Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

March 20, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

Now What?

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 55:1–9
Luke 13:1–9

Back in the summer of 1997, I served as a chaplain at what was then known as Hermann Hospital in Houston, a Level 1 trauma hospital with an extensive burn unit. As a chaplain, unless I was on call for the entire hospital overnight, I made rounds on both the fifth floor and the third floor. The fifth floor was not too bad. It was the general medicine floor. People had a variety of ailments, but most survived their stay and were able to go home.

The third floor, however, was a different story. It was the floor for general pediatrics. Whenever I walked into the rooms, I saw babies and children hooked up to a variety of machines. Some kids remained unconscious. Several babies could not be held by their families due to the variety of tubes encircling them. Parents who were able to be present simply tried to wade through the midst of it all—watching, waiting, wondering, hoping.

I never knew what to expect when I walked into a room. One morning, I found a little baby hooked up to breathing machines and a various assortment of monitors. Her young mother sat next to her crib. I introduced myself and told her I had come by to see how she was doing. She nodded her head and said, “I’m glad you are here, Chaplain, because I have figured out why God made my baby sick.” I stood there, stunned into silence. She kept talking. “God wants me to be closer to him. So, he made my baby sick. I am praying a lot more now and really listening for him now. That’s why I know God will make her well soon.”

I still had no words, because I was honestly horrified at her reasoning. I wanted to scream out, “No. God is not like that. God would not do that to your baby. You’ve got it wrong.” But I swallowed my words and kept silent. At that moment, her faith, no matter how I heard it, was the only thing sustaining her. Her baby was terribly sick. The only way this young mother could stay by her bedside was if she could make sense of the chaos. For the sake of her own sanity, she had to have a reason. God had to be testing her. Therefore, I decided to just remain with her and listen. It was not the time for a theology lesson. And as I left that room, I felt depressed and rather helpless.

But let’s be honest: even those of us whose theology claims that God would never make our babies sick to get our attention, even we can react like that young mother when trouble strikes. I hear the questions; I have asked the questions: “Why cancer again? Why is my relationship unraveling? Why is my teen having such a tough time? Why have I lost my job? Why has war broken out one more time?”

And underneath those questions are the larger issues: “Why did you let this happen to me, God? What did we do to deserve this? Haven’t we been faithful enough?” Even those of us whose theology claims that suffering is not tied to faithfulness sometimes react like this when trouble strikes.

Apparently our world is not very different from the one painted by Luke. The people gathered around Jesus are asking these same questions. “Did you hear, Jesus? Did you hear that Pilate killed the Galileans when they were in worship? What had they done to deserve it? Did you hear, Jesus? Did you hear that the towers fell on those people in Siloam? They must have really messed up for God to let that happen. Isn’t that right, Jesus?”

Honestly, their questions remind me of what the Russian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Kirill declared this week when he affirmed the Kremlin’s military assault on the people of Ukraine. He preached it was the result of the spiritual struggle against sin and liberal foreigners who pressure nations to espouse more progressive values (Peter Smith, “Moscow Patriarch Stokes Orthodox Tensions with War Remarks,” 8 March 2022, abcnews.go.com). The Patriarch seemed to declare that it is somehow Ukraine’s fault that Russian chose to invade and that the brutal attacks are divinely sanctioned as God’s judgment against their growing ties with the West. Our own American televangelist Pat Robertson declared God compelled Putin to invade to fulfil biblical prophecy (Patricia McKnight, “Retired Evangelist Pat Robertson Says Putin Is Fulfilling Biblical Prophecy,” Newsweek, 28 February, 2022). That’s why the Ukrainians have to suffer. Right, Jesus?

Yet to the despair of disciples then and now, Jesus refused to fall into their trap. He does not answer the “why” question. Instead he responds with what seems to be both good and bad news. The good news is very good to hear: You don’t suffer because God needs revenge. The baby did not get sick because the young mother was unfaithful. The Galileans did not die because they were worse sinners than others. Ukraine has not been invaded because of God’s anger with “liberals” or freedom of speech or any other scapegoat the Kremlin chooses to use. God is not a Great Disciplinarian in the sky, handing out punishments, letting bombs drop on maternity hospitals, or making babies sick to prove any kind of divine point.

I think that is pretty good news. But then again, Jesus was not done. He continued teaching. “You must repent, though, or you will perish just as they did,” he states. So, let’s get this straight: When they ask their “why” question, Jesus’ response is “Repent or perish?” I don’t know about you, but I am not sure if I understand Jesus’ logic here.

If suffering is not God’s judgment on our faithfulness or unfaithfulness, then why does Jesus tell us to repent or perish? Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Perhaps Jesus is not trying to help our logic but rather he is trying to disarm it. Could it be that Jesus is trying to throw up into the air our need for logic so he might remind us that we simply cannot control everything that happens in our lives and in our world?

No matter how hard we try, no matter how many times we go to the doctor, no matter how big a car we drive, no matter how much we pray, no matter how many alarm systems we buy or guns we own, we cannot completely protect ourselves, nor can we make ourselves invulnerable to suffering. Whether we like it or not, and I don’t, the possibility of suffering or causing the suffering of others is a part of what it means to live in God’s free creation. As my spiritual formation professor once said, God has too profound a respect for human freedom for it to be any other way.

But does this mean, though, that God does not care or is absent when trouble strikes? Not the God of our faith. Not the God of Jesus Christ, who experienced both the manger and the cross. God’s story in scripture shows us God’s heart is the first heart to break when babies are sick, when people hear the scary diagnosis, when the bombs fall, the drones strike, the job is lost, and another child is shot in our city of Chicago. Because of that manger and that cross, we know there is not a single human experience of pain or joy that God has not taken into God’s self. Because of the story of God’s love in Jesus, we can expect and eventually recognize the presence of God even in the depths of tragedy and suffering and not just when we escape the tragedy and suffering (Shirley Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, p. 187).

That truth of how God is for us is why I conclude Jesus is trying to disarm our desire for logic. Perhaps Jesus hoped if we could let go of that desire, we might then ask a different question, a question that could lead to a different life. What if, instead of asking “Why did this happen to me?” we asked, “How, then, will I live and help others to live in a world where this kind of human-made or nature-made suffering happens?”

That new kind of question might be why Jesus calls us to repent, to turn. Perhaps Jesus is preaching “Turn. Turn away from blaming—those in authority, those you don’t like, God, victims, yourselves. Turn away from explaining—trying to make sense of senseless tragedies and searching for reasons when there aren’t any to be found. Turn away from the death of living a life bound by certainty and fear, so you might turn to living a life strengthened by a realization of God’s mystery and presence.”

For I know from experience, and my guess is that you do too, that if we do indeed stay completely focused on how we could have, should have, prevented something from happening or if we live in paralyzing fear of what might be coming next, we will indeed perish. There is no doubt about it. We will be eaten alive by fear or by guilt or by a combination of both. We will forget that there is life to be lived, fruit that we are still called to bear.

And after disarming their logic, Jesus then tells a parable. Listen to it again: A landowner had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So 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! Why should it be wasting the soil?” The gardener replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

If I understand the text, then one way to hear this parable is that Jesus is prompting us to make a choice. Will we live as if God is like the landowner: One who rips us out and throws us away when we mess up, when we are unfaithful, when we do not produce good fruit? Or will we live like God is like the gardener: One who is bound and determined to tend to us, to do whatever it takes to give us another year, in the hopes that the fruit might finally start to bloom and grow?

My hope would be that on more days than not we would live our lives turning away from a theology that sees God as the Great Disciplinarian in the Sky, a Presence who causes Pilate to slay Galileans or topples towers onto people in response to unfaithfulness or unfruitfulness. For if that is who we understand God to be, then we will eventually put ourselves in that judgment seat, assuming we can know why things happen to other people, believing they just must not have been faithful enough or fruitful enough and isolating ourselves from the suffering of others in order not to be tainted by it. I would hope that on more days than not we would turn away from that way of being in the world. For that way of being will only lead to perishing in the heat of barren certainty and fear.

Rather, I would hope that on more days than not we would say yes to Jesus’ invitation to trust our Gardener God: the One who waits with us and for us to turn, to grow stronger, to bear fruit. The One who calls us to resist trying to explain away the suffering of others, but instead to shoulder it alongside them; to do what we can to alleviate it; to remind them they are not alone; and to trust that same promise for ourselves as well. For that way of being will lead to deeper roots, fruitfulness, and life.

Allow me to offer one last example from the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, an example that speaks to what bearing fruit in the presence of our Gardener God looks like. In an interview this past week, Ukrainian seminary professor and pastor Fyodor Raychynets, who remains in Kyiv, spoke of the importance not just of the frontline of a war but the rearguard as well. He considers himself a part of that rearguard. Here is what he said:

In these rearguards, there are so many things to do. So many things to be useful. So we decided that when the war started, we will build a small volunteers group and we will just serve to the people who suffered the most from the war. And these are the elderly people. We feed them because they are in the basements. They have no idea what’s going on outside the world. And they’re just there. Blocked. They are scared to death. So many of them could never dream that they will experience a war again in their lifetime. They are there hungry, without electricity, without water. So what we decided to do is we decided just to provide to these people.

He then goes on to speak of the critical importance of doing all he can do personally, which includes constantly bathing himself in prayer, to hold on to his humanity, even in the midst of such violence and suffering. Otherwise, he stated, if he gave into hate and into the temptation of seeing their oppressor as less than human, then the enemy would win. And he would lose himself. Perish. (Fyodor Rayschnets, “A Voice from Kyiv: Faithful Presence in the War on Ukraine,” For the Life of the World, Yale Center for Faith and CultureTo me, that sounds like trying to live in a world where God is indeed more like the patient Gardner rather than the landowner.

But let’s not kid ourselves. This turning thing is hard to do. It is difficult to live asking the “now what” question rather than the “why me, or why them” question. Living as a part of the rearguard has its challenges. Yet maybe if we can keep practicing this turning again and again back to the One who gives us life, back to the One who is present in all of life, back to the One who will do whatever it takes to tend to us, even becoming one of us, then maybe, over time and after all of that turning, the energy we spend with that “why me or why them” question will grow less and less.

And it might even be that the “why me or why them” question will eventually be transformed by God’s grace into the affirmation “Even in this, you are with us, so now what. How shall we live?” And by God’s constant grace and tending, maybe we will even bear the kind of fruit that God would hope for us, and then we could be free enough to be a part of God’s rearguard, helping others do the same. Amen.