I recently had a talk with a man who
considers himself an agnostic. His
reasoning is that he cannot and will not believe in a God who allows such
horrible things to happen to children, to the world at large, to people far and
near. And of course, as with all really
good conversations, the best argument I have in opposition didn't occur to me
until well after we'd finished talking.
Contrary to popular belief, God's not
Santa Claus. He's not keeping track of
who's naughty and nice in some book so that presents and coal are properly
distributed to the people on Earth. And
if you're going to blame God for every bad deed that happens to people,
conversely, you have to credit him for every good act that happens to
people.
In our Old Testament reading, we note
what God says to Moses: "I have
surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their
cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows." It doesn't sound like He arranged for them to
live in sorrow and subjugation to the Egyptians. It sounds more like He watches His creation
and what they do to one another, and knows
their sorrows, because how could any parent be happy that their children are
miserable? And at this point, He steps
in, to put His people back onto the path He laid for them by making Moses a
leader.
As our New Testament reading points
out, He gave them experiences in common, binding them together as a
people. The journey they took, the food
they ate, water they drank, the metaphorical baptism they all experienced upon
escaping the Egyptians – God provided all of these to them to strengthen them
as a people, to give bonds on which they could rely in times of
temptation. Even to today, we reaffirm
those gifts, just as they were reaffirmed by Christ.
During Lent, we address the
uncomfortable aspect of our often "feel-good" religion: we look at our sins, and we look at our
reactions to sins, our attempts to explain them, to hide them from sight, and
the really hard part – to truly repent
of them and change our ways. Saying
we're sorry but doing nothing different doesn't actually indicate repenting; it
represents lip service, and means nothing.
Each week, in our confession of sin,
we confess that we have sinned, by what we have done, and by what we have failed to do. I was talking with my son about this sermon,
and he pointed out that in each case, we often do the exact same thing that
Christ talked about in the Gospel lesson – well, yes, we've sinned, but look at
these horrible people over here and how heinous their sins are. Why, by comparison, we're nearly faultless. And Christ points out, no, we're not. Not only have we sinned, but we have failed
to act in defense of the defenseless. We
have failed to protect others, not only from those who would persecute them,
but in allowing that persecution to continue.
All too often, we fail to act for a variety of reasons – the problem's
too big, there's no way for me to make a difference, let someone else handle
it, or the general response – why does God
allow this to happen? I think in many
instances, it's the basic fear that if we did something, we'd have to actually
address our own sins, and that's what Lent reminds us to do.
Sometimes, it's looking at the
totality of the task involved that makes us hesitate to even begin. As someone once advised on how to eat an
elephant, the wise reply was, get out your knife and fork, and begin, one bite
at a time.
There's a story about some
missionaries to Indians in the Amazonian region of Ecuador, particularly the Huaorani
tribe. This tribe was exceedingly
savage, killing anyone who wasn't part of their tribe with spears and knives,
and sometimes killing just because they could, like people who annoyed them,
including their own children. The
missionaries were saddened by the lives of people who hadn't been touched by
the word of God. They were, however,
warned away by other missionaries and people who had experience with trying to
deal with the tribe, advising them not to even try, for they would surely die
in the effort. The missionaries began
making regular flights over Huaorani settlements in September 1955, dropping
gifts, which were accepted and reciprocated. They were able to communicate with a few
members of the tribe on several occasions.
After several months of exchanging gifts, on January 3, 1956, the
missionaries established a camp at "Palm Beach", a sandbar along the
Curaray River, a few kilometers from Huaorani settlements. They finally felt that they were ready to meet
with the rest of the tribe as a whole. Their
efforts came to an end on January 8, 1956, when all five—Jim Elliot, Nate
Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian—were attacked and speared
by a group of Huaorani warriors. The
five missionaries had guns with them in their camp, but they did not use them
to save their own lives. They were
trying to teach about a peaceful and beneficent God. To shoot their attackers would mean the
Huaorani would not have the opportunity to hear about Christ. So they chose to let themselves be killed, to
be an example of Christian love, and let the tribe have another chance to hear
the word of God. Several years after the
death of the men, the widow of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth, and the sister of Nate
Saint, Rachel, returned to Ecuador as missionaries with the Summer Institute of
Linguistics to live among the Huaorani. This eventually led to the conversion
of many, including some of those involved in the killing. While largely
eliminating tribal violence, their efforts exposed the tribe to increased
influence from the outside. Which, of
course, led to both good and bad results.
Five men didn't just agree with other
missionaries and the advice to leave the tribe to their savagery. They did something about it. And their deaths ended up having meaning to
the Huaorani, because they showed trust in God and faced their deaths with
faith and courage, rather than fear.
The parable of the fig tree in Luke,
as opposed to how it is told in Mark and Matthew, is giving us one last chance
to truly repent. Now, while spreading
manure may not seem like a particularly desirable change for people – if we do
look at the allegorical meaning, we realize that we need to change the
situation somehow – to do something different, to nourish our roots, feed our
souls, and nurture the faith that allows us to face our sins, repent of them
and move forward. We have time to make a
difference. We still have time before
the final judgment comes. But since we
don't have knowledge of just how much time that is, we need to do it now.
