Jan 28 2020 - Luke 13:1-21 – Did they deserve it?

A few years ago, the BBC news carried a strange item about a Japanese beak fish that had arrived on the shores of Oregon, carried in a small boat that had been swept out to sea in the tsunami. For two years the waterlogged boat had drifted across the Pacific carrying its strange passenger to the shores of the United States.

This story reminds us of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. Many thousands were killed or left homeless and nuclear reactors at Fukushima were crippled, leading to the release of troubling levels of radiation. What are we to make of such disasters? Should we seek to identify some particular trait in the Japanese – perhaps particularly those living in the most stricken areas – that provoked such a judgment? And what are we to say of famines or disease such as HIV that plagues so many parts of Africa? What have those who suffer untimely death done to deserve such a fate?

This was the question that was posed to Jesus when he was told of the Galileans who had been slaughtered by Pilate in the very act of offering sacrifices. This is the question he posed to his audience concerning the eighteen who died when a tower fell on them in Siloam; "Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?" (Luke 13:4). Jesus' answer is that they were not picked out by the hand of God because they were particularly worthy of judgment; they were just the same kind of people that you find anywhere else. More to the point, they were just the same kind of people as you or me.

Such disasters should move us firstly to compassion. Those affected are just like us. How would we wish others to respond if we or those we love were caught up in such things? We need to consider what we can do to help them and to bring them some measure of relief.

Secondly, we grieve that we live in a world where such things happen and where 'innocent' lives can be swept away in a moment. The world we live in is not as God planned that it should be, or created it to be; it is a world groaning with the longing to be transformed at Christ's coming (Romans 8:20-22). And we who have learned the heart of God for his broken world long for the day when all things shall be made new. We are pained by the sadness of a fractured world and cry out to God – sometimes with groans beyond words – for its mending.

And last, but by no means least, we want the confused inhabitants of this broken world to turn to God in hope. In response to the crowds who asked whether those struck down in an untimely manner were particularly deserving of such a fate Jesus replied, "I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish" (Luke 13:5). Such disasters remind us that sooner or later death will come to each of us; we are all mortal; we shall all face that great undoing. We, and every person in this dying world, need to know the living God, and to know in Christ crucified and risen from the dead the indestructible hope of a world made new.

This is the message of the gospel; there is hope beyond disaster for all who will trust in the crucified and risen Christ. He gives hope in the face of death and hope for a world made new.

Heavenly Father, keep me from quick and crass judgments concerning the misfortunes of others. Give me a heart of compassion for those who suffer pain and loss in this broken world. Give me the wisdom to see what I can do to bring hope and healing in place of hurt and despair.

Peter Misselbrook