1.  Did you happen to count the tragedies in the last week or two?  I didn’t actually count them, but I remember news reports of some of them: a storm rolled across the country, spawning  tornadoes that killed I don’t know how many people; roadside bombs exploded in Iraq, killing more than 100 people on a religious pilgrimage; early Thursday morning a fire broke out in an apartment buildings in New York City, killing 9 people, 8 or whom were children, and sending 10 more to the hospital with serious burns.  The week before, my friend Roger was killed in a car crash on his way to pick up his wife; an apartment fire killed some of Emerson’s fraternity brothers in one town and countless others in different parts of the world; a bus filled with college baseball players crashed, killing six immediately, and a seventh died a couple of days ago.  No day passes without some innocent person meeting his or her untimely death.  To paraphrase Rick Wells, the Channel 6 reporter, “What in the Sam Hill is going on here?”

2.  This story from the Gospel of Luke raises a similar question, a question as old as time.   Why do innocent people die?  And the first answer that comes to people is, “Well, they must have done something to deserve it, something maybe we didn’t know about.”  This is only exacerbated by the frequently-heard comment from people who DID NOT die in a car crash or tornado or whatever: “I prayed real hard. God heard my prayers and saved me.”  That’s very easy to say, but hard to defend!  There is an arrogance present in that attitude which all but nullifies whatever gratitude the escapees may feel about having been spared certain death.  Jesus took his own arrogant bystanders to task for their unthinking remarks.  “Their SIN had NOTHING to do with it!”  Then he turned the tables on them.  “And, by the way, if YOU don’t change your own ways, you’re going to have more problems than you can handle!”

3.  This is one of those bad news/good news stories.  First the bad news : People die.  This includes the people we love and would have a hard time living without, up to and including those whose death would leave the world a better place, in our humble opinion.   Death happens.  One of these breaths we take for granted will be our last.  It may be quietly and peacefully while we’re sleeping, it may be after an agonizing battle with something like cancer or multiple sclerosis or cystic fibrosis, or it could even be in some unanticipated disaster.  And the grave marker will indicate the date of birth and the date of death, with a little dash separating the two.

4.  The dash that separates a date of birth from a date of death is part of the good news in this story.  When anyone dies a catastrophic death, it is not because God has arbitrarily chosen death as proper punishment for sin.  It is because the conditions required for life no longer exist.  Even though it hits us hard, and we have a hard time recovering, the fact is that how people live is more important than how they die.  And God, who is full of mercy, wants to help us live out the “dash” between the date of birth and the date of death by making the world a better place.

5.  I don’t know how the people in this story were living – what the “dash” on their grave marker might read.  I think they needed to make some changes, though, don’t you?  I think maybe they were not working to make the world a better place.  Why else would Jesus say what he said?  Now, you might think Jesus was threatening those to whom he was speaking.  Not so!  Warning them, maybe, but not threatening.  We have to read on a little farther to find the rest of the good news.  “Then he told this parable,” Luke writes.  And Jesus launches into one of the parables which used a fig tree to carry the message.  This particular fig tree was just taking up space – it had no figs on it.  A root system, branches, twigs, and leaves, but NO figs.  For THREE years it produced no fruit.  The orchard owner had lost his patience; he wanted to chop it down – but the gardener made a plea for its life. “Oh, please, let me pay some extra attention to it – give it some food and water, and dig around its roots so it can breathe.”

6.  Some anonymous person wrote “The Gospel According to You.”^[i]

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John

Are read by more than just a few,

But the one that is most read and commented on

Is the gospel according to you.

You are writing a gospel, a chapter each day

By the things that you do and the words that you say.

People read what you write, whether faithless or true.

Say, what is the gospel according to you?

Do others read God’s truth and God’s love in your life?

Or has yours been too full of malice and strife?

Does your life speak of evil, or does it ring true?

Say, what is the gospel according to you?

7.  Bad news: people die; good news: people live.  And the best news of all?  God gives us all the help we need in the living of our lives, and God is there to receive us when we die.  Thanks be to God!  Amen!!