The Problem of Pain

Today’s Gospel reading is quite a difficult read right from the start. What are the events being talked about? It’s hard to be sure, though they’re clearly quite tragic. I’ve read a number of different theories, and the one that makes most sense to me is that both events - the murdered Galileans and the people killed when a tower fell on them - both events are linked to a project initiated by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate that aimed to improve the water supply to Jerusalem. That seems a very worthy initiative, and it was much needed, so you’d think it would have been popular with everyone.

But Pilate had decided to fund his project with money from the Temple treasury. I’m sure that seemed to him a sensible and practical way to do it. Jerusalem needed a water supply, so Jerusalem should pay for it. And since most of the money that came into the holy city ended up in the temple treasury, it surely made sense to use that money for this project.

But the people of the city, along with the many pilgrims who came to the Temple, were appalled at the thought of temple money being taken by the Romans. The Jewish equivalent of les gilets jaunes were soon out on the streets. Pilate’s response was to get his soldiers to mingle with the crowds in the disguise, so they could then deal with the trouble makers by falling on them with cudgels at a given signal. And that’s what they did, but with a vengeful violence that probably exceeded what Pilate had decreed. Still, no matter, order had been restored. And there would certainly have been Galilean pilgrims there. Maybe a group of them joined the protest, or maybe they were just there to make sacrifice, bystanders who got caught up in it all, with fatal consequences.

As for those killed when a tower fell: maybe they were Jews who’d taken Pilate’s penny (in other words, money from the temple) to work on the project. So when the tower fell on them and killed them that could have been seen as a just punishment from God for having received money stolen from his temple.

As people brought this news to Jesus, or asked him about it, were they pondering the question people have always asked, “Why did this tragedy happen to these people?” Did they think they knew the answer? What about the question behind that question: Why is there so much suffering in the world? Is suffering inextricably linked to the way we behave, the way we live our lives? But in that case, why do bad things happen to good people? Is all suffering caused by God? Should we think of suffering as a form of Divine punishment?

In his little book “The Problem of Pain”, one of our set books at college as I recall, C.S. Lewis looks at these questions and is forced to conclude that “The existence of suffering in a world created by a good and almighty God . . . is a fundamental theological dilemma and perhaps the most serious objection to the Christian religion.”  And it is, he’s right.

The people who came to Jesus had already come to a conclusion, I think, about those who died in these two disasters. They’d been punished, so they must have sinned, they must have transgressed. There was an obvious reason for the deaths of the eighteen people killed by the falling tower; and the Galileans? they too must have done something bad.

Many Christian scholars through the ages have tried to find a reasonable and logical answer to the problem of pain. At college, along with C.S. Lewis, we read Irenaeus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth and many besides. Lots of attempts to answer the problem of pain - but every one fell short, or so it seemed. And it’s not just a question for religious people. Everyone faces it, in all walks of life. We all know of good people to whom bad things have happened. Sometimes we can see a cause, sometimes we can identify someone to blame. But not always by any means. Suffering just happens; perhaps I can reduce the risk of suffering happening to me, but nothing I do will make completely immune from it.

We may come up with ideas like “Only the good die young,” even though that too is patently untrue. It’s certainly not a new question, as we see when we read the Old Testament Book of Job, Job’s so-called friends see the string of tragedies that befall Job himself, and all they can say is well-meaning but stupid things like, “You need to call on God, you should be praying harder” or “Things could be worse,” or even “God’s punishment is lighter than you deserve.”

The last seven or eight days have seen terrorist attacks, in New Zealand, in Holland . . . and we’re rightly distressed to read of the victims and their stories. “Why are these terrible thing happening to such innocent people?” we ask.

But when Jesus was asked to comment on the two tragedies in our Gospel this morning, he made it very clear to those who came to him that the people who died were neither better nor worse than other folk. Insofar as we’re all sinners, we all stand in some way under the same sentence of death.
And it isn’t that there’s a direct causal relationship between sin and suffering, that God chooses to zap us in response to our sin. It’s not that simple; and yet there is a link, for all that. Sin causes suffering.

Let Pilate’s actions stand for the injustices perpetrated by those in powerful places. The high-handedness of tyrants and dictators - though even those elected democratically can act in ways that prove unjust, uncaring or just plain foolish, and these things cause hurt. Destructive behaviour, misuse of power, feuding and vengeance seeking - these are things that happen at every level of human life. The greed that grabs and hoards without considering the other; the anger that lashes out before trying to understand: all of these do damage, all have consequences. And as Christian folk we need to be ready to speak out and act against all that causes suffering to others, and also to be aware of these things in ourselves.

And that thought takes me back to the story Jesus went on to tell. What’s the meaning of the parable of the fig tree? Why did Jesus tell that particular parable, and why is it placed here in Luke’s Gospel? Here’s what I think.

Most of us would prize fairness as a vital human value, and it’s the sense of things “not being fair” that underlies our questions and anxieties about the problem of pain. God should play fair, and it feels as though he isn’t. Fairness means we’re rewarded for doing good and punished when we do wrong. Fairness suggests that when we do really well, we might get a special pat on the back, or even a bonus. And those who get things badly wrong should be excluded, or get the sack.

In the story what the landowner says sums up what most of us think of as fairness: “Look! For three years I’ve been coming for fruit from my fig tree, and still there’s none. Get rid of it - why should it go on wasting my soil?”

But the gardener begs him to let it stay another year; he’ll dig round it and add manure. And then if it bears fruit, it can stay; if not, it can be cut down. We may well think of the owner of the vineyard as standing for God; but what if we read this parable with God instead as the gardener? If you do, it becomes the manifesto, if you like, of the God who doesn’t operate according to the standard concepts of fairness that we employ - and if he did any of us might be rooted out as not fruitful enough. Our God is the God of patient and faithful tending, and he looks on us with hopeful expectation.

All we have is the present moment, and tomorrow is never guaranteed; now is the time for us to work at being fruitful, now is the time to oppose what causes hurt and discord. But  there’s a word of good hope for us in the story of the fig tree: a promise that, though tragic things will happen, God is still tending his garden. He still works in and through his people to bring light and life, love and peace to a broken and sinful world. May he work that work in us. Amen.