One of the things we are learning to do with the work of the Transition Team at Bloor Street – and it’s a challenge that all faith communities face in these days – is how to ask better questions. Which sounds straight-forward, but it’s not. However, when you are faced with a complex, new set of circumstances, as we are today as churches in a post-pandemic, unpredictable world of misinformation, polarization, and disillusionment… you won’t get very far by asking the same questions you used to ask. Those questions were formed by who we used to be, in a world that we once knew.

Asking new and better questions often begins with learning how to un-ask the questions that spring to mind, in order to rewire our thinking to ask questions that open us to the possibility of new and better solutions – instead of going around in circles with the same old same old. New questions arise out of a renewed imagination, an openness to see the world with fresh eyes – and that takes something of a shift in outlook. A leap even.

Jesus is facing a situation like this in the gospel reading we just heard from Val. Jesus has been telling stories, teaching, and responding to challenges from a growing crowd. Some people pop up with a news flash about the Romans’ latest carnage. Ripped from the headlines!… the senseless murder of a group of Galilean pilgrims. We no longer know the context for this incident, nor for the collapse of a tower – evidently under construction at the time – killing eighteen innocent people. Judging from Jesus’ response, the scene prompted a finger-pointing question – that whether these fellow Jews died cruelly by Pilate’s order, or tragically by an accident… they must have been guilty in some way to have brought this on themselves, right?

On hearing of two tragic events we might think that people would rally to those who suffered so unjustly. But instead, it seems, they play the blame game we still hear today. Someone suffers? They must have done something wrong. They must deserve it somehow. The US theologian Wendy Farley is insightful here: “One of the most terrible beliefs of Christianity is that God punishes us with suffering. It is a belief inflicted on grief-stricken or pain-ridden individuals to justify their suffering and on groups to justify their continued oppression. The association of suffering with punishment denies the right to resist suffering. This sadistic theology conspires with pain to lock God away from the sufferer.”

But… we do it to ourselves too. Something happens and we lose our job, or have a serious health diagnosis, and we wonder what did I do to deserve this? Our partner walks out of the marriage and we’re haunted with questions – why me? Mental health struggles – why isn’t God helping?

For all our scientific advances, our society still has a nagging sense that suffering and tragedy in life must be because of something. Jesus makes no such connection. God neither causes nor delights in suffering and calamity. The truth – that suffering and human goodness or wickedness are not cause-and-effect related – is what Jesus is trying to get at. There’s not always a clear reason why bad things happen to good people. What is clear is how we respond to suffering and tragedy in life.

Of course, it’s just human to ask “why?” Why can’t we make progress when it comes to climate change? Why are so many young people in our prosperous and vibrant society depressed and anxious? Why do people in democracies elect tyrants? Why do humans again and again willingly become embroiled in wars?

We can’t help ourselves. We want to make sense of the world.  We want our lives to be logical, sane. And so it’s worth noting that Jesus spends very little time addressing this fundamental human question – the problem of evil in some form or another, and the reality of death. In fact, he actively discourages his followers from doing it either.

The Irish poet, theologian, and peacemaker, Pádraig Ó Tuama, in his book In the Shelter: Finding Welcome in the World, describes the Buddhist concept of “mu,” or un-asking. If someone asks a question that’s too small, shallow, or confining, Ó Tuama writes, you can answer with this word mu, which means, “Un-ask the question, because there’s a better question to be asked.” A wiser question, a deeper question, a truer question. A question that expands possibility, and resists fear.

In Zen Buddhism, “Mu” signifies an alternative to binary thinking, challenging the limitations of yes/no, positive/negative answers. It’s more than just a simple no. It’s that  the question itself is flawed. The true answer is beyond a simple yes or no.

This is a concept near and dear to Jesus’s heart. We’re the ones who want to pin Jesus down for answers. He’s more interested in helping us to ask better questions.

Why did these terrible incidents happen to fellow Galileans, fellow Jews? Why is there so much pain in the world? Why does a good God allow human suffering? Jesus’ response? Ask a better question.

In the philosophy of religion, theodicy is the name given to attempts to resolve the problem of evil that arises when we affirm that God is both all-powerful and good. Surely a good and loving God, having the power to do so, would relieve us of suffering and evil in life. Given that this is clearly not the case, we have to conclude either that God is not as powerful as we thought, or not as good as we’ve been led to believe.

For two thousand years these questions have plagued Christianity – and other faith traditions – without satisfactory answer. Yet we can’t stop asking the question. We crave a Theory of Everything to make sense of the bad stuff – to make sense of the senseless.

As Luke makes clear, the people with news don’t approach Jesus with a blank slate. They come expecting Jesus to verify their instinctive belief that people suffer because they’re sinful. That bad things happen to bad people.

Today we use different language, but when the unspeakable happens, we have our defaults. Some will insist that “Nothing happens outside of God’s plan.” Or “The Lord never gives anyone more than they can bear.” Non-religious people will say things like “Other people have it worse,” or “He died too soon,” or – one of my favourites – “She didn’t deserve to die.” These last two infer that there is either a timeline involved here that was violated, or that one can deserve to die, but the criteria were not met in this case.

The problem with these responses is that they distance us from those who suffer. They keep us from recognizing and even embracing our shared reality, our common humanity. Suffering, tragedy, and death are just a part of life – let’s stop asking questions that lead us to imagine otherwise!

Mu. You’re asking the wrong questions. These same old questions lead us nowhere. Start over. Ask a better question. Go deeper, be braver, draw closer. Repent! Which just means, change your thinking. Reorient yourself in the world. Head in another direction.

Okay. But what is the better question? If asking “why” won’t get us anywhere, what kind of question will?

In typical fashion, Jesus addresses the problem with a story. A landowner has a fig tree planted in his vineyard, Jesus tells his listeners. One day, the landowner goes looking for fruit on the tree, and finds none. Incensed, he confronts his gardener: “For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree,” he says, “and still I find none. Cut it down!  Why should it waste the soil?” The gardener begs his employer for more time: “Sir, let the tree alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

What an odd story to tell! What on earth does a fruitless fig tree have to do with Pilate’s heinous killings, or with the engineering failure that toppled the tower? What is Jesus saying?

Well, for one thing, he’s saying, “Engage in story rather than platitude.” Platitudes are flat, simplistic. Theories don’t heal. And questions that lead to shallow responses aren’t worth asking in the face of tragedy. But stories? Stories open up possibility. Stories include, undo, and transform us. Why did these tragic events happen? Okay, sit down, let me tell you about a fig tree…

And, like so many of Jesus’ parables, this cryptic little story leaves us hanging in the end. We aren’t told what happens a year later. Instead, the story invites questions in several directions at once.

So, we might ask, in what ways am I like the absentee landowner, at a distance from where life and death are actually happening? How am I refusing to get my hands dirty? Pronouncing arms length judgement. Why am I so inclined to be on lookout for waste, loss, and scarcity in the world — rather than potential and possibility? Where in life have I prematurely called it quits, saying, this situation is hopeless, move on?

Or, in what ways am I like the fig tree? Un-enlivened? Un-nourished? Unable or unwilling to nourish others? In what ways do I feel helpless or hopeless? What kinds of tending would it take to bring me back to life? Am I willing to receive such care and attention? Will I agree to change? Can I dare to flourish in a world where I have so far flown under the radar?

And then, in what ways am I like the gardener? Where in my life am I willing to accept Jesus’ invitation to go elbow-deep into the muck and manure? Where do I see life where others see death? How willing am I to pour hope into a project that I don’t control? Am I brave enough to sacrifice time, effort, love, and hope into this tree — this relationship, this cause, this tragedy, this injustice — with no guarantee of a fruitful outcome?

Churches not being fruitful today face this kind of calculation all the time, of course – more fertilizer, or when is enough, enough? So, it’s important for us to grasp the open-endedness of this parable.

There are times when “why” is an important question to ask. But there are times when it is pointless and, frankly, not a life-giving question to take time over. Instead, can we imagine a deeper story, a better question? And then live a better answer?

When Jesus says, “unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die,” he isn’t pronouncing judgement. His words are merely a tragic statement of fact – we will die. But this bad news can be good news, in a way, if we can focus not on what lies outside of our control, but instead on what we do have control of – which is easier said than done.

You see, we are afraid of sudden, unexplained disaster in life. We lie awake at night imagining how we might have overlooked something in our threat assessment. Jesus recognizes the vulnerability that our fear opens up in us when tragedy strikes close. He says that it’s not a bad thing to feel the fragility of our lives. Don’t worry about Pilate and all the other things that can come crashing down – terrible things happen, and often you’re not to blame. But don’t let that stop you from living your life fully. Instead, become aware that the place your fear, your vulnerability opens up inside of you is a holy place. Pay attention to what you feel there. It may be hard to stay with it, but the discomfort is not fatal. In fact, it can lead to life – if it opens up gratitude for life, appreciation for what you experience and accomplish, and if it nudges you to reorient your life to the things that give life to you and others. Call it metanoia, call it repentance, call it realigning your life to the way of God in the world… it is that turning that Jesus wants for us which is why he doesn’t resolve our fear, nor answer our misguided questions. He leaves us in a place of awareness from which better questions will, in time, come.

Death, Jesus knows, is not purposeful or meaningful. But death does come to us all, whether we fall victim to state terror or simply to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is misguided to look for some deeper meaning in death’s chaotic grip. Death comes… But death is not as powerful as we think when we live purposefully, meaningfully, and without fear – then we can set aside the superstition, and look death in the eye, and move through it. With hope. And individuals… and as church faith communities. May it be so.