Lessons from Hurricane Katrina

Luke 13:1-8

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ^2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? ^3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. ^4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? ^5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

^6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. ^7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

^8 “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. ^9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”

On August 16, 1987, I was working the afternoon shift at a hospital outside of Detroit, MI. We received an emergency disaster call alerting us that we could be receiving dozens of accident victims from that a Northwest Airlines plane had crashed ten miles away. There were only two of us working in the lab that night so we prepared for the worst. Another call came informing there would be no crash victims sent to our hospital because there was only one survivor out of 175 passengers and crew, a little four-year old girl named Cecelia. It was simple human error. The pilots had forgotten to raise the flaps on the wings. Barely off the ground at the end of the runway, the plane made a hard left turn and crashed in the middle of I-94, killing two people in a passing car. An hour later we received another call giving us the sad news that the husband of one of our lab employees had been on the plane that crashed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_255

That plane crash was tragic, but it is only one of endless tragedies. Hurricane Katrina claimed over 1300 lives. Last year’s earthquake in Pakistan killed 80,000. Last year’s tsunami killed 240,000. The 1918 flu claimed 50 million lives worldwide. Tragedies such as these have a tendency of accomplishing two things—they raise our levels of compassion and our anger. For example, Hurricane Katrina brought forth a flurry of compassion from government employees, organizations and individuals. These are the feel good stories that always emerge in the midst of a tragedy. The youth initiative school upstairs is a good example. The majority of their students spent thousands of collective hours cooking meals for workers.

But tragedies also make us angry. Katrina is the prime example of this. Within hours of the storm, the blame game was in full swing. President Bush was blamed. Governor Blanco was blamed. Mayor Nagin was blamed. The Army corp. of engineers was blamed. We need to have an answer for these tragedies, so we look for someone to blame. We blame others in order to avoid personal responsibility. If someone else is the cause of the blame then I cannot be the cause. Last week I blamed Karen for something. Within a couple of minutes I realized that my blaming her was just a way to deflect the blame off of myself. I was equally or more to blame than she was and the easiest way to avoid my guilt was to cast it off onto her.

Some bystanders asked Jesus an important question about suffering and tragedy and we can see that their natural reaction, like ours, was to cast blame. But before the blame comes a tragedy. Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. In order to understand Pilate we could use the illustration of nosocomial infection. A nosocomial infection is an infection that is acquired while staying in a hospital. Obviously a hospital is a place where you go to be healed, but because there are so many sick and elderly people in hospitals, it is the perfect place to get an infection. The classic example is an elderly person who breaks their hip, has surgery in the hospital and acquires a lethal case of pneumonia. These infections are often caused by opportunistic pathogens which are not usually harmful or fatal to an otherwise healthy person. Opportunistic infections are just that—opportunistic. It is like they lie and wait for the right opportunity to infect someone. A surgical incision on a patient who has a weakened immune system is the perfect opportunity for infection. Nurses and doctors who are exposed to the same bacteria do not become infected because the bacteria do not have the same opportunities with a healthy person. Opportunistic infections do not fight fair. It is like kicking someone when they are down.

Pilate was like this—he was an opportunistic leader. He took advantage of opportunities to further his political career. This is most obvious at Jesus’ trial before Pilate. Rather than do the obvious right thing, he did the opportunistic thing by releasing Barabbas instead of Jesus. He did something awful here in verse one. We don’t know what historical event is being referenced here, but we know enough. Pilate was involved in some massacre of Galilean Jews during a time of worship. In effect, the blood of their sacrificial worship was intermingled with the blood of those who were slaughtered. Nothing was sacred for Pilate—not even worship. This would be like pouring gasoline on a church and setting fire to it in the middle of a Sunday morning service. This was a man made tragedy, similar to, but not on the same scale as Hitler and others.

Jesus answered their question in verse two and by looking at his answer, we can reconstruct the question they asked. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? So what was the question? Obviously they asked something like, “What sin did these Galileans commit to deserve such an awful punishment?” This was a common way of thinking about suffering, what we would call the law of sowing and reaping: you always reap what you sow, therefore these Galileans surely must have sowed great evil to have reaped great evil from Pilate. All of us think this way at times because the law of sowing and reaping is evident everywhere. If you eat too much you will gain weight. If you smoke four packs of cigarettes a day you will get lung cancer. If you rob a bank you will be sent to prison. The law of sowing and reaping is also a Biblical principal. In Galatians 6 Paul wrote, “A man reaps what he sows. ^8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”

So if the law of sowing and reaping is a Biblical principle and it’s so obvious in life, why did Jesus deny the law of sowing and reaping by contradicting the premise of their question? In verse three he said that those who suffered were not worse sinners than anyone else. That is another way of saying that the law of sowing and reaping did not apply to them. Jesus gave the exact same response in vv. 4-5, Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? ^5 I tell you, no! This tragedy of a tower falling on 18 people would be classified as a natural disaster. So we have an example of a man-made tragedy with the Pilate massacre and a natural tragedy with the tower of Siloam. Do you see how relevant this is for us today? In the wake of the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, the nation the world and our next door neighbors are all asking the same question—“why did this happen?” And as soon as you ask that question, as I said before, the blame game begins. My favorite attempt at blame is from those who say that President Bush is personally and solely responsible for global warming which in turn directly caused the category 5 hurricane known as Katrina which slammed into Louisiana. I was talking with someone at the fair this past year. The skies were clouding over and it rain was in the forecast. As this man was leaving, he said, “Well I better get home before Bush makes it rain on me.”

Many Christians have played the blame game quite well. Do you recall what many high profile Christians said about AIDS when it first emerged in the mid-80’s? They said that aids was a judgment from God upon homosexual people. Clearly the law of sowing and reaping is at play with aids. If you engage in high risk behavior, then natural consequences are likely to follow, but it is idiotic to blame aids on gay people since more than half of those who die from aids or are orphaned from aids are children. These innocent children did not sow a lifetime of risky behavior, they were just born. Well known Christian author Henry Blackaby said that the tsunami was God’s judgment on Muslims who were persecuting Christians. Two weeks ago I heard him on Christian radio saying that Hurricane Katrina was also a judgment from God on all of the sin in the New Orleans area.

What would Jesus say to these Christians who are claiming God’s judgment? This is easy because we have Jesus’ answer right in front of us. He would say, “Do you think that these Indonesians were worse sinners than all the other Asians because they suffered this way? ^3 I tell you, no! Or those people who died when Hurricane Katrina struck—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in the United States? I tell you, no!” I have intentionally left out half of Jesus’ answer which we will get to in a moment, but it could not be more clear that these natural disasters, whether we classify them as natural or manmade, are not a judgment from God. Is that clear to you? Because if you don’t agree with me I think that you have to directly argue with Jesus on this one. Don’t let these kinds of condemnation come out of your mouth. Speak out against them when you hear other believers talking this way. It is foolishness.

Before you get all confused, we must admit that there are dozens of Biblical examples of very specific judgments from God upon people: Sodom and Gomorrah, the battle of Jericho, all of the judges, the snakes in the wilderness. These are all very specific acts of judgment in response to specific sins. In the Old Testament and a little bit in the N.T., God often worked this way. But in all of these examples we have direct revelation from God linking the sin with the judgment. With every other tragedy that is not found in the Bible, we do not have a direct revelation linking the sin to the judgment. Therefore in the absence of this specific word from God, and because Jesus explicitly states that these were not the direct result of sin, we can confidently conclude that most deaths and tragedies are not a specific judgment on that individual.

Jesus did not say such things are judgments from God, but he did say something that most people today would consider controversial. He said that these tragedies were not God’s judgments, but he also twice said, But unless you repent, you too will all perish”. Now on the surface that does not sound very compassionate. Let’s say Jesus was on the NBC nightly news with Brian Williams and was asked about Hurricane Katrina. Brian: Jesus, many Christians are saying that Katrina is a judgment from God. Can you comment on that? Jesus: No Brian, those who died were not worse sinners than anyone else, but unless you and all your viewers repent, you too will all perish. It doesn’t sound much better than saying that it is a judgment from God, does it. It does not sound like the compassionate Jesus we know. But be sure of this—disasters like Katrina are among the most compassionate of events because they warn us of an even greater tragedy—an eternal perishing.

Don’t make the mistake here—Jesus was not saying that you will perish in the same way these other people perished. That would not make any sense. That would be like him saying, “No, the 18 people who had the tower fall on them were not worse sinners, but unless you repent, a tower will fall on you too.” That doesn’t make any sense! Jesus was referring to perishing in the spiritual sense. I can say that a disaster is a compassionate event because anything that warns us of a final, eternal judgment is compassionate. If you warn someone not to go swimming in shark infested waters you are demonstrating compassion. You know that sickening feeling you got when you watched the death toll from the tsunami rise on a daily basis? You know those gut-wrenching emotions you felt when we heard about the nursing home residents left to die in New Orleans? We are supposed to feel that way. It is a natural reaction to human pain and suffering, but it is also meant to get us to think long and hard about eternal things. These are reminders that our world is hopelessly broken and they are compassionate warnings to repent in order to avoid an even worse tragedy. The world thinks that this is a bad as it gets, but we know better.

Let’s summarize this into a few principles.

1. All disasters/tragedies/deaths are due to sin.

The Bible is clear that that earthquakes, hurricanes, influenza and cancer are all due to sin’s marring effect upon all of creation. The world does not have an answer for things like Hurricane Katrina, let alone something much worse. We alone have the answer to suffering and death.

2. Most deaths are not a specific judgment on that individual.

Jesus is clear on this point. Unless God specifically tells you otherwise, we must not connect specific sin to a specific judgment.

3. A final judgment (perishing) awaits all people.

As tragic as man-made and natural disasters are, there is something far worse—an eternal judgment. Don’t try to explain this in your own words, but rather use Jesus’ words. The next time this question comes up in a conversation, point people to Luke 13. Most people think Jesus was a good man and they respect his teaching. Let Jesus do the talking for you.

4. For the unbeliever—disasters are a compassionate warning to repent.

As believers we want Jesus to return as soon as possible, but we must not forget that every day he delays his coming is one more opportunity to repent. The tribulation will be an unending series of what the world calls tragedies and what the Bible calls judgments. Even these will be compassionate warnings to repent. As C.S. Lewis said, “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a dying world.” If they won’t listen during times of prosperity, maybe they will listen in times of tragedy and loss.

5. For the believer—disasters are opportunities for compassion and truth-telling.

Our church gave very generously toward tsunami relief and hurricane Katrina. Some of us plan to serve on sight in Louisiana in a few months. I am confident that if a tragedy hit closer to home our response would be even greater, but Christians do not have a corner on the market in compassion. The world can also dole out enormous amounts of compassion. As believers we need to be at least as compassionate as the rest of the world. But do you know what can undo an enormous amount of compassion? When a Christian opens their mouth and claims that those who suffered and died in Hurricane Katrina deserved it.  One or two comments like that can smear all the good that has been done in the name of Christ. Don’t speak words of judgment, but do speak words of truth. Don’t be afraid to point them to Jesus’ warning in this chapter. Tell them it is not your warning, but rather Jesus’ warning you want them to hear. Compassion is handing our food and water to hurricane victims, but compassion is also warning them of a final judgment. We need to do both of these very well to the glory of God.

Rich Maurer

January 1, 2006