Jesus Responds to Current Events

Or, at least the closest things we have to it in the gospels.

Blessed second Sunday of Easter to you. Where do you see life today?

This might be the closest we get in the gospels to someone asking Jesus about current events. The stories of Pilate’s killing of the Galileans and the tower that fell in Siloam seem to have been well-known tragedies. They involve government violence and sudden disaster. These are the kind of things people talk about and try to make sense of.

And so they bring them to Jesus, perhaps with the same kinds of questions we still ask. What does this mean? Why does God allow it? Should something be done?

Jesus’ response is notable. He doesn’t comment on Pilate. He doesn’t analyze the collapse of the tower. He doesn’t assign blame or offer political critique. Instead, he turns the question inward. Do you think they were worse sinners than everyone else? No. But unless you repent, you too will perish.

It’s a piercing response, and maybe an unsatisfying one for many contemporary minds. It doesn’t resolve the tension of injustice or explain the tragedy. It redirects it. It would seem to many that his response avoids particular aspects of the issue. Jesus refuses to let these events become speculation or distance.

This does not mean that the pain or injustice of the world is unimportant. Nor does it mean that Christians should do nothing. But it does challenge how we have been formed to respond. We live in a world that tells us to analyze, react, and fix. We assume that awareness should lead to control, that knowledge should lead to resolution. We then apply these assumptions to how we think Jesus would respond.

Jesus offers something different.

Keep doing what God has asked of you. Attend to the life that is yours. The work of repentance and renewal begins within the human heart.

We live in a time when we are aware of tragedies across the world at all times. Whether there is more suffering now or simply more access to it, the effect can be the same. It can overwhelm. It can distract. It can give us the illusion that we are more responsible or more capable than we really are.

But Jesus’ words still stand. You make sure your life is what it should be.

And so what we see is not a dismissal of the world’s pain. But it is a call to faithfulness within it.

Luke 13:1-17

Some who were present on that occasion told Jesus about the Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. He replied, “Do you think the suffering of these Galileans proves that they were more sinful than all the other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did. What about those eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think that they were more guilty of wrongdoing than everyone else who lives in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.”

Jesus told this parable: “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertilizer. Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’”

Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. A woman was there who had been disabled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and couldn’t stand up straight. When he saw her, Jesus called her to him and said, “Woman, you are set free from your sickness.” He placed his hands on her and she straightened up at once and praised God.

The synagogue leader, incensed that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, responded, “There are six days during which work is permitted. Come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath day.”

The Lord replied, “Hypocrites! Don’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from its stall and lead it out to get a drink? Then isn’t it necessary that this woman, a daughter of Abraham, bound by Satan for eighteen long years, be set free from her bondage on the Sabbath day?” When he said these things, all his opponents were put to shame, but all those in the crowd rejoiced at all the extraordinary things he was doing.

Prayer (adapted from the Book of Common Prayer)

God,

You have drawn us into something new through Jesus and his resurrection: a new way of life and a new kind of relationship with you and with one another.

We confess that it is easy to say we believe this, and harder to live like it is true.

So form us. Shape us into people whose lives reflect what we say we trust. Not just in words, but in action. In how we treat others. In how we live each day.

Make us a people who look like the body of Christ.

By your Spirit & in Christ,
Amen.