How to deal with tragedies in our life.

HOW TO VIEW TRAGEDIES

Lk.   13:1-9

That must have been an awful tragedy - those poor worshippers innocently engaged in offering their sacrifice, when suddenly soldiers came and put them to the sword.  News of that atrocity was brought to Jesus and it gave Him an opportunity to correct a false notion that some people had about God and tragedies that take place.

Some thought that if a tragedy occurred God had brought it about to punish people for the wrong they had done.  But God does not work like that!  He is not cruel, ready to pounce on people if they don’t do what they are told.  God loves us very much and wants nothing but our good.  He is also very, very patient when we continually offend Him.  He gives us time to repent.  Why do we blame Him if tragedies happen?

On hearing this news Jesus said, “Do you suppose those Galileans who suffered like that were greater sinners than any other Galileans?”  He also reminded them of another recent tragedy, and posed the same question, “Do you think those victims were more guilty than anyone else?”  His answer to both questions was, “They were not.”

With that discussion as a backdrop, Jesus told the story of a barren fig tree.  It had been planted and given special care.  It had every opportunity to be fruitful, but had failed.  Then it was given one more chance.  If it failed again, the tree would be cut down.

There can be no doubt whom Jesus had in mind with the telling of that story.  It was His own people.  He saw them as a nation that had received the special favour of God; no other nation had so rich a spiritual heritage.  They could trace their roots back to Abraham, who was called ‘the friend of God’.

They had Moses and the Exodus, as the centrepiece of their culture.  There had been a long succession of prophets, who had spoken to them on God’s behalf.  They had the sacred Scriptures, as a permanent record of their noble history, but from all these benefits so little had come.  They were like a carefully tended fig tree that produced nothing.

If Jesus were here today would He tell us the same story?  Does that fruitless fig tree stand as an accurate likeness of our modern Church?  We also have a rich and noble heritage.  It includes the history of Israel – Abraham, Moses and the prophets.  It has been extended to include Jesus, the Apostles and that priceless collection of writings known as the New Testament.

We have the Cross of Jesus as the centrepiece of our faith, and the examples of the saints as the pattern for our pilgrimage.  Yet does it seem that so little has come from all this?  Would Our Lord give us the same warning as He gave to His own nation?  We are a privileged people, but along with these privileges come some serious responsibilities, which we neglect at our own peril.

Our first responsibility is to recognise that we are indeed privileged.  There is a tendency for us to focus on the things we want, but do not have.  All the while, we forget those things that we have, but did not earn.  This was the failing of the people who first heard the parable of the barren fig tree.  They wanted political freedom more than anything else on Earth.  They hated and despised their bondage under the Romans. They dreamed that one day a redeemer would come and drive these foreigners from their land.  Occasionally, a revolt would break out, and Rome would crush it with ruthless brutality.

Meanwhile, the blessing that they did possess went virtually unnoticed.  They were contemporaries of Jesus when He walked their streets, taught in their synagogues and shared their daily life.  But they failed to notice Him as their Redeemer!  For a while, He created a flurry of excitement.  When they decided He would not help them defeat Rome, they lost interest.  Their obsession with what they wanted, but did not have, blinded them to greater riches.

I am reminded of that touching story, of the butcher who saw his shop go up in flames.  In despair he said, 'I’ve lost everything' - but his five-year-old daughter was holding his hand!  She said to him, “Daddy, you haven’t lost everything, you still have me.”  Our first responsibility is to see our privileges, and to recognise them for what they are.

When people reported to Jesus the tragedy of the Galileans, He had a lesson to teach them.  He was annoyed with them, not for bringing the report, but for what He knew they were thinking.  They held that misfortune was always the consequence of sinful living.  Jesus hated that attitude of mind, not only for what it said about God, but for what it said about the people who believed it.  When tragedy happened to someone else and not to them, they saw that as a sign of their own goodness.  That life had treated them more kindly was, in their minds, a sure indication that they were more worthy and pleasing to God.  Thus, they thought well of themselves, and were exempted from feeling compassion for the less fortunate.

Do we think along the same lines?  How do we regard our own good fortune?  When life smiles on us, do we ever take that as a sign of our worthiness?  When others fail to do as well, what do we think of them?  Have we ever looked upon poverty as a stigma?  Are the poor somehow less worthy than the rest of us?  What about those who have AIDS - has the thought ever crept into our minds that they got what they deserved?  If we search our hearts with honesty, we might be surprised by what we find there.

Lord Jesus, whenever we hear of tragedies, and there seem to be many these days, let us be compassionate towards those who have suffered.  Let us pray for them.  Let us not jump to the conclusion that they must have deserved this.  We pray that we will not be like that fruitless fig tree, but bear fruit in our lives because God has nurtured and cared for us.

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