HERE is another Gospel passage unique to Luke. Sometimes, the context of such passages helps us, as we find clues to meaning in what has just been narrated, or what follows afterwards. This approach will not necessarily work well for Luke 13.1-9, because it is part of the middle section of the whole Gospel (chapters 9-19), and many commentators treat that section as a collection of assorted stories and sayings, jumbled together because they do not obviously belong anywhere else.
If we accept this view of chapters 9-19, we cannot expect theological coherence or historical sequence to reveal a single message: a Gospel “take-home” to last us through the week ahead. Perhaps this also explains why lectionary compilers did not scruple to set Luke 13.1-9 (Lent 3) after Luke 13.31-35 (Lent 2), and why they make a single lection out of one encounter, reflecting on human responsibility and divine theodicy, set beside a story about a fig tree that committed the heinous offence of not bearing fruit.
I have previously referred here to a Hebrew word meaning “Aha!”, which has overtones of gloating (Faith, 14 February). There is no textual support for where my imagination takes me with this Gospel, but still I end up wondering: did those unnamed people “who told him about the Galileans” inform Jesus in order to warn him? Or were they genuinely curious for his opinion on a theological conundrum about suffering (the bloodshed) or holiness (a polluted altar)? Or did they tell him because they were trying to catch him out, thus triggering (in my mind, though not in the gospel) an “Aha”?
One English word expresses even more clearly the gloating feeling that accompanies catching someone out in some wrongdoing or pretence: “Gotcha!” For me, these verses call that word to mind, because they make me think of how interviewers ask questions to get an interviewee to respond in a particular way.
Imagine some journalist or politician, manipulating a member of the UK Government into denouncing Donald Trump, to make an eye-catching headline: “Gotcha!” Might the consequences be disastrous for, say, Ukrainian civilians, or Canadian industry, or any other target the US President might be inclined to attack? Would the speaker even care?
There is nothing in the text to suggest that the people warning Jesus were either manipulative or malicious in their intentions, or that he put himself at risk by his reaction. But, by the way in which he responds, Jesus shows that he is taking it as an opportunity to challenge the popular assumption that underlies their question.
This mysterious calamity is mentioned by no other ancient witness. One understandable response to it might be that those who suffered at Pilate’s hands deserved to do so. Similarly, some in modern Britain might assume that would-be migrants to the UK are choosing to put themselves in harm’s way, and deserve to suffer in consequence.
The first interchange began with a calamity inflicted by a single individual, Pontius Pilate. Then Jesus made reference to a second calamity, of a different kind, in which no human agent was apparently at fault. Just now, I suggested informing, theologising, and entrapping, as three plausible reasons that those people told Jesus about the suffering of some Galileans. Readers must make their own judgement on which is the most likely. Jesus’s own example — the collapsed tower — seems to have been chosen for contrast rather than corroboration. Apparently, the Lord did not see destiny or divine purpose at work in that event.
But Jesus did not live in an era of planning consents, structural surveys, health and safety legislation, or anti-terrorism measures such as Prevent. Since the Grenfell Tower disaster — and, before that, 9/11 — our view has changed for the foreseeable future. How to interpret meaning in deaths caused through the collapse of towers no longer tends automatically towards accident, chance, or misfortune. Now, unsurprisingly, incompetence, greed, and callous disregard for human life, or perhaps oppression and exploitation, or even blind, obsessive hatred, must be factored in to the judgements that we must make about cause and effect.
However tempting it is to search this passage for a unified message, it makes better sense to take it as a representative sample of the countless encounters and interactions of Jesus’s itinerant ministry, all of which possess the only gospel coherence and unity that really matter: that of the fact — and consequences — of divine love for errant humanity.
