With Jack Paton.

Life’s fragility gives this story some urgency. Jesus turns attention away from the disasters, and away from the victims, and “why?” He distracts us from spending time asking the "why" questions, and he addresses those of us who thus far have survived hazards of the universe and the dangers of living in human society. But we should not mistake our good fortune as evidence of God’s special blessing.

What Jesus wants to talk about in this passage is repentance. And the need for repentance is a universal condition, and it is shared by random victims of tragedies and the rest of us who go about our lives knowing that they could very quickly be cut short.

When Jesus says, twice, “unless you repent you will all perish” like the others did, he is not promising that the godless of this world will be struck by an asteroid or some great disaster. He refers to death as an end of time experience – a destruction, not just of one's life, but of one’s soul.

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