St. Paul’s United Church                                                                                Sunday, March 14, 2010

                                               

Looking for Clues

Rev. Cathy Russell

 

Luke 13: 1-5

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Who doesn’t love a great detective story?  Since the Victorian era, the professional detective has fascinated us.  Part scientist, part artist- using a combination of reason and intuition the detective follows the clues, solves the crime and brings the perpetrators to justice. And we love to come along for the ride, to unravel the clues, and to match wits with the detective whether in a book or on television.  Did you know the word clue actually comes from the word “clew”, which is a word for a ball of string?  (SLIDE #2 Theseus) It’s a reference to the Greek hero Theseus.  It was by, unwinding a ball of string- a clew- and then tracing the trail it had made, that Theseus was able to find his way into the labyrinth lair of the monstrous minotaur, and more importantly find his way out again after disposing of that unfortunate creature.  I can’t resist saying at this point that the ball of string solution came from a wiley woman named Ariadne who had fallen in love with Theseus, and wanted to help him. Without her simple but ingenious solution, poor Theseus would literally have wandered around ‘clew-less’ and ended up as Minotaur meat.

 

Detective stories are intellectually and morally satisfying.  A good detective story promises a way into and a way out of an encounter with the more monstrous side of human nature. There is a great sense of intellectual satisfaction in a puzzle solved, a mystery revealed- and there is a great moral satisfaction in a trespass punished, a criminal apprehended.  Kate Summerscale, author of the Victorian era true crime book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher writes that the criminal investigator became a “secular substitute for a prophet or priest.” Our culture puts its trust in reason, the five senses and the powers of the rational intellect above everything else, and so the idea that if correctly applied these powers can pierce the fog of any mystery is deeply appealing.  We have a deep need for the world around us and the events of our lives to make sense, a need to know why things happen the way they do, and who or what is responsible- especially if the events cause chaos and uncertainty in our lives.  We want to believe that there are clues that, once unraveled will lead towards a coherent solution, that the detectives of our world- the scientists, the doctors, the police can, or at least will unravel them and make our world make sense.  

 

Looking for clues: God hates you.  Although in the ancient world, some pretty brainy folks like Aristotle did use their powers of rational observation to understand the workings of the natural world, the popular understanding among the people of Jesus’ time was quite different.  Greeks worked hard to keep the gods happy with sacrifices and feasts in order to stay on the right side of those vain and often vindictive Olympians. It was common for folks to believe that there was a direct cause and effect relationship between tragedy and transgression.  If your nation’s army was defeated, if your crops failed, if your children died in infancy you must have committed some offence against the divine powers- in other words you must have done something to deserve it.  Outward suffering was the sign of an inward guilt or failing. Bad things happened to people who did bad things, or failed to do the right things.    The story of Job in our Older Testament contains arguments between Job and his friends on this very subject. And though this “you gets what’s coming to ya” kind of theology may be ancient, it is still very much alive among Christians today.  American Television evangelist Pat Robertson has hinted on his show the 700 Club that the devastation and death caused by Hurricane Katrina and the recent earthquake in Haiti were God’s judgment on human sin.  Even those who would never normally accept this view for others may begin asking of themselves and God- “what did I do to deserve this?” when the tragedies of illness, death, or disaster blow a hole in their own lives.

 

Looking for clues: God has a secret plan.  And while many Christians would reject Robertson’s ‘disaster as divine punishment ‘ theory of tragedy, there is another less harsh version that holds a real attraction for many- and that is that whatever happens, each and every moment of time unfolds according to God’s plan.  This plan is like the little envelope in the game of Clue in which the true identity of the murderer the weapon and the location of the crime are hidden.  You know the answers are there and have been there all along, but you don’t get to see them until the end of the game.  Again, we have what seems to be chaos into order- even if that order is temporarily invisible to us.  As long as we know we’re going to get an answer eventually, we can put up with its delay.

 

The comfort people find in the theory of ‘God’s plan’ is not something to be dismissed lightly or without compassion.  I have experienced how people cling to this belief as they struggle to get their bearings in the aftermath of some disaster- and as you might guess that is simply the wrong time to engage in serious theological debate.  However, this solution to the mystery of tragedy is simply not one I can embrace or endorse.  Yesterday, John and I went to the funeral of a 12 year old girl Britney and her father Ken who died in a house fire in the west end of Toronto.  The girl’s mother who was not home at the time of the fire, comes from the Sagamok Reserve where John served for 8 yrs, and is related to some of his friends there.  I have been to a lot of funerals, and John to many more.  But for both of us, this was one of the saddest and most tragic we have ever attended.  A beautiful, happy young girl and the father who tried to save her are dead.  A woman is left to mourn the loss of her eldest child and her husband.  A baby girl, whom her father did save, will grow up with no memory of him or her sister. What kind of a plan could that depth of suffering possibly fit into?  What kind of plan could the suffering of thousands upon thousands in Haiti and Chile possibly fit into? Surely not the plan of a God who came in Christ so that we might enjoy life in all its fullness!

 

Jesus says beware the red herring.  The Jews of Jesus’ time who lived under Roman occupation were no strangers to suffering and tragedy.  In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus reflects on two recent events- the execution of some Galileans by Pilate, and the deadly collapse of a tower in Siloam.  In both cases he rejects the notion that the deceased brought about their own destruction by their sinfulness.  Did they die because they were more sinful than their neighbours- more sinful than you or me-Jesus says N, O- NO!  And for good measure, he reminds us that we need to worry about the state of our own souls before we go judging others.  More of that- “You know, you might just want to take care of that two by four in your own eye before you go pointing out a little speck in your neighbour’s”, brand of advice.  I guess Pat Robertson and his pals haven’t got around to that part of Luke’s gospel yet.  It’s like the great 19th century American author Mark Twain’s response when a reporter asked him what he thought of the Jews. He answered with his typical sardonic wit- “They’re no worse than anybody else.”- which is another way of saying, they’re every bit as good as you.

 

When we look for clues to solve the mystery of why tragedy, why suffering, we can end up seizing instead upon every detective’s Achilles heel- the red herring. Red herrings were supposedly used to train hunting dogs.  The fish were dragged on the ground to see if the dogs could stay focused on the scent of the animal they were supposed to track, instead of being distracted by the much more obvious- and to a dog delicious- odour of a string of dead fish. In other words, red herrings though they may appear obvious and promising at first, ultimately lead us in the wrong direction. To see tragedy as God’s punishment, or even as God’s secret plan is to go chasing after red herrings-unravelling threads that look like clues but which in the end lead nowhere.

 

Where’s our denouement?  Well, if hanging the pain of the world on God takes us in the wrong direction, then where are we to find answers to the mystery of tragedy in our midst?  Where’s that wonderful denouement- literally the moment of de-knotting- when the mystery is solved, the culprit revealed, the solution recounted, and our sense of order restored?  If Jesus warns us away from the red herring, where else does he want us to look- what more satisfying alternate solution does he have to offer?  Turns out Jesus isn’t much of a detective after all.  Because Jesus’ answer to the mystery of tragedy is not what people who are used to rational explanations for everything –people like us expect.  Jesus has no ingenious denouement, no armchair deductions from his” little grey cells” to offer.  The solution, the only solution Jesus has to offer us in the face of tragedy is nothing other than himself.  Not his logical brain, but his gracious heart, not his power to explain a brilliant hypothesis, but his fervent desire to transform our lives, not his sworn duty to uphold the demands of the law, but his sacred mission to offer God’s forgiveness and reconciliation for sin.  The Jesus who will go to the cross knows the mystery of tragedy, of suffering, of evil- and not from a cool distance, but first hand- in his own being, his own body.  

 

 

From mystery to mystery.  It’s through the cross of Christ that we enter into the greatest mystery of all- the mystery of a death that is overcome, of a stone rolled away, of a grave that is empty, of a love that never ends.  Through the mercy of God and the power of the Spirit- Christ will live again.  And it’s the living Christ who accompanies us through the mystery of our lives not as a fictional hero to be admired, but as a real presence to be worshipped.  Not as a detective or scientist who will unravel all the clues and give us all the answers, but as a shepherd, savior and friend who accompanies us all the way through this life and beyond.   More than clues, more than answers, what we need is God.  Thanks be to God for the holy mystery of love in Christ.