Because we operate in this way – having favorites, treating our favorite things differently – we sometimes believe that God operates this way as well. God, we imagine, has certain people that he seems to favor more than others: the people who seem to be blessed with success, or fame, or fortune, who seem to achieve exactly what they desire. Because we think that God showers blessings upon those whom he favors, we also fall victim to the opposite idea: that God punishes those whom he doesn’t favor. We think: if something bad happens in my life, it must be that God is punishing me – or, at least, that he doesn’t like me enough to keep that bad thing from happening to me.
Today’s Gospel shows us that this mindset is nothing new. As he is teaching the people, Jesus refers to two unfortunate events: that Pontius Pilate has put to death some people from Galilee, while another group of people died in the collapse of a tower. The implicit attitude of people at the time is that God was punishing those who died: perhaps they were sinful, perhaps he just didn’t like them as much as he liked others, but for whatever reason, they must have had it coming. Jesus tells them flatly they are wrong: God doesn’t seek to punish the sinful by causing bad things to happen to them. God doesn’t play favorites in this way; rather, “he makes the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike.”
But if we recognize that God doesn’t directly cause bad things to happen to us on account of our sins, we should also realize a second, more subtle untruth that Jesus corrects: that because nothing bad has happened to me, I must be OK with God. I think this flaw is much more common in our thinking today – that my relationship with God must be perfectly satisfactory because if it were not, he would let me know. We think, “I’m doing pretty good. Sure, I’m not perfect, but God must be pretty fine with me, since nothing bad has happened to me.”
The problem with that idea is that it lulls us into complacency, and it makes us take our relationship with God for granted. Instead of being appalled by our sinfulness, we ignore the voice of our conscience. Instead of striving to achieve the ultimate goal of union with God in heaven, we begin to arrange our lives around more earthly goals – things like success, fame, fortune – and we think that if we don’t get them, then God doesn’t favor us in the same that he favors other people.
This whole way of thinking is in need of some serious correction, and Jesus gives that to us in today’s Gospel. He says, “I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish.” Those are scary words! But Jesus’s intention is not to scare us so much as to force us to reexamine the way we view our relationship with God. It’s true that God doesn’t play favorites, and doesn't cause bad things to happen to punish us, but that doesn’t mean we are blameless in his eyes. Rather, as Jesus says, we all are in need of repentance. Why? Because repentance is the starting point for growth. We think of repentance as getting on our knees and beating our breast, but repentance at its heart is an openness to change – a willingness to reexamine how we are going about things. God desires to bring each of us to the fullness of life – to give us an abundance of life here on earth and eternal life with him in heaven. But he alone knows how best to do that, and so when we resist the movement of his grace, we are like a tree that refuses to produce fruit: we reject our own nature, our most basic purpose.
The Gardener (1882) by Georges Seurat
Fortunately, the Lord is patient, as we hear in the second half of today’s Gospel, and so he deals with us patiently. While God does not punish our sinfulness by causing bad things to happen, he does at times permit us to experience challenges and sufferings in order to bring forth some greater good. He is like the careful gardener who at times must prune and trim in order to accomplish a greater flourishing. In a sense, each of us is the favorite of God, but uniquely so, and so he treats each of us uniquely, in the way proper to his purpose. Sometimes we understand how those purposes work, and sometimes not. But always they are for our good, if we are open to understanding that good as God does, not as we would define it.
Friends, at this midpoint of the season of Lent, we are all probably at risk of becoming a little complacent. This season of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving is intended to remind us how far we each have strayed from God, and how much we need his mercy. The Lord is a careful, patient gardener, and thus he is always at work to bring forth good fruit from us. But he cannot do so unless we are open to change, open to repenting of the ways we have gone astray and being set right again on the path to the fullness of life. We cannot know the state of our souls by comparing ourselves with others, but rather only by submitting to the Lord’s patient, persistent efforts to change and renew us.
May this Eucharist reawaken in us the desire never to resist the work of the living God, but to yield to him, he who is Life itself.
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