Adult Bible Study February 10, 2008

Lesson Text: Luke 13:1-9
By George Epp
E-mail: g.epp@sasktel.net

“I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish!” Luke 13:3 TNIV

There’s nothing abnormal about wanting to know the causes behind the events happening in our world. Currently, the talk around us includes reference to global warming as a cause of the apparent increase in the severity of weather: frequent avalanches in the Rockies, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the melting icecap in the Arctic, unprecedented flooding in Asia. We want to know why, as if in the knowing we might have some chance of averting the tragedies severe weather causes.

We still meet people whose search for causes leads them to question whether tragedy is a consequence of sin. If sin and disobedience cause God to visit us with dire weather as a lesson or punishment, then whose sin are we talking about? If the Arctic icecap melts and the Inuit people are forced to give up their livelihoods as a result, will it be because they have sinned? Or will it be because the corporate executives in high towers sinned? Or will it be because all have sinned? This is treacherous ground, and Jesus recognizes this in the question put to him regarding the massacre of the Galileans by Pilate. “Was their sin the cause of their misfortune?” In Luke 13:3, his answer is: “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
           
Sin is a general condition, according to Jesus’ teaching in Luke 13. Those of us who point the finger at others in regard to their sinfulness and its consequences are making a big mistake. Jerry Falwell said after 9/11, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, ‘you helped this to happen.’” (see www.gainesvillehumanists.org/attack.htm#joint). According to Jesus, such horrible things happen because unrepentance is a general condition.
           
On the other hand, we have Jesus’ parable of the fig tree and the gardener who pleads with the owner to give it one more chance rather than cutting it down. In the matters of global warming and the chaos in the Middle East (among many others), it’s the pleading of the gardener Jesus with the Father in heaven that prevents the hacking down of the nations, and pleads with us to repent and prepare to bear fruit fit for the kingdom.
           
How tragic when so many of the weak have to suffer and die for the sins of us all!