We’re Not Worthy

When I was a sophomore in college, someone decided to start setting fires in garbage cans in our dorm…in the middle of the night…and one morning at 2 am, I was awakened by a fireman beating on my door. Up and down the halls they ran, beating on our doors and rousing us from sleep.

Jesus is in the synagogue knocking on doors and warning that they need to wake up – to repent and change their ways – or they will perish. Jesus, just like those firemen going up and down the hallway of my dorm, is knocking on every door shouting “Wake up! Your sins are going to cost you your lives.”

“O, mmmmhmmmm, say some in the crowd…yep, seen it happen. There were some Galileans worshipping, making sacrifices, and Pilate’s men came along and killed them. The sacrificial blood and their blood all ran together. God must have been angry with them about something.”

Jesus answers, “Wake up! You live on the same hallway. Do you think they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you.”

Then Jesus brings up another recent tragedy, one of chance rather than violence. A tower had fallen, killing 18…

“O, mmmmhmmmm, heard about that, sad, murmurs the crowd, “ heads were nodding.

”Do you think they were worse sinners?” asks Jesus “ No, I tell you.” You live next door. Your hallway is on fire too. You are just as likely to get burned as they are.

So, why were they killed as they worshipped? Why were they killed in a freak accident? Or, maybe the question that was on their minds was why didn’t God protect these Galileans who were offering sacrifices to God from being slaughtered by the government’s henchmen? Why did tragedy strike that particular 18?

We have a tendency, don’t we, to want to know why.

Last Saturday the New York Times printed an article by a Duke Divinity professor. Katie Bowler is 35, a wife and a mother, and she has stage 4 cancer. Her area of expertise is the American prosperity gospel; she studies “the belief that God grants health and wealth to those with the right kind of faith.”

She admits to being “one of the many people who wants an answer when there is no answer, who wants to demand things of God when God does not always connect the dots for us. Even more, I relate to [the] desire for certainty. Prosperity gospel makes everyone feel special. It makes everyone feel uniquely chosen. Every detail of your life is God’s ultimate concern. I’ve seen that do wonders for people. Getting over not being special,” she says, “has been hard. I have to get used to being as beloved by God as everybody else. You want to feel like your personality, your efforts, and your theological insight counts for something. It doesn’t. I just have to be as beloved as everybody else.”

Well, Kate’s neighbor knocked on the door when she heard the diagnosis. “Everything happens for a reason,” she reassured Katie’s husband when he answered the door.

“I’d love to hear it,” he said.

“Pardon?” came the startled response.

“I’d love to hear the reason my wife is dying.”

Kate writes, “My neighbor wasn’t trying to sell him a spiritual guarantee. But there was a reason she wanted to fill that silence around why some people die young and others grow old and fussy about their lawns. She wanted some kind of order behind this chaos. Because the opposite of #blessed is leaving a husband and a toddler behind, and people can’t quite let themselves say it: “Wow. That’s awful.” There has to be a reason, because without one we are left as helpless and possibly as unlucky as everyone else.

Her neighbor’s reassurance that “Everything happens for a reason” helped her neighbor feel comfortable that in the dark of the night a fireman wouldn’t come banging on her door shouting “Wake up!”…at least not without a reason.

There is a woman in the crowd there in the synagogue, who didn’t feel special. Certainly, her fellow Jews in the synagogue did not think she was special. She had been crippled for 18 years. She had bowed her head so long that she could no longer stand up straight. Suffering, in the Jewish mind, was closely linked to sin. The reason she was crippled was that she was weighed down by a heavy spirit of sinfulness. Jesus placed his hands on her and declared that she was set free from her ailment.

The leader of the synagogue rebukes Jesus for healing her, claiming that because it is the Sabbath no healing work should be done. And Jesus answers that they lead their animals to water on the Sabbath, should this woman who is as beloved as everybody else not be untied from her bondage and led to living water.

The real reason the leader of the synagogue objected to Jesus healing the woman wasn’t that it was the Sabbath. It was that he didn’t think she was worthy of being healed. She was suffering, and she had been suffering for 18 years. She must have done something to deserve such a fate.

But Jesus sees her and calls her over to him. She doesn’t say anything, and he declares “Woman, you are set from your ailment.” He lays his hands on her, and immediately she stands up straight and starts praising God. It isn’t that she is worthy of being healed; Jesus heals her because she is just as beloved as everybody else.

So beloved, that she was made straight and tall again. She has another chance to bear fruit with her life, just like the fig tree.

In the parable of the fig tree, Jesus says that a man planted a fig tree and came back for three years running and the tree had produced no fruit. So he tells the gardener to cut it down; it’s wasting the nutrients from the soil. And the gardener begs for one more year. He will dig around it and add fertilizer around it. If it bears fruit next year, good. If not, cut it down.

Jesus is the gardener. God planted the tree. And we are the tree. Individually, as the church, as humankind…the whole earth. Rev. Dr. Barbara Lundblad says”There’s hope in this parable–don’t cut the tree down. But there’s also urgency–give me one more year. We can hear that as a threat. There’s not much time left….But Jesus’ parable moves in the direction of promise more than threat: “I’m going to do everything I can to help this tree live and bear fruit…I’m going to find every way possible to get to hearts that are hard as packed down soil.”

That woman who had been crippled for 18 years wasn’t worthy of being healed. Those 18 who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them weren’t worthy of being saved. Those Galileans who were slaughtered weren’t worthy of being spared. You and I – we aren’t worthy either. We are just as beloved as everybody else.

And so, Jesus comes knocking at our door. “Wake up!” Repent. Get up and get out of the burning building. Believe that things can be different and act on it. You aren’t special. You don’t have endless chances. This year could be your last. You are not worthy, yet Jesus has promised to break up the soil of your hearts and fertilize your lives so that you can bear fruit. Why? Because you are just as beloved as everybody else.

Barbara K. Lundblad, “Could This Be the Year for Figs?” Day 1, March 18, 2001.
Kate Bowler, “Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me” New York Times, February 13, 2016.