Living in Faith in a Dangerous World Luke 9:1-9

Luke wrote down some of the questions people asked Jesus as they searched to better understand the tragedies of their day. We are no different 2000 years later. We want and seek out reasonable answers that satisfy our human sense of justice when tragedy happens. And Jesus responded to the questions not based in a human understanding of justice but by naming, out-loud, our need to repent of our sins and our simple mortality. The crowd looked for a reason, like a sin of the victims, that caused such tragedy; and Jesus offered no reason and named no such sin.

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ^2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? ^3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. ^4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? ^5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Luke 13:1-5 NIV.

Jesus challenged his first hearers to respond to tragedy by repenting of their sins, acknowledging their humanity and their need for a savior. Jesus offered no explanation why such tragedies happened. Still some claim to know why tragedy happens even when our Lord doesn't offer an easy causal explanation.

I'm reminded visiting with folks from church and listening to news reports from Chile and Haiti that we are fragile. Calamities still overwhelm humans as they did in Jesus day. A favorite radio host sometimes plays a somewhat fatalistic soundbite saying, "Life is dangerous." He's right, it is and it always has been. Knowing how precious and precarious our existence is we still look for sin as the explanation and the cause of tragedy. When confronted directly with the question, "Who sinned ... that this man was born blind?" Jesus challenged those looking for a sin as the cause of tragedy saying that this man's blindness would help reveal the glory of God. He challenges us to look both for the glory of God that can be revealed in tragedy and to repent of our own sins as we face our own mortality.