The LA Wildfires: A Judgment from God. There is no question in my mind that these fires where a judgment from God. Is God punishing Los Angeles? LA Fires and God’s Judgment. God punishes LA After being mocked at the Golden Globes. Hollywood Mocks God, Then This Happens. God is cleansing California from woke religion. Just 48 hours after the Golden Globes, devastating fires swept through Los Angeles. These are just some of the many headlines and opinion pieces that emerged at the height of the LA wildfires this past January. People are quick to jump to the conclusion that big natural disasters are a direct punishment from God on the wicked, those who break the commandments, those who deserve it.  Same thing happened during the aids epidemic of the 1980’s: HIV, A Consequence of Divine Judgment. AIDs, God’s Punishment for Immorality. AIDS and the Wrath of God. And the opinion pieces and headlines go on and on.

Is this how we know God to act? By no means, but it does offer a quick explanation to world problems, and it is also easier to project onto God our own violent desires towards those we consider wicked… which is no wonder this way of thinking is so prominent in the history of world religions, even the disciples would have thought so.

Jesus talks about a tower that collapsed, killing eighteen people. Rumor was that God had caused that tower to collapse as a punishment, so Jesus asked his disciples do you think those people were guilty and thus deserving of what happened to them? By no means, the collapse of the tower was an accident not a punishment from God. But then he says if you do not repent, you will perish as they did. He is not contradicting himself; he is not saying that they will be punished by God, rather, that tragic accidents will always be a part of life… and to blame others for their tragedies leads nowhere. Not only would they be withholding hope from those who need it, but they themselves would be hopeless.

He compared that accident with those who were killed by Pontius Pilot while they were worshipping in the temple, which was not an accident. Pilot believed that the Roman emperor was divine, and he had little patience with other religions and often had them massacred. So, Jesus asked his disciples; do you think these people suffered in this way because of their sins? By no means, they were victims of the violence of a totalitarian state. Then he says; if you do not repent you will perish as they did. Again, not that God will punish them, but to think that others deserve the violence perpetrated against them intentionally by another human being is to deprive them of what they need, hope, and to withhold hope is to yourself be hopeless.

Then he brings up the fig tree, which in the Bible it is the symbol of the spiritual life of Israel. Jesus looked at the spiritual life of the people of God of his day and realized: many of these people do not know God… they are not bearing fruits, they are living an immature spiritual life. A mature spiritual life is motivated by hope. An immature spiritual life is motivated by fear. It was evident that his disciples and most people around him did not know God, they lived in fear.

What motivates you in your own spiritual life? Sadly, sometimes we are motivated by an immature faith, by a very limited and inaccurate understanding of who God is, something God has been slowly correcting. In the first reading from Exodus, God reveals himself to Moses as the source of everything that is and he reveals himself as a God of hope; I have witnessed the affliction of my people, I have heard their complaint against their slave drivers, I know well what they are suffering, therefore I have come to rescue them.

Paul writes to the Corinthians that God was never far from his people in the desert, but it was the people themselves who gave in to fear and who lost hope, and they suffered the consequences of their attitudes, their own lack of trust in God. God respected their freedom as God always does and he allowed them to see what life would be like outside of his power.

Then he says; these things have been written for us as a warning; learn from these examples of people who tried to go it alone outside of God’s power. Again, this might sound like a contradiction, as if Paul is ending with a warning of “you better do this or else…” but we don’t hear the full reading in the selection for Mass today. If we continue, Paul actually ends with words of hope: for no trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength, he will provide a way for you to bear it.

In other words, God will not prevent difficulties from coming into our lives no matter who we are. Freedom comes with a cost, and while yes some make choices that hurt other people, God will provide a way for us to bear whatever difficulty comes, and that way is through hope. Hope allows us to confront evil with good, bearing with one another in love. This is the Christian way of life and it inevitably means never going it alone. Whenever evil rears its ugly head in the world, be it through a natural disaster or the disaster caused by irresponsible human governance, the Christian community comes together to bring hope.

We see this happening before our very eyes when a war breaks out, Christians come together to take in refugees and be signs of hope regardless of what the political sentiment might be. The Church around the world has formed organizations to help displaced victims of war these last decades. Most recently here in the Archdiocese we took in and many Ukrainian refugees.

This is our mission, to transform evil into good and to offer others reasons for hope amidst the tragedies of life. That is the fruit of a mature spiritual life which comes when we have true knowledge of God.

What is the truth of God? That God has come to share our own life in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the maximum assurance that God is with us. Nothing else can give us that assurance, no government, not the latest technology, no not even Elon Musk (putting aside politics, I got to drive a tesla recently and, oh yeah, the technology on those things is impressive!)  The people back in Siloam probably thought their tower was the best state-of-the-art technology, until it collapsed.

The selection of the gospel of Luke today ended with what sems like a warning… if it does not bear fruit in the future, then then you can cut it. But it actually continues with a story of hope. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and he saw a woman who’s been crippled for 18 years. He laid his hands on her and she at once stood up straight and glorified God, but the temple leaders were indignant that Jesus had cured on the Sabbath. There are 6 days when work should be done on the Sabbath so he said to them in reply you hypocrites don’t you take your ox out to give it water on the Sabbath? So why should I not set this daughter of Abraham free on the Sabbath?

The contrast could not be more clear between those who live in fear, and a crippled woman who lived in hope. She comes to worship faithfully believing that God loves her and immediately glorifies God when she is healed. Meanwhile the teachers of the law are going through the motions in the temple fearful of disobeying the rules. They see no reason to heal the woman. She’s probably crippled as a punishment for sin anyway, they place more value in caring for their livestock than they do in caring for a suffering person.

Family, as we are now half way through Lent, as we get close to seeing how God responds to human sin, not with punishment, but with self-giving transformative love, it is a good time to ask ourselves: What motivates your hope?

If it is fear, ask Jesus to reveal to you the love and mercy of God in your life, and seek the council of others with a more mature faith to help you and to pray for you, for we cannot continue this journey alone. If you have received good evangelization and have a mature spiritual life, you bear the responsibility of giving signs of hope to those most in need, so be attentive don’t just pray for them but teach them how to pray – Christian hope is not given for self-assurance but for the lifting up of the lowly. The good news is that it doesn’t matter where our spiritual life is right now, we are together, and that is all Jesus needs to bear great fruit.