Taking Care of Business

March 07, 2010

Third Sunday in Lent
Isaiah 55:1-9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

Listen to part one of this sermon.

Listen to part two of this sermon.

One day some people who had been following Jesus asked him about a recent event concerning a number of Galileans who were murdered by Roman soldiers as they went about their temple rituals. Lacking the internet, New York Times and television, this news was evidently a hot word-of-mouth story. "Did you hear that Pilate murdered some of our brothers while offering sacrifice at the temple?" Surely stories like this fueled the resentment and insurgent political spirit boiling in the hot sand.

But interestingly, the questioners were especially troubled in this way: since these Galileans were about the business of performing holy obligations, how is it that God allowed their deaths? Given the strict cause and effect piety of the day they asked if these victims had somehow deserved to die due to some grievous sin, especially since it was the reprehensible Romans who killed them.

So Jesus asks them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?" The answer is a flat no. Then he tells of another recent tragedy concerning a tower that fell on eighteen persons and asks the same question. Did these seeming innocents somehow deserve to die? Again the answer is no, but in each case he tells his questioners to repent, for surely their own situation is precarious. Those who died were no worse than those who were still living, but their living was no special credit to them and it would be best if they engaged in a little soul searching.

Whenever I encounter this passage, especially the part about the tower, being a New Yorker I cringe just a bit. It reminds me of the two towers that came down at the end of our island. And then the recent earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist bombings, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and any number of other deadly calamities makes me wince at Jesus' teaching. I'm thinking his actual listeners cringed and winced as well, trying to make sense of seeming random violence and death.

They had their own version of corrupt and uncertain politics, of course. Pilate had his reasons for having the Galileans blood mingled with their sacrifices. He was a brutal, cynical man. In fact, we know that eventually he was removed from his governorship in part due to his brutality. But even so, by the time the gospel of Luke was written Rome had pretty well crushed the Jewish resistance. Ultimately the temple was razed, literally torn apart and thrown down. Rome did what it thought politically and militarily expedient. When people got in the way they had to be removed.

Variations of the same happens today. We have our own political and military responses to perceived threats to our security and so-called "way of life"; we devise rationales and means for manipulating the political environments in far away places, which in turn put other innocents in other lands at risk by both design and accident.

And then, too, an 8.8 earthquake can shatter a city just a few weeks following the destruction of the poorest nation in the hemisphere. All this human suffering piling up overwhelms our hearts' and brains' storage and processing capacities. But one thing all this makes abundantly clear: life is fragile.

Life is fragile. This is a great truth. One of the greatest truths. This very fragility animates so very much human behavior to both good and ill effect. And yes, it does seem human moral failure, or let's just call it sin, lies behind a lot of human suffering. So often the actual victims of this moral failure seem innocent as do those who suffer from random accidental causes. If a drunk driver crosses the median extinguishing the life of a young mother, what sense are we to make of it from her perspective even after we've assumed the morally superior position concerning drunk driving? The base-line matter here concerns our fragile human situation, our being born and having to die.

Now there would be many a preacher at this point who would move quickly to reassure his listeners with a word of comfort, something about how God is present in our suffering, perhaps most present to us in our difficult moments. And that's certainly an appropriately pastoral way to go with this - important truth lies in that direction. In fact, in the weeks just ahead in our season of Lent you will hear me say among other things, how Jesus bears our suffering and then transforms it into something that startles us in joyful, astonished wonderment, transforming our fear into faith.

But for the moment, and for all of his sacrificial compassion, I'm noticing that isn't how Jesus speaks when pressed about those Galileans murdered by Pilate. He did clear up some bad theology concerning a strict cause and effect of sin and death. But he also implied that no simple answer, even a seemingly morally superior one, saved his questioners from the responsibility of examining the content of their own lives. There was no clear, discernable reason for the length of their days on earth. And a quick rush to solution provided a too-easy by-pass around very substantive questions about the content their lives. It's a rather sobering, even shocking splash of cold water in the face for the spiritually complacent.

Several years ago I was speaking with someone whose good friend was in the final stages of an advanced cancer. Close for many years, Jeff had been emotionally attentive and caring for his friend whose life, shall we say, was not neatly wrapped up. I was a witness to Jeff's caring attention. A reflective person, Jeff said his friend's premature end had caused him to think about his own life and it had occurred to him that if he were about to die, he could honestly say that he had "taken care of business."

Now I have known Jeff for many years. I've known something about the business he has taken care of. I've known about his extended family, how he worked at resolving damaged and conflicted relationships and how he had lived into the role of a father himself. I've been privy to both his inner and outer journey and when he said he had taken care of business it rang true with my experience of him.

In that quiet moment before the final breath of his friend, it dawned on Jeff that he had accomplished a lot of work that had been his to tackle up to that point. No telling the work that lay ahead, but for now I said to him that he must have a sense of deep peace. He replied that most of all he was very grateful.

This conversation has haunted me over the last few years. It comes to mind from time to time with the attention grabbing question: Steve, have you been taking care of business? I mean, really taking care of business…the real business…the real work of my life and not simply important-seeming surface preoccupations and distractions? You know what I mean. The relational work, the spiritual work, the compassionate work, the work related to really listening to this God I say I believe in. The work related to things like forgiveness and character and compassion and love, the things that make for-as Jesus might say it-abundant life.

Life is so very fragile. So precious. So priceless. And for whatever unnamed, unknown reason, you and I have yet more time. Time to think, time to act, time to repent, that is, time to turn around, do our real work and get it right. Time to dig around our roots and fertilize the soil from which they draw their nourishment. Time yet to stretch out our branches and finally bear fruit that is worthy of the life that has been given us.

Friends, there is wonderful grace in this. Remarkable grace. Miraculous grace. A gift not to be squandered. Do you hear the admonition in the voice of Jesus with your name attached? Take care of business…for God's sake…and for your own...and for your family and even for the sake of the world….

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