We Are the Problem, Not God!
Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15; 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9
I was disappointed in God for many years; not because of what he did, but for what he failed to do: a nun/sister was raped by armed robbers, and I couldn’t understand how God could sit by and watch that happen to a person who had consecrated her life to him! I was just 12 years-old at the time. In my mind, I questioned God’s omnipotence and love, at least, for that nun/sister. Today, all is coming back to me, because of our gospel reading. But I now know that the problem is me, and not God; it is all about my use of my freedom, my refusal to accept obedience as the law of life and living; indeed, all that matters is God’s directive not human volition!
As a Nigerian, today’s gospel doubles my culpability because God is always to blame whenever anything at all goes wrong in Nigeria. Whenever anyone is ill, we ask: “God, why now”? even for residents of humanly made slums and those denied of access to hospitals. When we’re involved in a car crash, despite the fact that our car/bus is in bad condition, we ask: “God, why now”? We steal money from government coffers and swindle people (419); yet, we ask: “God, why now”? After rigging our elections and having received bribes for doing so, we ask: O God, give us good leaders! It is not only in the African continent that God is blamed for human ills. In Europe and America, we teach our children to have sex from elementary school, and we blame God that our society is replete with sexual predator and abortion. Our children are placed on contraceptive pills from their first menstruation, and we blame God for infertility and offer Masses for them to conceive children in marriage. We allow everyone access to firearms, yet we complain about mass shooting. We run mega million arms-industrial-complexes and we complain of wars around the world. We closedown churches, imprison those who condemn the sins of our society and we blame God for lawlessness and immorality!
Yes, we believe in justice, our own invented justice without God. That didn’t begin today, human beings have a track record of that kind of behavior. Our gospel tells us that when people are killed, we blame God for that – human justice and God’s injustice! God is supposed to turn himself into the Superman, Batman and Spider-Man of our movies to save those to be hurt or killed. As far as we are concerned, we have no hand in it! Natural disasters too are God’s fault, even when science tells us that our global warming is not the responsibility of God, rather human inactivity and activity are responsible for it. For once, God pushes back and places the ball in human court: “But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did” (Luke 13:5).
Three actors are at play in our gospel reading, in addition to the accusations against God for human ills. The three actors are: the owner of the vineyard, the fig tree and the gardener. Although parables have myriad approaches, should we stick to the idea of accusations of God for human mishaps, the central question will be that of the barrenness of the fig tree – whose fault was it? The owner of the vineyard expected fruits from his fig tree, and couldn’t find any. The gardener insinuates that the fig tree needs more care and time to produce fruits. Two expectations confront each other, the owner of the vineyard’s and the gardener’s, but where is the responsibility of the fig tree? Well, if this parable teaches anything at all, it is that God is very patient with human beings; but there is a deeper meaning.
Human beings, the first to accuse God of wrong doing in our gospel reading, fail to produce the fruit of righteousness God expects of them – the fig tree – and Jesus (gardener) buys time for them. The fruitlessness of the fig tree tells God’s expectation of every fig tree – every human being – the production of good fruit. The gardener didn’t contest this expectation of the owner of the fig tree, but asks for more time. What is responsible for the barrenness of the fig tree and what excuse has the fig tree for not producing fruit? Here is the response of Jesus: “But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did” (Luke 13:5). It is not actually a fig tree that Jesus is talking about, but human sinfulness. It is only when human beings conduct themselves the way they should, by obeying God’s commandments, that the evil human beings do will cease. Jesus’ requirement of conversion suggests that the onus for a better world rests with human beings not God, because God has entrusted his garden and the wherewithal for fruitfulness to human beings.
God calls us to make our choices wisely because in freedom lies destruction, but obedience to God’s Commandments brings salvation. The exercise of human freedom against Divine precepts leads to the anarchy and chaos we experience. The life of Moses, as it unfolds in the first reading, tells the tale of the importance of obedience for salvation over the exercise of freedom. Yes, freedom can only be so-called when it is a freedom to choose God and obey his Commandments. “Freedom” becomes slavery and the fastest means to self and collective destruction when God has no bearing upon it. It was the encounter between God and Moses, in our first reading, that allowed Moses to understand that human destiny is in God’s hands and human beings can never hijack it. Moses killed an Egyptian because he wanted human justice, because he felt God’s help was taking too long to arrive. God tells Moses that he is more compassionate than any human being. Today, God outlines his plan for saving the Jews from Egypt and how Moses has a stake in it.
From the wrong accusation of God in our gospel, in our first reading God manifests himself as a God of all and as a God of patience and compassion: “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:7-8). Even in our gospel reading, the extra-time given to the fig tree to produce fruits shows God’s patience, and God’s determination to sustain the fig tree through a good gardener shows his compassion. Even the sinful person is offered opportunities to repent, just as the Egyptians were offered opportunities to treat the Jews well and they failed to. These all point to human failure to play their part in assuring a humane and violence free-world!
Our second reading provides us with the message of today – to take seriously the lessons of the past. Paul says this: “These things happened as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil things, as they did. Do not grumble as some of them did, and suffered death by the destroyer. These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:5-6).
The abandonment of God and disobedience to his Commandments, as we see in our societies today, are always responsible for the ills of human beings. Only repentance and penance can win us God’s favor. We must concentrate on what we are doing wrong and change, and there will be no need to ask why our world is messed up! We Are the Problem, Not God!
Assignment for the Week:
Do something that alleviates the suffering of somebody.
(Taken from “Fatherayo2u.com” 2019)