

As Christians, we really shouldn’t be so surprised when this happens. The idea that only good things happen to good people should have been put to rest when Jesus was nailed to the cross.

Christian faith is no magic protection against tragedy. After all, the cross is our central symbol – the cross, where an innocent man died the death of a criminal.

Nonetheless, Christians have long since wondered why bad things happen to people, even good people. In his book The City of God, St. Augustine considered the great suffering that occurred when the barbarians sacked Rome, and he noted that when the barbarians raped and pillaged, Christians suffered just as much as non-Christians. Faith in Christ did not make them immune to pain and tragedy. Augustine wrote,

“Christians differ from Pagans, not in the ills which befall them, but in what they do with the ills that befall them.”

The Christian faith does not give us a way around tragedy. Our faith gives us a way through tragedy.

So, no, we cannot and must not ever look at tragedy and assume that someone did something to deserve it.

“But,” Jesus says, “unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

What kind of a statement is that?

Jesus is not saying that questions are bad or that ‘why’ isn’t a vital human question. Jesus is saying, don’t be distracted by the wrong question. To Jesus, the ‘why’ isn’t important. God made us in love and gave us free will, freedom to choose how to respond, how to act.

In freedom, humans have written symphonies, others have started wars. God made a dynamic world in which natural things change and evolve into beautiful new forms of life, but they also mutate into cancerous cells.

A good question to ask, according to Jesus, isn’t: what did she do to deserve that suffering? The much more important question is: how is your relationship with God? Jesus says that we shouldn’t be distracted by looking at what happened to someone else. We shouldn’t spend our time wondering what someone must have done to deserve what they are going through. Instead, we should look at ourselves – while we still have time.

Jesus refuses to get caught up in the question of whether or not someone else deserves to suffer, and instead asks another question: What in your life needs acknowledging and turning around? What needs to be turned over to God? What needs to be forgiven?

Things will happen. And while the gift of earthly life is still ours, we need to ask ourselves, how is our relationship with God? Do we love our neighbours as ourselves? Are we relieving the suffering of others or just pointing our finger at them and trying to connect the dots between their suffering and the things we consider to be their wrong-doing?

The scandal at the heart of our faith is this – God already loves us;  God doesn’t need a record or tally sheet because we don’t do anything to deserve God’s love. We have no favour to earn, because God already sees us as God’s beloved ones. All we have to do is live and explore the amazing mystery of our acceptance. We can’t lose God’s favour and make bad things happen to us because we don’t earn God’s favour in the first place.

Life is short. Don’t be distracted by the wrong questions. And don’t be disappointed if Jesus asks you to love God more than you love answers. Because Jesus will do that!