Why Doesn't God DO Something?

Jesus responds to current events. Kind of.

These seventeen verses have quite the potpourri of Jesus stories - someone “telling on” another to Jesus, a parable, a healing, a Sabbath complaint, and Jesus chiding the religious leaders. It’s kind of like a Reader’s Digest version of the whole gospel of Luke.

But I want to focus only on the first part this time around.

I’ve searched…and I think this is the closest thing we get in the gospels to someone asking Jesus about current events. It’s certainly not like the social media phenomenon we travail today. And it’s not like the news media or our participation in civics. But it does present a situation that apparently was well-known at the time. And it seems like some wanted Jesus’ take on it.

First off, it’s notable that these things happened during Jesus’ lifetime. Perhaps you, like many, sometimes wonder about the things of injustice and why God doesn’t intervene. In these two stories that almost certainly happened in Jerusalem, Jesus did nothing about them. Why? We could ask an even larger question - we know that all sorts of atrocities happened in the Roman Empire, even at the hand of the empire, during Jesus’ lifetime. We didn’t he march on Rome? Does his example in this way serve to teach us about our own actions regarding injustice? Wait…did Jesus even really care about the empire?

…did he come to change the empire?

These questions may seem far from what happens in these two stories. But if we’re talking about injustice, it certainly relates. Those who brought the two situations to Jesus may have had the same kind of questions we have - What the heck…why doesn’t God DO something?

…and what should his people do/look like as a result?

Jesus’ answer is piercing, and yet, perhaps unsatisfying to our appetite for clarity. He doesn’t comment on Pilate or the tower, doesn’t assign blame or offer political critique.¹ 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.

In other words, Jesus refuses to let tragedy become gossip or theory. He redirects it toward self-examination. Rather than asking “why them,” he invites us to ask, “what about me?” It’s not that the pain or injustice of the world is unimportant. It’s that the work of repentance and renewal begins within the human heart.

I’m not saying that Christians shouldn’t do anything about the injustices of the world. But we would do well to consider how much our upbringing in a world that seeks the functional and the utilitarian has shaped what we expect of Jesus.

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.

Psalm 32:1-5

The one whose wrongdoing is forgiven,
whose sin is covered over, is truly happy!
The one the Lord doesn’t consider guilty—
in whose spirit there is no dishonesty—
that one is truly happy!

When I kept quiet, my bones wore out;
I was groaning all day long—
every day, every night!—
because your hand was heavy upon me.
My energy was sapped as if in a summer drought. Selah
So I admitted my sin to you;
I didn’t conceal my guilt.
“I’ll confess my sins to the Lord, ” is what I said.
Then you removed the guilt of my sin.

Prayer

God,

I just think we ought to do something. I really do. I’m not always sure what we should do, but I feel the strongest of beliefs that we should do something.

Protest? Sit-ins? Hunger strikes? Withhold taxes? Strap myself to Raytheon’s gates? Make a poster? And I can think of more drastic things…but I’m wary of bots and word searches.

Then I worry that my reluctance to do such things - given who I think I’m reading Jesus to be - is just an excuse to avoid conflict. Even worse, I know how privileged the seat in which I sit really is.

So help me, God: Just tell me, Big Dude. Tell me what to do and what not to do. I mean it.

Honestly yours,
By your Spirit & in Christ,
Amen.

1. Goodness…Jesus had so much opportunity to rail on Pilate both here and as he stood before him in John’s version of the passion story. Pilate was basically a Vice President of the Roman Empire, but Jesus barely tries to affect him at all. This is frustrating to some of us who would believe that Jesus calls us to particular political action or advocacy. But he just doesn’t do it. We must wrestle with this. Just how much of our democratic formation shape our faithful action?