Hi everyone, here is my homily for the THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT – March 7, 2010. Thanks as always for reading it and all of your feedback and comments. The readings for today can be found at https://www.usccb.org/nab/030710c.shtml – (Note these are the “regular” readings for the Third Sunday of Lent… If you¡¯re parish is preparing people for Baptism at the Easter Vigil, you heard different readings…)
Here is the Gospel for the day:
Some people told Jesus about the Galileans
whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way
they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?
By no means!
But I tell you, if you do not repent,
you will all perish as they did!
Or those eighteen people who were killed
when the tower at Siloam fell on them¡ª
do you think they were more guilty
than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
By no means!
But I tell you, if you do not repent,
you will all perish as they did!”
And he told them this parable:
“There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard,
and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none,
he said to the gardener,
¡®For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree
but have found none.
So cut it down.
Why should it exhaust the soil?¡¯
He said to him in reply,
¡®Sir, leave it for this year also,
and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it;
it may bear fruit in the future.
If not you can cut it down.¡¯”
¡¡
HOMILY:
A week ago, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck the Latin American country of Chile – killing several hundred people, damaging or destroying 500,000 homes – affecting some 2 million people.¡¡¡¡ Those sad images couldn¡¯t help but bring back thoughts of¡¡the devastating quake that hit the people of Haiti just a few weeks earlier.¡¡While Haiti¡¯s quake was technically less severe than Chile¡¯s measuring in at 7.0 magnitude, the effects in Haiti were even more catastrophic – close to a quarter million people killed; over 300,000 were injured; a million people homeless.¡¡It¡¯s been frightening and surprising to see such dramatic events happening so close to each other and affecting so many people.¡¡The unpredictability of these natural disasters – hitting so suddenly and with such devastating force understandably leads people to ask Why did this happen?
Whenever such disasters happen, people try to find a technical answer to that question:¡¡Is there some scientific explanation, or can we identify some sort of pattern to these occurrences.¡¡ Anything that can try to bring some understanding to such seemingly random acts of devastation.¡¡ Experts will show graphs, maps, charts.¡¡ They will compare this recent incident to other natural events and pose theories about why these things happen.¡¡Often times they prove to be just that – theories.¡¡No one seems able to predict with clarity or certainty when another earthquake can strike, or how badly that earthquake will affect innocent people.¡¡ After a Tsunami struck the coasts of the Indian Ocean in 2004, killing 200,000 people, there was a major effort to put a system of warnings and alarms when scientists believed a tsunami was about to hit.¡¡ So last week when the earthquake hit Chile, and the experts felt reasonably sure a tsunami could hit Hawaii and Japan – all of those alarms and systems went off – forcing mass-evacuations and more fear and crisis – yet (thankfully) no tsunami hit.¡¡Why¡¡didn¡¯t that happen?
Eventually when theories don¡¯t pan out, when even the best scientific evidence cannot give us the certitude to such wide-spread calamities, people will stop looking just at the natural phenomenon and wonder quite simply, Why do bad things happen?¡¡At the pictures of such devastation and destruction, the faith-filled person asks Why God?¡¡The non-believer or skeptic says yeah you who claim there¡¯s a God, who supposedly is all Loving… explain this!!!
Why do bad things happen? – it¡¯s a question that has unsettled people for as long as bad things have happened..¡¡And we don¡¯t have to look at some events of global attention for the question to be asked.¡¡ You have a loved one who is suddenly diagnosed with a major health problem… Your spouse¡¯s company announces that things aren¡¯t going so well after all and that more than likely their job will be lost…¡¡ Your actually trying – trying in school, trying in your social life, trying in sports, trying in life, and things aren¡¯t working, aren¡¯t going right…¡¡With the seeming randomness to these “bad things” that keep happening, where even those who go to Church and try to be good people aren¡¯t immune or protected from being shielded from bad things- there¡¯s more than a few people who ask another question – Well what¡¯s the point?¡¡ Why worship a God who allows bad things to happen?¡¡Why mid-Lent am I giving stuff up if it¡¯s not going to result in “good karma” or something so that things improve?
In hearing today¡¯s Gospel, you might have thought “did I miss something?”¡¡It starts off talking about something that has occurred that we are not aware of.¡¡ A group of people come to Jesus with a horrific event on their minds that had just happened.¡¡ Biblical scholars aren¡¯t quite sure which horrific event this was. Pilate, sentencing Jesus to die wasn¡¯t his first hideous act, so sadly there¡¯s a few possibilities that could be referred to here.¡¡ Whichever event is being referred to here, what we do know was that once again, these Romans who had occupied what had been the Jews’ land had brutally killed them in their own temple area as they practiced their own religious customs. And so they wonder – ¡¡Why did this bad thing happened?¡¡ As if that wasn¡¯t bad enough, Jesus mentions another tragedy that had happened around the same time. This incident though wasn¡¯t caused by the evil commands of Pilate or enforced by the Roman army. 18 people had been tragically killed in a construction accident in a town called Siloam when a massive stone tower had collapsed on them. So here was another terrible event that his listeners would be aware of… something that had distracted, upset, confused a lot of people.
Some people in Jesus¡¯ time – probably some of those in this Gospel story – assumed or believed that – well obviously God hadn¡¯t protected them from these calamities because they must have sinned.¡¡ They must have done something in God¡¯s eyes which resulted in him taking his eyes off of them.¡¡¡¡¡¡If you take anything from this Homily – If you only remember one thing, let it be this ¨C Jesus is VERY pretty clear to say how wrong this argument is.¡¡ (I really hope people got that because it amazed me that a well-known “Christian” preacher would forget this passage as he claimed that the earthquake in Haiti was because, supposedly, some Hatians had made a deal with the devil decades ago… Jesus in today¡¯s Gospel would respectfully disagree with this preacher speaking in His name…)
Jesus expands that point by asking Do you think the people who suffered Pilate¡¯s evil – do you think the people who died in the construction accident were bigger sinners than those who happened not to be at that religious event or not on the construction scene the day of that accident?¡¡¡¡ Jesus is trying to break that mentality that believes God is doling out punishments and rewards ¨C that somehow the bad things that happen, the good things that happen in this life are directly attributed to our sins or our good deeds.¡¡¡¡
We need that reminder today too. Cancer afflicts good and bad people.¡¡There were some very innocent, holy people who were killed in those same earthquakes as some murderous criminals.¡¡And just because we¡¯re at Mass today, doesn¡¯t mean we¡¯re going to ace that test, find that job or win the lotto tomorrow.¡¡
So we¡¯re back to the question of “What¡¯s the point then?”¡¡ Does this mean that God doesn¡¯t care? If he¡¯s not going to take care of us when we¡¯re good and get even with those who are bad, why relate to him.
Part of the problem is that we know in our own lives we sometimes are good, and sometimes not. We¡¯re not perfect, and when we make bad choices, when we do evil things, when we choose to sin, our sin affects others. Maybe not as dramatic as an earthquake killing 200,000 – but is it a matter of numbers? My nasty gossip about someone that can destroy someone else¡¯s self image can be pretty devastating to that person. God cares intimately and personally for each and every one of us. So he¡¯s concerned about that one as much as each one of the 200,000. So we don¡¯t have the answers about earthquakes or Tsunami¡¯s. We cannot control the natural disasters, but we can control our own personal disasters. Which is why God isn¡¯t punishing us for our sins. God hasn¡¯t and doesn¡¯t give up on us.
In the first reading today, God reveals himself to Moses.¡¡He says that his name is “I AM”.¡¡That can sound sort of confusing.¡¡ So another way of understanding the meaning of God¡¯s name is I AM THE ONE WHO WILL ALWAYS BE THERE FOR YOU.¡¡The Jewish people¡¯s history gives testimony to that.¡¡Yes, evil still happened to them – sometimes because of sinful, bad choices they had made, sometimes sinful bad choices made by others.¡¡ But in all of that they kept coming back to this promise that God would lead them out of affliction, out of slavery into the promised land.¡¡
In Jesus, the God who has always been there for us comes a step closer… God dwells among us and stays with us.¡¡ Jesus isn¡¯t denying that bad, horrific things happen to good and bad people. But he¡¯s clear that the evil isn¡¯t coming from His Father and tells us how saddened by sin, saddened by evil God is that Jesus has come to save us from it. So Jesus the Son comes to remind us we need to get things right ourselves. That¡¯s what this season of Lent is all about – to repent of the evil we¡¯ve done; to turn away from our sin, our bad choices and turn back to God. Maybe we need to experience God¡¯s love through going to confession, acknowledging our sins and experiencing the healing that comes from that reconciliation as God removes those places of darkness in ourselves so that his life and light can once again be reflected through us.
Then the God who has always been there for us – Jesus Christ, His Son who remains with us empowering and strengthening us with the Holy Spirit, can transform us from being stuck simply fixated on asking the unanswerable question Why do bad things happen to being His presence in the world with the call to action asking – What am I going to do about it…
