Who Sinned?

I do not believe God sent COVID-19 (coronavirus) to punish the US or the world for abortion, sexual harassment, homosexuality, gun violence, socialism, or exploitation of the poor. To be sure, we humans in the US and elsewhere have plenty of room for personal and social ethical self-examination. And yes, human actions have consequences. I haven’t seen any research on what may have unleashed COVID-19, but we do know that other viruses have spread from disruption of previously undisturbed environments.

Each month when I come to Psalm 106:15 I cringe a bit. [God] “gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them.” I rather like how the KJV says, “sent leanness into their souls,” but current events make “wasting disease” rather pointed. Whatever interpretations are teased out of this line, it does point to our human tendency to self-promotion and self-interest without thought to the impact on others. The panic buying of toilet paper and hand cleaning products that was never encouraged by either media or government is a present manifestation of this. I do think the getting what we ask and with it getting wasting diseases and leanness of soul aptly describes our propensity to self-focus in a whole range of concerns.

In the Lectionary Gospel for next Sunday Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2) Jesus’ answer is at once comforting and disturbing. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (v. 3) In Luke 13:1-5 Jesus emphatically states that those who suffer catastrophes are not being punished for their sins. Yet, in both cases Jesus leaves us with troubling questions. Was God so cruel as to make this man born blind just so that Jesus could come along years later and heal him?  If those who suffer are not worse sinners than anyone else, why are we to repent so we don’t perish as they did?

While I take considerable comfort in Jesus’ assurance that the ordinary sufferings of life are not God’s punishments, I will not offer a casual way of dismissing the distressing aspects of his words. However, juxtaposed with Psalm 106:15, as they were in my reflections today, I do recognize in the call to repentance much more than fessing up to specific sins. Rather, I see it as a call to change the way we think about ourselves and our desires in relationship to the impact of pervasive self-focus that not only inflicts more suffering on those who are most vulnerable, but obscures our recognition of others around us. If my memory serves me right, Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Jesus the man for others. We who aspire to follow Jesus have both opportunity and responsibility to model and call for lives focused on others in a world obsessed with self.