Who Repents?

Beware of “Gapers Block.” About a decade ago I heard a phrase I had never heard before. The phrase was “gapers block.” Gaper’s block is when you see an accident on the side of the road. And what is your reaction? You slow down. Well, on an interstate where people are used to going 70 or 80 mph, when people slow down to 40, the traffic can back up. And when that happens, we tell ourselves that we’re slowing down to be safe. But let’s face it, there’s also that curious part of us that wants to know what’s going on. The problem with gaper’s block, of course, is that if you’re looking off to the side of the road, where are you supposed to be looking? As they told us in driver’s ed. class: “keep your eyes on the road.” These words this morning start out with a sort of gaper’s block. They start out with a distraction from the main point that Jesus wants them to focus on. In Luke 13, we read: “1 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.”” (Luke 13:1–5 NIV11-GKE)

So there were people who came to Jesus with this odd and cruel story. Pontus Pilate, the governor of that area had done something shocking and stunning. There were people bringing animals up to the altar to sacrifice them. In some way that we aren’t told human blood got mixed in with the animal blood. Did Pilate’s soldiers cut down someone else and then that blood spattered onto the animals? Did Pilate’s soldiers cut down people as they were offering up their animals so that, there on the altar, was animal blood and the blood of those who were offering up those animals? We aren’t told those details. But we do know that is was bloody and it was wrong. And isn’t the same true today? If you buy a newspaper today or turn on the news, do you hear headlines like this: “Woman comes home after hard day of work” or “Dad finally learns how to change diaper?” No, instead you hear about that which is bloody and wrong. And when we hear about it, we can obsess over it.

Notice where Jesus takes the conversation. They had already decided that they knew the answer to the why question. Why did they suffer like this? They had done something worthy of dying this way. So, to them, Jesus says, “Unless all of you repent, you all will perish.”1 And just to make sure that they understood him correctly, he makes the same point with a different example. There was a tower people were building. And the tower fell on them. And the people concluded that it fell on them because they had done something worthy of being punished. And again, Jesus told them that unless they all repent, they will perish.

Now, my friends in Christ, there are two points to take home and ponder here. The first is that tragedies happen. And when they do, God and God alone is the only one who knows all the reasons why it happened and what he is going to do with the situation. And the second is this: Tragedies out there do not give me the right to ignore what is happening here in my heart. For each one of us has this real temptation to conclude that I have the right to not repent. We can say in our hearts that there are those people out there. Those tragedies happened to them because they are so bad. And we say this to avoid the bad that is in our own hearts. Or a little closer to home, we can say to