The Bible and Mike Johnson

Recently the new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, was asked if he could explain his worldview, to which Johnson replied, “Go pick up a Bible, that’s my worldview.” Good idea, so I did that. Below are a few things I found that helped form my worldview. This is just a brief list. There are several hundred more like them. Tell Mike if he needs any help looking them up, just give me a call.

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Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?

— James 2:15–16, NIV

Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

— Romans 12:13, NIV

The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor.

— Proverbs 22:9, NIV

If anyone is poor among your [people] in any of the towns of the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need.

— Deuteronomy 15:7–8, NIV

Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.

— Proverbs 31:9, KJV

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

— 1 Corinthians 13:3, NIV

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

— Matthew 25:40, NIV

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”

— Luke 12:33, NIV

Those who give to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.

— Proverbs 28:27, NIV

Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward them for what they have done.

— Proverbs 19:17, NIV

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?

— 1 John 3:17, NIV

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

— Matthew 6:2, NIV

“But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

— Matthew 6:3–4, NIV

Why do Some People Not Report Abuse?

The recent news about E. Jean Carroll and all of the swirls of conversation around it about why she (and others) waited so long to call out her abuser, reminded me of a famous Gospel passage, Matthew 25:14-30. It's the story normally referred to as the "Parable of the Talents." Hang in with me. It's not as boring as you think.

We have three people who are fund managers for a wealthy property investor. By all accounts, the man is a brute and dishonest (and when accused of that, he does not deny it). He has an illegal loan operation (described in Exodus 22.20-30) which more than likely made high-interest loans to vulnerable poor people, and then took their property from them when they inevitably got behind.

Two of the three managers keep quiet and go along with the program and are rewarded later with more power and money. But one of them denounces the system as a scam, accusing the boss of taking in more income from borrowers than he was owed and in some instances stealing from investments he didn't even make. So he refuses to go along. He holds onto the small amount of money he got from the investor and then gives it back to him unchanged, probably so that he will not be accused of being a participant in the crime.

The powerful boss responds to his being stood up to by the lowly manager with a punishment that is swift and deep. His remaining money is taken from him and given to those who kept silent, and he is sent into outer darkness. And no one comes to his defense. The other managers don't say a word. There's no HR to go to. There is no court that would believe him, or probably even hear his case.

So, here's a thought, does what happened to him say anything about why it is that so many women decide to suck it up and remain silent even when their boss is an asshole and sexual predator?

Just wondering...

Stan

It Was the Building that Saved Him

Stan G. Duncan

Some years ago, when I lived in Oklahoma, I helped found a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. There were just three of us in the beginning: A friend of mine did the organizing, I did media, and this nice woman named Marge something-or-other was the treasurer. One day, soon after we got it started, we had a big gathering that was part fundraiser and part get-acquainted meeting. My church hosted it and put on the refreshments. They had me staff the punch bowl to greet and smile pleasantly at the newcomers because I couldn’t do much else. While I was standing there doing my job, I met a pleasant-looking gentleman who introduced himself as “George,” and seemed right at home, though I hadn’t yet met him. I noticed he was missing his right hand, though he didn’t seem to have any trouble filling his cup at the bowl.

He told me that he had been a carpenter all his life. Lived outside the city in a small town whose name I’ve now forgotten. He said he used to drink something terrible, and that one day he’d gotten drunk and crashed his truck into the storefront window of a bank and was in the hospital for over a week. Among other things, he had rammed his hand through the windshield of the truck and cut it off. They rushed him to the emergency room, but it was too damaged, and they couldn’t save it. On top of that, he didn’t have very good insurance, the hospital billed him, and the bank sued him. He was ruined.

After that, he pretty much shut down. He and his wife managed to save their little home, and he had social security, and she had some pension, but his life, so far as he was concerned was over. He said he got started sitting in a lounge chair watching TV with a “Clicker” for hours and hours every day. He fell into what we would think of as a deep depression, though he never called it that. He just felt dead and was waiting around for the end of life to catch up with how his heart already felt.

Periodically his wife would come in and plead with him to get up and do something to get his life going
again. He wouldn’t move. He could no longer work, so for him, he lost not only his job but also his manhood. He was no longer a good provider, so what good was he? Nothing, he thought, so he just drank beer, clicked channels, and avoided letting his mind function.

He said that now and then he’d say a few words to his wife during dinner, or at night, but more or less he let his life slide into a deep pit that he couldn’t get out of. One day, some years after the accident happened, he remembered vaguely that his wife packed up some things and said goodbye. He absently wondered what she was up to but didn’t think about it. Then that evening he listened and looked around and realized that she was gone. She was really gone. Her things were gone. A note was left. She wouldn’t be back. She wrote she had tried to help him, to talk to him, to love him, but he wouldn’t let her. She had failed. She mourned, she cried, she prayed, but she couldn’t stay.

For a while, he responded simply by falling deeper into his despair. Aside from eating and sleeping, which he did poorly and sporadically, he barely moved. Just sat in his chair drinking and clicking. Then one day he saw Jimmy Carter on TV. It’s been some time now, but he recalled that Jimmy was in Philadelphia rehabbing old houses. It was a special day, a “disabled-working-on-the-houses” day. All the people in the work crew had lost hands or feet or were otherwise crippled up bent over, or in wheelchairs. He saw this crowd and distantly saw himself. Here were people worse off than he was and they were building houses for Jesus.

He pulled himself up from his chair, took a shower, packed some food, crawled into his old camper, and took off for Plains Georgia, to Jimmy Carter’s house. Not a thought as to whether he could actually walk into the home of a former president, he just drove.

Two days later he drove up to the Carter house, and sure enough, there were official-looking people in front, but far from keeping him out, they invited him in. He just walked up to the door, knocked, and a moment later Rosalyn Carter came to the door. He stumbled and stammered and told her his story and she said just a minute. And then President Carter appeared. In a bathrobe, holding a cup of coffee. He invited George in. The three of them sat at the Carter breakfast table and talked for over an hour. George told his story, and they listened. They prayed together, shared scripture together, and then in the end Jimmy got on the phone and called some people he knew who planned projects for Habitat to see what they could do to set George up with a work project sometime soon.

George did it. In fact, he spent all that summer, and the better part of the rest of his life traveling around from house to house, helping work parties on Habitat houses.

And there he was across from me by the punch bowl telling me his story. I was moved, I was humbled. It was a great story. “It was the work what saved me,” I remember him saying. “When I was rebuilding them houses, I was actually rebuilding my life. If I hadn’t started working for Jesus, I would’ve died.”

I said “That’s a wonderful story. But…” and I was cautious about asking this. “What about your wife? What happened there?” I was afraid that that wouldn’t be a happy ending.

He beamed. “In fact, you met her.” I took a breath. “You met her right over there. That was her there who gave you your name tag as you came through the door. He called out, and sure enough, Marge, the treasurer, looked up and smiled a lovely smile at us, and waved. George beamed again. Sure enough, in putting houses together, he put his life together. It was the building that saved him.

The Gift of Goodbye

It's an adventure and it's exciting, but it's also poignant and just a little bit scary. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn't, but if you could measure the level of emotion in the air for these days, it would be deep into the red zone.

There is a ritual in Boston and many other places that takes place every year around the end of May and the first of June. That's when literally thousands of college students dump all of their collected dorm and apartment paraphernalia into the streets to be picked up and sold or given away. Desks, chairs, beds, lamps, whatever. Boston is a huge college town, so this act is a bonanza for area homeless shelters and thrift shops.

There is a different, but related, ritual that is happening right now. It is the ritual of an equally large number of cars with weepy parents and anxious 18-year-olds driving down Francis Ave. in Cambridge, or Commonwealth in Boston, or wherever, and letting go of someone they have known and lived with, literally all of his or her entire life. It's an adventure and it's exciting, but it's also poignant and just a little bit scary. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn't, but if you could measure the level of emotion in the air for these days, it would be deep into the red zone.

I remember doing this with my kids back in their days. Actually Kevin and Stanley, the two oldest, were not as big a leap. They both went to the University of Oklahoma, which was only about 15 miles away from where I lived at the time, and I was able to get together with them for dinner once a week for a lot of their time there. With Kevin, it was even less of a break, because out of a freakish coincidence, I happened to be at OU working on a masters in economics at the exact time that he was there working on a BA in economics, so we actually passed each other on campus on occasion (a little discomforting, by the way, but don't tell Kevin). And when he later went to law school, he did his first year at Washington University in St. Louis the same year that my wife and I happened to move there on an internship. And then the next year he switched to Yale, just as we moved to western Massachusetts about an hour north of there.

I think my biggest dip into the red zone of separation emotions was when Karla left. She went off to a little private university in Memphis, Tennessee, that specialized in languages and foreign relations, and then after that she traveled the world, even working for a while for the French government. There were times when I went for more than two years without seeing her. That was tough.

Of course, I didn't know all of that when she was bundling up her life and squeezing it into a car to drive off for orientation, but inside I still sensed that a huge break was taking place.

Last week, I happened to be in front of Rockefeller Hall at Harvard (where I once did time myself) and I saw a dozen or so cars come and go with parents dropping off offspring. Usually the son or daughter was cool about it -- for kids, excitement tends to swallow up fear in the beginning -- but the mother was visibly emotional. The father, however, remained stoic. He's the guy, after all, and can't show emotions because it's not a guy thing. But after their little girl was dutifully set up in her room and they were alone in the parking lot, the husband grabbed his wife's hand and held it long and tight. I suppose it seemed right to be strong in front of the daughter, but when they were alone, he needed strength.

When I saw Karla for the last time I didn't do a very good job at that stoic thing. I think my voice was relatively calm, but my eyes were watery and they gave me away. She was sweet about it. She didn't say a word, but just gave me a kiss and told me that she'd miss me and would see me again soon. And the future of the entire world as we knew it suddenly changed forever. And it has never changed back again, and it never will.

I remember when I made that big break. I put all of my clothes and books and bedding -- and a banjo -- into a tiny Volkswagen "Beetle" and drove thousands of miles to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and I did it while my parents were at work, because I was young and stupid and didn't realize that they would want to be a part of the ritual. We had dinner that night and I chatted about everyday affairs as though nothing was changing. And then after dinner I gathered up the last of my things and drove all night long to my new home. It never occurred to me at the time that my excitement was their loss. I can only imagine now, decades later, that they may have stood there on the driveway for a long while after I left, holding hands and dabbing their eyes at the rupture that had just changed their lives forever.

They are both gone now and looking back I wish I had given them a better goodbye. And one of these days Karla and Stanley and Kevin are all going to be sending off their "babies" with a similar mix of sadness and sorrow and excitement and thrill. It's the cycle of life and it will never change, no matter why they are leaving or how far they go. Eighteen years are far too few to have in your life someone you love with all of your being and might, but to hold on to them would be worse. Holding close, then letting go; holding close, letting go. Again and again. It happens to those who have kids and even those who do not. It's universal. It breaks you and it heals you. It is what moves life forward whether you want it to or not, and if you allow it, it keeps you from becoming stagnant. It's sad and it's painful, but it is also energizing and creating. It's one of the things that helps us learn what it means to be alive.

Interview with Stan Duncan, author of new book,

THE FIRE ON POTEAU MOUNTAIN
Available now from Amazon.com or Adelaide Books

February 9, 2021

1.Tell us a bit about yourself – something that we will not find in the official author’s bio?
I don’t totally recall what was in the official bio, so some of this will overlap. I am originally from Oklahoma and lived for some years in the small town up in the Kiamichi Mountains where these stories took place. I have an embarrassing number of degrees, two in religion and two in economics and a fellowship at Harvard in both. And I have worked and published in both fields all my life. I was a college professor for a while and a church pastor for a while and a wide variety of other jobs, like van driver, restaurant owner, club pianist, and economics commentator for public radio’s “MarketPlace.” Perhaps my most daring job was in El Salvador, in the late 1980s, where I work as an economic development advisor for a consortium of nonprofits in Central America during the region’s many civil wars. It was the most exciting and dangerous period of my life, and is the setting for my current novel.

2. Do you remember what was your first story (article, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

The earliest completed story that I can remember writing was for a creative writing class in my Freshman year of college. It was a series of letters from a young woman off on her own trying to assure her worried parents that she was fine. Each letter creates an increasingly large (and false) world of many friends and a wonderful boyfriend. But when the family evidently (in an unseen letter) has offered to come see her, her notes begin to change. They start encouraging them to not come, and when the family doesn’t seem convinced, they say that one-by-one her friends and boyfriend have either moved away or died and she is now very sad, and that now if they still want to come and visit, they can.

It was overly obvious and a bit “too clever,” but I was trying to build on a theme that a lie can go awry and have consequences, and I was eighteen and it was the best I could come up with. At eighteen, I thought everything I wrote was great.

3. What is the title of your latest book and what inspired it?
It’s called The Fire on Poteau Mountain, which is from the title of the last story in the collection. It was written like a memoir of memories and stories of an aging pastor who once served a small church in a small town called Heavener, Oklahoma. Each story is more or less a stand-alone piece, but the setting and many of the characters interlock. I initially started writing it to put down some of my own memories of that beautiful little place, but the setting and characters soon took on a life all their own, and a collection of short stories (all fiction) began to emerge. Over many years, when I would occasionally run across a difficult conflict or complicated person, or some interesting human interaction, I would wonder how that person or event might be “spun out” into a longer story with new twists and turns, and then eventually it became a book-length collection..

4. How long did it take you to write your latest work and how fast do you write (how many words daily)?
I don’t write fast at all. The Fire on Poteau Mountain was collected over about ten years. A few years ago I published a book on economic globalization, about the ways that problems and issues of trade and finance harm poor people around the world, and that also took about ten years. I hope that’s not the pattern for the rest of my writing life; I’m hopeful that this next one will break that pattern.

I don’t have a real sense of how many words per day that I can put out. It’s been several months since I wrote on a daily basis. Since then life has been filled with retirement, a major move, COVID-19, and chasing love. Some things demand priority even when I don’t want them to.

5. Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Probably not. For many years my most consistent time of writing was in the early evening after work, when I would settle into the couch, turn on some music, pour a glass of wine, and then write. I’m retired now, so I’m hopeful that after the dust of the new life settles, I can recreate that habit (but with much more time for sitting and writing).

6. Is writing the only form of artistic expression that you utilize, or is there more to your creativity than just writing?
No. My biggest creative expression today is playing and composing music for the piano. I have boxes and boxes of my (largely unpublished) sheet music for bands or choirs or solo piano. I also do pen and ink drawings that have sometimes turned out well. In the past I did some nice wood carving and clay molding and wire sculpting, but it’s been a long time.

I also think I’m pretty good at playing the spoons, but so far I haven’t seemed to have been able to develop much of a fan base for that particular gift. (Maybe someday…)

7. Authors and books that have influenced your writings?
There are so many that it is hard to choose, but here are a few great writers who have fed and inspired me. John Steinbook, Norman Maclean, Pat Conroy, Andre Dubus II, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Ralph Ellison, Ian McEwan, Annie Dillard, Anthony Doerr, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, and several others I can’t think of right now.

8. What are you working on right now? Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?
The book I am working on now is set during the eighties in El Salvador, where I once lived and worked and loved and nearly died. And it is inspired by those experiences. The tentative title right now is Zacamil, the name of a neighborhood in the capital city, San Salvador, which was a center of political organizing during the war. My protagonist is an economics professor from the US who moves there after his wife died to do research on economic development projects. While there, in addition to encountering the politics and violence of the war, he also meets and has a relationship with a widow and her two children, who live in the Zacamil neighborhood. That area was bombed and strafed and nearly leveled by the government for over a week in November, 1989, resulting in over eight hundred people being killed. And it is the setting for the final conflict and climax of the novel.

9. Did you ever think about the profile of your readers? What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

This is very hard to say, but it is something I’ve tried to understand many times. Most of my writing before now has been in religion, economics, and human rights, so my reading audience
will probably be at least slightly different. I am hopeful that they will be people who are versed in, or appreciative of, southern literary (slightly Gothic) fiction. That is a genre that I appreciate and live in, and hopefully have written in. My stories are filled with wife-beaters and addicts and molesters, and heroes. Even the good are flawed and some of the villains want to be free of their demons. I think people who have been wounded and discredited, and loved and forgiven will find a voice in these stories. I know that I have, and I’m one of those people.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?

Don’t ever give up. And don’t put it off (we all are going to die, and your best seller may die with you, if you don’t watch out).
Don’t pronounce or preach or proclaim on social or political issues. If you want/need to express them, let it come out of the depths of the story line or the passions and experiences of the character.
Don’t try to sound overly grand or poetic. Let the dialog sound human and engaged and real. False-sounding dialog kills a good scene.
Avoid cliches or common expressions. They are fine in your own conversation, but they can mortally wound dialog in a work of fiction. If you must use one, put it in quotes, or have your character say, “well, as the saying goes” or “as they used to say….”
Strive for authentic renderings of humanity. A weak story line can still be a successful book if the reader identifies with and falls in love with, the heart and hurts of the protagonist.
There are many more, but I’m a retired pastor, economist and van driver, so what do I know?

11. What is the best advice (about writing) you have ever heard?
Ann Lamott wrote a book some years ago called Bird by Bird, on how to write. I never read it, but I heard her give a talk on it one time and she told the story of its title. When she was young and couldn’t get her mind around how to write a term paper about birds because there were too many of them and she didn’t know how to start. So she went to her father for some advice, and he said to simply take it “Bird by bird.” Perfect. My best advice. Step by step. Move forward. Much of what you will write will be bad. But you’ll never get to the good stuff unless you plow along, putting one bird in front of the other.

12. How many books do you read annually and what are you reading now? What is your favorite literary genre?
A few years ago, when I was on a more regular reading schedule (which is to say, when I was married), I would probably read about fifteen to twenty books a year. But when life hit a hefty bump in the road (which is to say, when I was divorced), it dropped considerably. Maybe two or three books a year. I still read a lot for work, because I had to, but pleasure reading took a dive. Today my reading has gone up, but a lot of it is histories and journals and novels about El Salvador during their civil war, because that is what I am also writing about. Some of that is still quite pleasurable. For example, right now I’m reading Sandra Benitez’ The Weight of All Things, which is a beautifully written story of a young boy traveling across the country trying to find his mother after they became separated in a brutal shooting and panic in the capital city. I commend it to anyone.

13. What do you deem the most relevant about your writing? What is the most important to be remembered by readers?
What I hope is the case is that my characters are real and that they speak to our common humanity. They struggle to make sense out of a life that is in chaos and mystery and sometimes make it and sometimes don’t. I strive for their voice to be real and not affected. I want their lives to describe and explain, and hopefully heal, the rifts and tears in our shared aspirations and realities. That’s a little loose and vague, but it’s as close as I can come to touching the deep philosophical, theological heart of my stories. Even my new book, that has the structure of an adventure novel, has a lead character who moves to a developing country to find himself. He has been broken in despair because his wife died suddenly and he blames himself and he hopes that this over-the-top “mid-life crisis” will help heal him and give him the sense of something close to forgiveness. That is the real heart of the story, not whether or not he solves the mysterious crimes of assassinations.

14. What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?
I’m sure I’m not the first person who has looked at a question like that and something along the lines of, “If I knew the answer to that, I would be a wealthy person.”
The publishing industry is on the ropes right now, just like journalism, churches and brick and mortar stores. The internal fracturing of our society and norms and minds has been going on for decades and there is nothing in the foreseeable future that appears to be an antidote for that. What we might be able to say (perhaps based more on faith than evidence) is that Something will eventually emerge as a new way for writers and life to go on, and a new generation will probably evolve someday that will think of it as the “new normal,” and they will find joy and fulfillment in it. But between our time and that one there will be a great wall of immense pain and loss and dislocation, and there is nothing we can do about it but grieve and breathe and go forward.

My sense is that the best way that authors can be a part of the new “trends” is to chronicle the explosive emotional turmoil ahead of us in a way that readers will be drawn into it and reconciled by it. When readers see themselves and their emotional feelings in literary writing, they learn more about who they are inside and feel (slightly) stronger and more self-aware. The new writing doesn’t have to be straight journalism or history or political punditry, but it does have to have a heartbeat, it has to embody human hurts and aches, and resiliency and resurrections. Writers at their best can help us learn what our insides mean and how to maintain hope and sanity in the midst of a world that has lost its grasp on both.

Second Sunday of Easter, Year A,B,C

Seeing and Believing,

the Faith of "Doubting" Thomas

Acts 5:27-32

Revelation 5:11-14

John 20:19-31

John 20:19-31[1]

Text (with a little exegesis and commentary here and there)

When it was evening on that day,[2] the first day of the week,[3] and the doors of the house where the disciples[4] had met were locked for fear of the Jews,[5] Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”[6] ²⁰After he said this, he showed[7] them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced[8] when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”[9] ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them[10] and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.[11] ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them;[12] if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Jesus and Thomas[13]

²⁴But Thomas[14] (who was called the Twin[15]), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ So the other disciples told him,[16] “We have seen the Lord.”[17] But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark[18] of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” ²⁶A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷Then he said to Thomas,[19] “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”[20]²⁸Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”[21] ²⁹Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me?[22] Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

The Purpose of This Book[23]

³⁰Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his[24] disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe[25] that Jesus is the Messiah,[26] the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Notes and thoughts on Preaching this Text

There are four resurrection appearances in John. This passage represents the second and third of those.

The first was in the garden and the fourth is on the beach in chapter 21. (Interestingly, John calls that fourth one the third appearance. Either he can’t count appearances or he can’t count women.)

There are dozens of interesting directions that this story could take you this week. I’ll try to keep my comments down to just three.

Saving or strengthening?

The first one has to do with a very interesting textual problem in verse 31, that might give you a two (or three) point sermon and an opportunity for a teachable moment with your congregations about the methods and history of translations.

Verse 20:31 reads “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (NRSV). However, “come to believe” in most of our translations has a footnote. The NRSV’s says, “Other ancient authorities read may continue to believe.”

What is behind that qualifier is that the phrase in Greek has a slight, slight variant that can dramatically alter the meaning of the whole, so the translation committees decided to offer them both. A thin majority of ancient texts have hina pisteuēste, which is in the aorist tense and means “come to believe.” However, a slight but significant minority, have hina pisteuēte, which is present tense and means “continue to believe.” The difference is one letter. The USB critical edition of the Greek New Testament (1972, 2^nd ed.) has the word with a bracket around that one letter, like this hina pisteuē[s]te.

Now, the significance of this is that the slight-majority reading says the gospel was written so that you will change and become a believer in Jesus as the Messiah. In that case it is meant as an evangelical statement. But the slight-minority texts say it was written so that you (who are already believers) will continue to believe, in which case it is meant as a support or strengthening statement. One wants you to become a believer, the other wants you to put that belief into practice. Translators are not settled on this, and the difference is not minor.

It seems to me that as a preacher/interpreter one could either throw ones hands up and choose according to your theology (Leon Morris’s conservative commentary claims John clearly means it as an evangelical statement, and Bultmann’s “liberal” commentary [which avoids the notion of Christ’s expiation] says it clearly is an existential statement), or one can use it as an opportunity to teach average church goers about the difficulties of translation and then preach a mini-sermon based on both.

I could envision a Fred Craddock-style “Not this, not this, but this” sermon in which you tell of the conflict, wax a few minutes about what it could mean for you and me if translated one way and then a few minutes on what it would mean if it was translated the other way, and then have an inclusive conclusion based on both.

Suffered like me?

The second has to do with Jesus identifying with our wounds. Usually when we read that Thomas wants to see Jesus’ wounds, we are saying that he wants tangible evidence of the existence of the risen lord. But maybe what Thomas is saying is that he refuses to follow a savior who does not have wounds. “Unless I see the wounds in his side, I will not believe in him. I will not follow a savior who has not suffered like the rest of us.”

Does this hearken back to the image in Isaiah of the suffering servant? Is Thomas saying that he can’t follow someone who has not borne the wounds of humanity? Or not suffered like other humans? Is he saying, “What good is a savior who has not suffered like I have?” This sounds similar to what Jesus was saying when he said that before he would be the Christ he would have to be arrested, tried, and executed. And similar to what the letter to the Hebrews meant when saying that to be our savior he must be tempted in every way, just like we were.

Hebrews 2:18: “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”

Imagine going to see a doctor and you said, “I have a pain here and there and I’m worried about it,” and the doctor said nothing but gave you a prescription and said “take this”? Compare that with a doctor who might say, “yeah, I’ve had that too, and I know exactly what you mean,” and then gave you a prescription. Which one would you be most likely to bond with?

In my own preaching I have on occasion told stories about women who were battered or abused in their relationships. Usually people sympathize and then yawn. But I once had a female guest pastor preach for me and she told her own story of abuse, and after the service five women came up and said they wanted to talk. Unless they saw that she had been wounded like they had, they wouldn’t trust the speaker.

On Seeing and Believing

Finally, quick word on seeing, but not really seeing. Thomas was a follower of Jesus and certainly would have wanted to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead. But for whatever reason (redaction critics have had a field day trying to guess why John portrayed him this way) he seems to not want to believe based on the testimony of others, but only on the trustworthiness of his own eyes. In the end Jesus allows that to happen, but adds, “Have you believed because you have seen me?[27] Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Believing through seeing is fine, but sometimes conviction empowers understanding in a way that facts cannot.

Do you remember the old Ted Danson and Joely Richardson movie, “Loch Ness” that came out in the mid-nineties? It’s about a lonely, discredited, anthropologist, who goes to Scotland to see if he can prove the story of the Loch Ness Monster. He rents a room from a widow and her daughter, and, of course, they eventually spark a relationship. At one point in the movie he has a talk with the daughter, played by Kirsty Graham, about the reality of the animal that no one has yet successfully proven the existence of. He tells her that he just can’t believe in something until he sees it (sound like Thomas?) and she responds that he’s got it all backwards. The truth is, you really can’t see it until you believe in it (sound like Jesus?). You can't really "see" truth, until you already "believe" truth. You can't really "see" the presence and actions and deeds and love of God through Jesus Christ, until you already "believe" that those things exist. The believing causes the ability to see. The ability to see doesn't have much effect on your ability to believe.

And after that, I guess, the pastor says “Amen.”

[1] 20:19-23 “Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples brings his bestowal of peace and of the Spirit, with assurance of his commissioning them to carry forward the work God gave to him, and the right to forgive or retain (hold them blameworthy for) the sins of members of the community” (Keck). “This appearance is astounding because Jesus apparently penetrated the closed room and manifested himself in their midst. He could do this because resurrection and the subsequent glorification had altered his form. In resurrection, he had become life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:42-45). At the same time, he still retained his humanity—but a glorified one. In resurrection, he was the same person in a different form (see Mark 16:12). In this new spiritual form, he was able to transcend all physical barriers. He was able to penetrate matter and even penetrate men.” New Commentary on the Whole Bible, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, General Editor: J. D. Douglas New Testament Editor: Philip W. Comfort (1995).

[2] That day, may have eschatological implications. In the OT, occasionally the term refers to the “day of the Lord.” Cf. Isaiah 52:6, “My people shall know my name; on that day they shall know it is I who speak.” John often uses this note of time (1:39; 5:9; 11:53; 14:20; 16:23, 26). John is using Roman time, not Jewish, for here evening follows day instead of preceding it. Note that NIB makes no reference to the eschatological possibilities, but instead says that its purpose here is to connect it with the previous story of the empty tomb where it is also used. Are these two theories mutually contradictory?

[3] First day of the week. John puts this event on the first day of the week, and the appearance to Thomas on the first day of the week, suggesting that the chronology may have been influenced by later Christian custom of celebrating the Lord's supper on the first day of the week. See Acts 22:7, 1 Cor. 16:2.

[4] “Disciples” (μαθητής/mathētḗs, masc. noun). From manthánō, to learn, to understand. A learner, pupil. It certainly included his disciples, but not necessarily only them, and may have included the women followers as well. “Though in the NT μαθητής generally refers to men, it is neutral as to sex distinction, and thus in a few instances in the NT also includes women (as in Ac 6.1, πληθυνόντων τῶν μαθητῶν ‘the number of disciples kept growing’).” Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd edition. (New York: United Bible societies, 1989), 1:470.

[5] For fear of the Jews, See John 7:13 for the phrase; cf. 12:42.

[6] Peace be with you (eirēnē humin). The usual salutation as in verses 21, 26; Luke 24:36. However, here it probably also is the fulfillment of with John 14:27, where Christ promised them his peace. Stoffregen says that it is usually used in John as a relational term, i.e. “may a peaceful relationship exist among you.” It doesn’t mean be calm, or have world peace. It means get along. “Whenever I see this word in the NT, I begin by defining it as a description of a type of relationship between people rather than a personal inner tranquility. The verbal form [ειρηνεύω - eirēneuō] always refers to relationships between people in the NT (Mk 9:50; Ro 12:18; 2C 13:11; 1Th 5:13). Given John’s emphasis on the disciples’ love for one another (13:35), I think it highly possible that it has a communal meaning. It is clear in 16:33 that peace does not mean “not having troubles in the world” -- which would tend to rule out the meanings eirene adopted from the Hebrew shalom.”

[7] “Showed” (edeixen, εδειξεν). First aorist active indicative of deiknumi, “This body, not yet glorified, retained the marks of the nails and of the soldier’s spear, ample proof of the bodily resurrection against the modern view that only Christ’s “spirit” arose and against the Docetic notion that Jesus had no actual human body. Luke (24:39f.) adds feet to hands and side.” (Word Pictures of the Greek New Testament)

[8] Rejoiced (echarēsan). Second aorist passive indicative of chairō. Thayer’s has rejoice, be exceedingly glad, to be well, and thrive. Strong’s adds “be full of cheer.”

[9] This is one of the three “commissions” given by the Risen Christ (another on the mountain in Galilee (Matt 28:16-20; 1 Cor 15:6), another on the Mount of Olives (Luke 24:44-51; Acts 1:3-11).

[10] He breathed on them (enephusēsen, first aorist active indicative of emphusaō). “Here only in N.T., though eleven times in the LXX and in the papyri” (Word Pictures in the Greek New Testament). “In Greek, pneuma means both breath and spirit. In Genesis 2:7, God breathes into the nostrils of Adam, giving him earthly life; the Septuagint translation uses pneuma here” (Haslem). “It occurs also in Ezek 37:9. See Christ’s promise in John 16:23. Jesus gives the disciples a foretaste of the great Pentecost” (Word Pictures). “Jesus’ breathing into them recapitulates God’s breathing into Adam (see Gen. 2:7, LXX, where enephusÎsen is used) and thus denotes that Jesus’ infusion inspired a new genesis, in which he regenerated the disciples (see 1 Peter 1:3)” (New Commentary on the Whole Bible). Compare Ezekiel 37:5.

[11] There is an article that is missing here. The gift bestowed was not that of the personal Holy Spirit, but rather an earnest of that gift; an effusion of the Spirit.

[12] “They are forgiven them” (ἀφέωνται αὐτοῖς). “Despite the present and the future tenses in many MSS, the variant apheōntai (perfect passive, ‘they are forgiven’) is probably original” (Barton, John and John Muddiman, The Oxford Bible Commentary, (London: Oxford University Press) 2001).

[13] 20:24-29 “Thomas, the absentee among the disciples, is first dubious about the resurrection claim, but then through a second appearance to the disciples he is shown the pierced hands and side of Jesus, and acclaims him as Lord and God” (Leander Keck).

[14] “Thomas.” (Thomás). “Twin.” Note that Didymus, below, means all but exactly the same thing.

[15] “Twin” (Didymus). From äßò (twice); means double, that is, twin old Greek word. Note that the term “twelve” is still applied to the group, though Judas is dead. The same expression applied to Thomas in 11:16; 21:2, but nowhere else in N.T. (Robinson, Word Pictures in the Greek New Testament).

[16] “The other disciples told him.” Note that it is the imperfect that is actually used here, “The other disciples kept telling him that ‘We have seen the Lord’.” The implication is clearly that they have repeatedly spoken to Thomas several time throughout the week.

[17] “We have seen the Lord” (heōrakamen ton kurion). This is the very language in the plural that Mary Magdalene had used (20:18) when no one believed her.

[18] “The mark” (τὸν τύπον). The print or stamp made by the nails. The fact that he wants to see it implies the disciples had told him that they had seen the typon of the nails in his hands and the spear in his side.

[19] “Then he said to Thomas” (eita legei tōi Thomāi ). Jesus turns directly to Thomas. The impression is given that the purpose for this visit is to speak to Thomas. He lists the very tests that Thomas had named (verse 25).

[20] “Do not doubt, but believe”( mē ginou apistos). “Although many translations include “doubt” in v. 27 -- and thus lead to the phrase “Doubting Thomas”, there is no Greek word for “doubt” in the verse. The contrast is between apistos and pistos—the only occurrence of both these words in John” (Brian Stoffregen). The word play is between apistos/ἄπιστος (disbelieving) and pistos/πιστός (believing), but not between doubting and believing. The KJV has “Be not faithless” (KJV), which means something like, “stop disbelieving; start believing.”

[21] “My Lord and My God” C.K. Barrett sees in this phrase a portion of “the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith.” A literal translation might be, “Lord of me (i.e. Jesus of history), God of me (i.e. Christ of faith).” “In 13:13–14 Jesus used ‘teacher’ and ‘lord’ as synonyms, but now ‘my Lord’ designates the risen Christ. ‘My God’ resumes the description of Jesus in the Prologue as ‘God’ (1:1, 18). In the OT Lord and God are associated terms (e.g. Ps 7:2–3; 30:3). This is more likely to be the background than the pagan acclamation of the emperor as Lord and God (but see Suetonius, Dom. 13: ‘dominus et deus noster’) (Oxford Bible Commentary).

[22] “Have you believed because you have seen me?” “Both verbs are perfect tense, which implies …a past action with continued effect in the present. This sentence also poses a punctuation problem: Is it a question as the nrsv translates it or a declaration as the niv translates it (“‘Because you have seen, you have believed’”)? We have the declaration: “Seeing is believing.” It’s not always true, but we say it” (Brian Stoffregen).

[23] 20:30-31 “The original conclusion of John's Gospel. The author indicates that he has chosen to report this group of Jesus' signs in order to persuade his readers that Jesus is the Messiah and to show them that through trust in him they may obtain life as God intended it to be” (Keck) .

[24] “Although most MSS, including several important ones (𝔓⁶⁶ א C D L W Θ Ψ f^{1, 13} 33 𝔐 lat), read αὐτοῦ (autou, “his”) after τῶν μαθητῶν (tōn mathētōn, “the disciples”), the pronoun is lacking in A B K Δ 0250 al. The weight of the witnesses for the inclusion is somewhat stronger than that for the exclusion. However, the addition of “his” to “disciples” is a frequent scribal emendation and as such is a predictable variant. It is thus most likely that the shorter reading is authentic. NA²⁷puts the pronoun in brackets, indicating doubts as to its authenticity.” NET Bible: First Edition (Biblical Studies Press, 2005).

[25] “Come to believe.” nrsv note: Other ancient authorities read may continue to believe. A thin majority of ancient texts have hina pisteuēste, which is in the aorist tense and means “come to believe.” However, a smaller but significant minority, have hina pisteuēte, which is present tense and means “continue to believe.” The difference is one letter. Most critical editions of the Greek New Testaments (mine is UBS 1972, 2nd ed.) have the word with a bracket around that one letter, like this hina pisteuē[s]te. The significance is that the slight-majority reading says the Gospel was written so that you will change and become a believer in Jesus as the Messiah. In that case it is meant as an evangelical statement. The slight-minority texts say it was written so that you (who are already believers) will continue to believe, in which case it is meant as a support or strengthening statement. One wants you to become a believer, the other wants you to put that belief into practice. One is written to bring you into the community, and the other is written be the community, that is, live up to what the community was meant to be.

[26] nrsv Note: Or the Christ

[27] It doesn’t change the overall meaning much, but the phrase “Have you believed because you have seen me?” (NRSV) could also be punctuated as a declarative statement, not as a question which would give, “Because you have seen, you have believed” (NIV).

Murders and Killings and Who Gets Charged with the Crime

Lent 3 C, Year C

Isaiah 55:1-9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

First the text and notes, followed then by my own commentary and sermon suggestions.

Luke 13:1-9

Repent or Perish

13 ¹At that very time[1] there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.[2] ² He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered[3] in this way they were worse sinners[4] than all other Galileans?[5]

³No, I tell you; but unless you repent,[6] you will all perish as they did.

⁴Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders[7] than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵No, I tell you; but unless you repent,[8] you will all perish just as they did.”

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

⁶Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree[9] planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. ⁷So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down![10] Why should it be wasting the soil?’

⁸He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹If it bears fruit next year,[11] well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”[12]

Commentary and Sermon Suggestions

As usual, our Gospel reading for this week, Luke 13:1-9, lifts up some very difficult theological issues. But that’s why we preach, isn’t it? That’s why preaching is important. If the ideas were easy, they wouldn’t hire people like you and me to untangle the knots and make sense out of them. J

This week I will only talk about the first half of the Gospel reading. For one thing, the first part, about death and sin and repentance, raises some powerful issues in and of itself, and probably, originally had nothing to do with the second half, about the survival of a fig tree. For another, I'm lazy and spent all week on the first half and will have to wrestle with fig trees another time.

According to the narrative arc that Luke is following or creating, this is the very last part of a much longer “speech” (or loose collection of sayings), that Jesus delivers after dinner at the home of a Pharisee. It was evidently a fairly large gathering because there were a number of people from the town present. The total speech runs from Chapter 12:1 to 13:9 and covers a number of topics roughly woven together (some more smoothly than others) around a larger theme about being vigilant in the face of crisis. Some of the issues included keeping their faith, and remaining morally and ethically strong, even under difficult conditions.

For example, the speech contains the statement that we shouldn’t spend our lives worrying about what we should wear or eat. So, Jesus says, “Remember the lilies of the fields: they neither toil nor spin, yet even Solomon in all his glory was not arraigned like one of these” (12:27). On another, he says to not give up on your faithfulness just because times are hard. And there's the story of the servants waiting for their master to come home after his wedding, who eventually got tired waiting and gave up on him. Jesus says, “blessed are those [servants] whom the master finds when he comes” (12:37).

Finally, here in 13:1-9, he comes to something of a climax in his talk. It is a call to repent and change our ways, a “change of heart and life manifest in fruitful lives” (New Interpreters' Study Bible). As I mention in the notes on the text above, Luke mentions repentance more often than any other book in the Bible. In fact, close to more often than all of the rest of the New Testament combined.

Then, that evening, presumably after dinner, someone in the crowd raises a question about a recent tragedy concerning some grizzly deaths that had occurred in the temple. Evidently Pilate had punished some Galileans for an unspecified crime (likely their involvement in an insurrection plot) by killing them and sprinkling their blood in with the blood of the sacrifice on the Temple altar. Incidentally, we have no other record of this happening, however it is very much in keeping with the gruesome policies of Pilate. Jesus’ response to it indicates that the questioner was probably suggesting that God had caused the deaths as a punishment for their being “worse sinners” than others.

Background “Riffs”

As an aside, here are a couple of “riffs” that you could go off on in your sermon that could flesh out the background of this simple two-sentence story. First would be to think about the possible underlying emotions driving this question. For example it could have reflected a basic prejudice by those in Jerusalem against the lower class Galileans who they believed should be considered sinners, prima facie, solely because of their class. An attitude that still lies just under the surface in much of our discourse about race and nationality and gender today. Or you might mention a frequent attitude among marginalized peoples that any opposition to the government is out of line and sinful. “Those people,” they might say, “could have put the lives of the rest of us in jeopardy by that action; they should have just stayed in their place and not tried a protest.” But in either case, the first thing Jesus says is no. I’ll come back to the second half of Jesus’ response in a moment.

A second riff could be to give a little primer on sacrifice as the mode of worship in the first century. It may have been more bloody than our modern methods of worship, but no less significant. In ancient Israel, sacrifices were gifts to God as a thank offering for the bounty that God had given them. And they saw it as a transformation of something temporal (the animal) into something transcendent (the smoke, the spirit from the animal). [13] We retain a lot of the symbolism of sacrifice in our worship today, but without the (bloody) physical actions behind them. It’s not our 21st century mode of worship, but don’t let the bloody aspects of it derail us from looking at Pilate’s even more bloody response and the moral and theological issues that the story raises.

Traditional location of the "Pool of Siloam"

The second story raised that evening came from Jesus himself. It was about a time when a tower in Siloam[14] by the waters fell over on top of people and killed 18 of them. This was probably tower that guarded the aqueduct bringing water to the pool of Siloam, that formed part of the old wall of Jerusalem.[15]

It was a terrible tragedy. Greg Jenks, a New Testament scholar at St Francis Theological College, in Australia, believes that both of these stories may be related. At about the same time that Jesus was making his way to Jerusalem, Pilate began an aqueduct project to bring more water to the city. That’s a good thing, but he was going to pay for it by stealing money from the Temple treasury and many local Jews protested that. So, the first group who died could have been enraged Jews who protested against the robbery, and then paid for it with their lives. And the second group could have been the workers on one of the towers related to the water project.[16] So, Jesus asks, were they suggesting that the people who Pilate killed and had their blood mixed with the Temple sacrifices were worse “sinners”? And that those who died in the tower collapse worse “offenders” for what they had done?

He asks both of these questions in a rhetorical way, The implication in both was yes, that is exactly what they were suggesting. Yes, they believed that because these poor people died the worst possible deaths, therefore they must have been the worst possible sinners.

Jesus’ responses to these two stories

The first part of his response to both questions is simple, of course not. And that answer is very helpful. God is not a killer. Thinking so is nice when you are talking about a Saddam Hussein or Bashar al Assad (brutal dictator of Syria) dying, but the argument gets a little weak when you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Haiti during its earthquakes and floods and cholera epidemic (which was, by the way, introduced to the island by the United Nations earthquake relief workers). Did they sin more than us, and therefore God destroyed their country? Of course not, and Jesus makes that plain.

But the second part is more difficult. I can understand his saying that you need to have a life of repentance and new meaningfulness, but it at least sounds like he is adding that if you don’t repent you will die just like those Galileans did, or you’ll die the way that they did. It’s the “like they did” part that remains troubling.

I don’t think he means that if you are a sinner, you will die in the same manner that they did. That is, you’ll have your blood mingled with some kind of Jewish blood-offering in a temple. And I don’t think he means that if you don’t repent, you’re going to die too. That one doesn’t actually make any sense, because of course you’re going to die. Everyone dies. It’s the end of life. It comes. Get over it. It doesn’t mean you’re a sinner if you die. It means you are mortal and your clock ran out.

But surely he does mean that if you don’t repent then you will die in some way that is similar to those guys. And that’s your biggest take home for a sermon from this passage. If you die and you have not turned your life around (Greek: metanoia) then it could, in fact, be argued that you will die cut off from God and from hope and peace in your bones, the very way that these people (might have) died. I say “might have” because since none of them lived to do interviews about their spiritual life we have to just say, “for the sake of argument, let’s say that none of them had a meaningful connection with God, and if you don’t turn you lives around, then you will die with the same lack of meaning." Jesus is not saying that that unless you repent (turn your life around) you’ll die too, just like they did, because you certainly will eventually die like they did, no matter what your repentance status is. But he is saying that when you die it will be a cut-off, soul-evacuated life—like theirs (probably) was.

One thing that might be helpful is to point out that, while the literal meaning of the word "perish" (apóllymi), refers to dying or eternal punishment, in the New Testament it is also often used to mean something closer to being lost or estranged or separated. For example, Mark 8:35: "those who want to save their life will lose (apolesei) it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." Or the three parables of Jesus in Luke 15, the shepherd who lost a sheep, the woman who lost a coin, and the father who lost his son, all use the word, apóllymi for the thing that is lost, and clearly none of the stories are about someone who is being punished for eternity for their sins.[17]

A more nuanced (and more accurate) reading of Jesus' words here about how we should respond to the deaths of the workers and protesters is to separate the two clauses. On the one hand, no, those people did not die for their sins. And on the other hand, you should not die separated from God. They are not closely related thoughts. You should turn your life around in meaningful, God-related, way now, because you may die estranged, alienated, separated from the love of God and others and yourself.

There are two things going on here.

The first, I think, is the deeper meaning that you shouldn’t throw blame around when you see suffering. That’s not only rude and in poor taste, it’s also a wrong use of the event. Instead use it as an occasion to change your own life.

When you see a car accident, don’t say, “whew! Those stupid bozos. I’m sure glad I’m not like those guys.” A better response would be to feel shaken and torn inside and think to yourself, “how awful that was. It makes me realize how fragile and temporary life is. I should take life more seriously and meaningfully.” The most important “learning” that we should find in a death (if indeed there is one, and sometimes I’m not sure), is not that the person who died deserved to die, or that God “Took him home.” It’s silly and unproductive to think that God picks and chooses who to kill off according to the level of sinfulness in the deceased, or from some dark divine plan that only God understands.

When I preach on this story, I often use a real story of an exchange I heard at the collation following a funeral years ago. A lot of well-intentioned people were milling around saying it was sad, and all, that old John died, but y’know, he was a rounder back when he was a kid, and God probably gave him that diabetes and gangrene that took him, as a punishment for all that.” After two or three of these exchanges, an old Methodist on-the-wagon alcoholic, who knew a thing or two about “rounders” and sin, glowered at them over the punch bowl and said, that if God strikes down people for the sins of their youth, then every single man and woman in this town would be walking around with a limp.”

I love that story. As Paul says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Whenever we blame someone’s death on their sin, or on God’s capricious taking them home, or because it was “their time,” we tread in dangerous, almost evil waters.

There are only two potentially “good” responses to death (note the cautionary use of quotes and italics, because any good response can be abused if we try hard enough). One would be to ask how can I turn my life around and become a better person in light of the death of this loved one? Or “How can I celebrate this person’s life by creating a better life?” The second is like it. “How can I create a world in which there is a smaller number of children washing up on the shores of Greece or Spain or Britain, or emergency rooms or jails or homeless shelters in the US?”

So, it’s most likely that when Jesus says that without repentance, you will die as they did, he was saying something like, “unless you repent and turn your life around you will die—not in the manner they did, but in the spiritual state that they did. That is, not that repentance will keep you from dying at all (which it clearly will not), or that repentance will keep you from dying with a tower falling on your head (which would be interesting but silly for the story), but from dying while lost, alienated, and separated from God. Unless you change and return to God, you will die cut off from God as (presumably) those people did. So, repentance is not related to their death, it’s related to their life. Their sin (of separation) had nothing to do with their deaths. It had to do with their lives.

Conclusion, summary and difficult issues

Someone in the crowd raised this issue because he or she believed that there was a direct correlation between sin and suffering. These people suffered horrible deaths. Does that mean that they must have been terrible people? It is the question found in Job, Psalm 37 and 73 and others. John 9:2. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?”

We (you and me) occasionally raise that question too. And occasionally there appears to be a link between the two. But on the whole, hunting down that link is a bad direction to go in. The clarity of the down side is far worse than the ambiguity of the up side. If we say that God punishes those who are sinners and rewards those who are saints, then we get dangerously close to saying that the people who died in the 9-11 tragedy (or in the plane crash in Ethiopia, or the racist mass killing in New Zealand...or whatever) were somehow more guilty than the rest of us. And if we say that God rewards those who are good, then we slide overly close to saying that some people are financially successful because they were somehow more morally good than the rest of us. I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared to say that. How about Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund manager, who bought up the rights to Daraprim, an important and inexpensive life-saving drug, and then jacked up the price 5,000 percent, actually putting at risk the lives of thousands of people? And who had absolutely no remorse for his actions later when questioned about it in Congress.

Jesus brushes aside that theology and recasts the issue: If you don’t change your ways, and live a life of repentance and trust in God, then you are going to approach death with a life that has no meaningful connections to life eternal, a meaningless life. Without a life of repentance, all of the rest of life is empty and lost. I think that’s a more fruitful direction in which to go, and I think it was what Jesus was getting at: don’t dwell on whether God did this awful act; dwell on pondering what we are going to be like in light of it? Who am I going to be in light of it? How is it going to change me?

Occasionally we see people who are wonderful people and successful and healthy and we can think we see a direct relation between their moral life and their checkbook or health. And occasionally we’ll see a real scumbag who died young or badly with some degree of justice. However, we all can also remember examples of truly decent people who died long, protracted, awful, unjust deaths. So don’t ascribe the hand of God in those. It just isn’t there. What Jesus calls us to is the quality of life, the relation with God life. Not a financially or medically rewarding life. Don’t ask a theological question about the ethics or morals of people who died in an accident, ask how that accident can bring us to change our relationship with God and with our world. This is the theological question that makes the most sense. You all are going to die anyway, just like the people whose blood Pilate mingled with the blood at the altar and who died under the crushing collapsing building. You don’t have a choice in that. But you do have a choice in how you live your life before you get there.

[1] “At that very time” (en autōi tōi kairōi). A frequent idiom of Luke’s. Emphatic about the particular time: “At that very time “at the time itself.” The kjv has “at that season.” There have been a number of guesses as to what “time” he was referring to, but there’s no consensus on them. Fitzmyer says that while “The transition creates the impression of a report about something that has recently happened,” it may just be “a transition composed by Luke to join this episode to the foregoing.

(Joseph A. Fitzmyer S.J., The Gospel according to Luke X–XXIV: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, vol. 28A, Anchor Yale Bible [New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008], p. 1006.

[2] “Whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices” (hoôn to haima Peilatos emixen meta toôn thusioôn autoôn). The verb emixen is first aorist active (not past perfect) of mignumi, a common verb. The net and niv have “mixed.”

^{^[3]}“Suffered” (peponthasin). Second perfect active indicative third plural from paschoô, common verb, to experience, suffer. The tense notes that it is “an irrevocable fact” (F.F. Bruce).

[4] “Sinners” (“öåéëÝôáé). From QìáñôÜíù, hamartanō (to miss the mark [and so not share in the prize]), i.e., sinful, missing where we should be in terms of righteousness.

[5] “Worse Sinners than all other…” (hamartoôloi para pantas). Para means “beside,” as in being placed beside the Galileans for comparison, and so beyond or above (with the accusative). Lit. they sinned beyond all the Galileans.

[6]“Unless you repent” (ean meô metanoeôte,ìåôáíïyôå). Have a change of heart, change one’s ways. Lit.: Unless you reform your lives and the way you live…. Present active subjunctive of metanoeoô, to change both one’s mind and conduct, and keep on changing. Calls to repent are much more common in Luke than in other NT writers.

[7] “Offenders” (öåéëÝôáé, opheiletai). Literally, debtors, not sinners as in v. 2, and as the kjv has. See 7:41; 11:4; Matthew 6:12; 18:24-34. One who is under obligation, One who owes something to another. That is, a person indebted, a debtor. Translated as sinner, or offender, because debtors were considered transgressors of the law by virtue of their not paying their debts. From “öåßëù, “öåéëÝù, opheiloô opheileoô, to owe (pecuniarily); figuratively to be under obligation (ought, must, should); morally to fail in duty.

[8] “Unless you repent” (ean meô metanoeôseôte). First aorist active subjunctive, immediate repentance in contrast to continued repentance, metanoeôte in verse 3, though Westcott and Hort put metanoeôte in the margin here. The interpretation of accidents is a difficult matter, but the moral pointed out by Jesus is obvious. Again, calls to repentance are mentioned more often in Luke than in any other gospel.

[9] “Fig tree” Fig trees in the Hebrew scripture were often symbols for Judah or Israel. Cf. Hos 9:10; Micah 7:1; Jer. 8:13; 24:1-10).

[10] “Cut it down!” ἔκκοψον [οὖν] {C} “In order to reflect the balance of external evidence for and against the inclusion of οὖν, as well as the absence of any compelling consideration relating to transcriptional and intrinsic probabilities, the Committee felt obliged to retain the word in the text, but to enclose it within square brackets, indicating a measure of doubt that it has a right to stand there.” Metzger, Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, second edition.

[11] “If it bears fruit next year” (kan men poieôseôi karpon eis to mellon). Aposiopesis, sudden breaking off for effect (Robertson, Grammar, p. 1203). See it also in Mark 11:32; Acts 23:9. Trench (Parables) tells a story like this of intercession for the fig tree for one year more.

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[12] “At the end of this verse there is added in some manuscripts, ‘as he said this, he called out, ‘Let the one who has ears to hear take heed.’” (Fitzmyer, p. 1009).

[13] See for background, William K. Gildershttp, “Sacrifice in Ancient Israel” www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/related-articles/sacrifice-in-ancient-israel.aspx. Retrieved, 02/27/16

[14] See “The Locations of the Pools of Siloam,” https://againstjebelallawz.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/the-locations-of-the-pools-of-siloam/

[15] Fitzmyer, p. 1008.

[16] His thoughts on this, and extensive quotes from Josephus’ writings about Pilate’ brutality on the Jews, can be found here: http://gregoryjenks.com/2013/02/24/lent-3c-3-march-20143/.
[17] Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), p. 67.