Sermon — March 20, 2022
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Jesus’ words in our Gospel this morning crack open a debate about what’s sometimes called “karmic retribution.” You’re probably familiar with the idea: if you do a good deed now, you’ll “have some good karma” and the universe will owe you good things in the future. If you do evil now, you may escape punishment for a while, but eventually, you will reap what you have sown; bad things will happen to you.
Now, this is an over-simplified version of the real Buddhist or Hindu idea of “karma,” but in fact, most people believe in some form of it. It’s just the timeline that changes. So, some people really do believe that “what goes around comes around” in this life: if I do good things, good things will happen to me. It may be in a week, or a month, or ten years, but it’s coming. Of course, the various Hindu and Buddhist traditions from which the word “karma” actually comes, have a much more nuanced idea of things, especially when you introduce concepts like reincarnation: I may be repaid for the good or evil I’ve done in this life in some future life, after my death and rebirth. And of course, even most people’s ideas of how “heaven” and “hell” work are variations on the same theme, but again with the timeline changed: God is just, and justice will be served, not in this life, but after death. So no good deed goes unrewarded, and no evil deed goes unpunished; it’s just that it happens in the afterlife.
Jesus dives right in to this debate. It’s clear that he rejects the most simplistic version of “karmic retribution,” the idea that “good things happen to good people” and “bad things happen to bad people,” because this amounts to a kind of victim-blaming. Jesus names a couple of recent news stories to make the point; we don’t know anything about them, but you can probably understand without much context. Think about those Galilean pilgrims, he says, whom Pilate killed in cold blood at the very Temple itself, mixing their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. Think of those eighteen poor souls killed when that tower collapsed. We might say: Think of those families huddled in subway stations in Kyiv, of that friend who’s sick and fighting so bravely, of that family member who was bullied at school for years. Is their evidence of some hidden wrongdoing? Is it simply that “what goes around comes around”?
Jesus dismisses that idea out of hand. Do you think they suffered in this way because they were worse sinners than all the rest of us? “No, I tell you,” he says—“but…” (Luke 13:3)
There’s an old saying that preachers ought to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” and Jesus knew it well. To those who are worried that their suffering is a sign of God’s wrath or vengeance, Jesus simply says: Be not afraid. It’s not your fault. You’re not being punished for anything.
But to those who are comfortable, who have the leisure to come to him with speculative questions about the cause of human suffering and the problem of evil, Jesus says, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish, just as they did.” (Luke 13:3, 5)
“Repentance” is such a church-specific word that it’s sometimes not obvious what it means. Our English word “repent” comes from the Latin verb repenitire, a verb which means “to feel regret.” It’s tightly tied to ideas of punishment: the pen in repent or penitence is the same Latin word as in penalty or penal; in fact, it’s an alternate spelling of the pun in punish. To “repent” is to “feel really bad,” because to “punish” is to “make someone feel really bad.” But Jesus didn’t speak Latin. The Greek and Hebrew words for repentance have slightly different connotations. You may have heard a preacher quote the Greek word metanoia, the word used in the original language of the New Testament for repentance. Metanoia doesn’t mean “punishment” or “regret” but “transformation of the mind,” a reorientation of a person’s values and beliefs. And the Hebrew and Aramaic word for repentance is even clearer about that reorientation: it’s teshuvah in Hebrew, “turning” or “returning.” Not feeling guilty, not being punished, not even changing one’s mind, but turning away from a path that’s leading to destruction, and returning to God.
It’s this “turning” that Jesus is talking about, I think. Jesus is speaking to people living under foreign occupation in the decades before an explosive, failed revolution that will end with their defeat and the destruction of their city. Pontius Pilate isn’t a generic bad guy. He’s the Roman official charged with maintaining control of this part of the empire. Those Galileans were probably killed for resisting Roman rule, one way or another. And when Jesus turns and addresses the crowd, he’s begging them to resist the Romans in a different, non-violent way, because the rebellion they are planning will lead them to their destruction. To be clear: Jesus is not claiming that unless they repent from their personal sins, whatever, God will destroy them as individuals. He’s claiming that unless they practice teshuvah, unless they turn aside from the path they’re on, they will be destroyed; by Rome or one another or.
We are living in a different place and time. But we nevertheless sometimes find ourselves walking paths that lead us toward destruction. Perhaps it’s a personal path of destruction, an addiction or an obsession or simply an unhealthy way of relating to another person that’s destroying you, day by day. Perhaps it’s something bigger, like the path that’s leading us inexorably toward environmental catastrophe. But it is as true for us as it was for those Judeans and Galileans long ago: Unless we repent, unless we turn aside, we will all perish. This is the sense in which “what goes around comes around.” Not as the result of karmic retribution or divine justice, but simply as the consequence of our own actions. Jesus doesn’t tell these people that they’re going be suffer forever in hell. He tells them that if they don’t turn, they will perish. But what if they do turn and look to see what’s on the other road?
Like many of the heroes of the Bible, Moses isn’t much of a hero; at least not to begin with. This first reading comes from Exodus chapter 3. So far, Moses has been born into an enslaved people under the threat of violence. His fantastic escape down the river in a basket is a testament to his mother’s ingenuity and to the compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter, but we can’t give any credit to baby Moses himself. That’s chapter 1. Chapter 2 mostly tells the story of Moses as a hot-headed and violent man. Raised a prince of Egypt, he’s nevertheless killed an Egyptian man and fled, leaving behind his family and his homeland and all his privilege to tend the flocks of Jethro, the priest of Midian. It’s not a great start.
But no spiritual journey ever starts with our good behavior. It starts with God’s unprompted, undeserved calling. And so the “angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush,” and Moses noticed. (Exod. 3:2) And Moses said to himself, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight,” and “when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see,” God called to him by name: “Moshe! Moshe!” (3:3) And Moses replied, Hineni, “Here I am.” (3:4)
It is not because Moses’ mother sets him afloat down the river in a basket that God calls him to stand up to Pharaoh and lead his people. It’s not because he’s particular good at nonviolent resistance, which he’s not. It’s not because he’s a good public speaker—in fact, he’s such a bad public speaker that God gets his brother Aaron involved to help him out. It’s because when he sees God’s glory flaring out from the bush, he turns aside to see. And when God saw that he had turned aside, God called to him.
Moses turns away from the path of destruction, the path that had led him from the royal court to a lonely wilderness, from his life being saved from Pharaoh’s violence to ending another man’s life by violence, and he turns onto another path, a path of freedom and of life. And while that path is not always easy—while Moses suffers much along the way—there is never a sense that he’s getting what he deserves, there is never a sense that what goes around comes around, there is never a sense that God is punishing or will punish Moses for this inauspicious and violent beginning, in this life or the next. Because as soon as he turns aside, he has left the path that leads to destruction, and he is safe.
God calls us each by name, as good or bad or ordinary as we are. And the God whose name is “I Am Who I Am,” calls each of us as we are, and we respond, “Here I am.” Here I am, as I am. There’s no one else I can be. And if we turn aside—no, since the moment that we turned aside to look—God will and God is and God has been leading us down the paths of life and love and peace, whatever may happen along the way.
As we walk along that path, may God indeed “keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul,” this day and for ever more. Amen.