Why?

UNC Lutheran Campus Ministry Spring Break 2025

(This is a sermon preached by Pastor Katie Elkin Ziehr, on the 3rd Sunday in Lent, March 23rd, 2025)

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit our Advocate. Amen.

On this third Sunday in our Lenten journey, we meet Jesus where we often do –

in a crowd of people, having a conversation.

We don’t get a lot of backstory on the conversation at hand, but we can tell that the people surrounding Jesus have encountered evil in their lives.

The Roman government recently killed some of their Galilean neighbors, and what’s worse – these Galileans were killed while they were in worship.

Their blood was mixed with the blood of the sacrifices they were offering to God.

And if that wasn’t enough tragedy to handle, a nearby tower fell and killed eighteen people.

This morning, Jesus is in conversation with people who are confronting evil left and right in their lives. 

Evil wrought by the hands of people in power. 

Evil wrought by the randomness of natural forces. 

And they want to know – WHY are these bad things happening?

Have any of y’all had that question on your heart, recently?

God, why is this bad thing happening?

Why do wars still rage in Palestine and Ukraine?

Why are children dying from preventable diseases in the United States?

Why do hurricanes and wildfires and tornadoes and earthquakes wreak havoc in communities all over the world?

Why did my loved one get cancer?

Why me?

To be fair, some of these questions have easier answers than others. 

But even under the preventable disease question is a deeper, less answerable question:

Why did that child die?

Was she a worse sinner than all the other children in the U.S.?

This is the question that Jesus poses back to his listeners: 

“Do you think that those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because of the tragic way they died?”

And Jesus answers: No.

Jesus asks: “Were those eighteen people worse offenders than everyone else living nearby because that tower fell on them?”

And Jesus answers, no. 

“Do you think those people deserved to be the recipients of such evil?”

No, Jesus says. No. 

Our LCM students wrestled with a lot of “why” questions on our Spring Break Service Trip to Denver last week. We worked with a variety of nonprofits who are meeting needs in areas like food security, gender justice, youth advocacy, and environmental protection. And especially when we had face-to-face encounters with clients/members/participants, we found ourselves asking questions like, “how did they get here?” and “why them and not me?” and “God, why are bad things happening to your children?”

One place that was particularly impactful for me is called Urban Peak. Urban Peak ignites the potential in ~youth~ to exit homelessness and create self-determined, fulfilled lives. You heard that right: Urban Peak serves youth experiencing homelessness. Youth from 12 years old to 24 years old.

LCM was with Urban Peak last Thursday to help set up one of their housing pods and offer programming for the afternoon. We were prepared with crafts, computer games, and Just Dance for any of the youth who wanted to come hang out.

(If you don’t know what Just Dance is – it’s basically a video game where you follow the dance moves of a person on the screen, and you get points based on how well you

“just dance.”)

I stayed in the Just Dance room for most of the afternoon, along with Gracie, Abby, and one Urban Peak youth who we’ll call Travis. And before we started dancing, I was eavesdropping on a conversation Travis was having with one of the Urban Peak staff members. They were talking about the cell phone that Urban Peak had helped Travis get, the apartment he was hoping to move into in a few months, and the new pair of earrings that Travis had just picked out from Urban Peak’s free boutique. The staff member complimented Travis’s earrings and asked when he had gotten his ears pierced. And Travis responded, “the day I got kicked out.”

I don’t know why Travis got kicked out of his house. 

I don’t know anything about his family history, life circumstances, or future trajectory. 

And I never will.

But what I do know is that when I heard Travis say “I got kicked out” as nonchalantly as he said “we’ve had nice weather this week,” I wanted to know the answers to all the “why” questions.

Why did this bad thing happen to this child?

Why was I born into a family that could love and support me through anything and Travis wasn’t?

Why are we about to do 14 songs of Just Dance with this kid like it’s going to make any difference in his life??

And ultimately, beneath all of those “why” questions, is a human desire for assurance and control.

You see, if I know “why” Travis got kicked out, then I can keep that kind of thing from happening to people I know and love. Right?

And if I know “why” I was born into a family of privilege, then I can make sure other people are, too. Can’t I??

And if I know “why” everything happens the way it does then I can easily categorize people and actions into buckets of “good” and “bad” and “deserving” and “undeserving” and then I’ll find some peace in this life!! …right?

No, Jesus says. No.

Jesus hears our cries.

Jesus holds our questions and our fears and our doubts.

And Jesus knows that in the context of suffering in this world, even the very best answers won’t give us control.

They won’t take away the pain.

They won’t keep us from grieving.

And they will not keep bad things from happening again.

So when Jesus hears these “why” questions from the crowds, and from us, instead of meeting them with answers, he meets them with a story.

Once upon a time, there was a fig tree. This fig tree has been growing for three years, and yet, it hasn’t been able to produce fruit. 

So the owner of the orchard comes by, he sees this tree’s unfruitfulness, and he says, “gardener! Cut this tree down. It’s wasting my soil.”

He says, “This tree must be defective. It must be doing something wrong, since it can’t seem to produce any fruit. Get rid of it.”

But the gardener says, “Wait. Let me take care of it for just one more year. I’ll till its soil and I’ll put some good manure around its roots. And then next year, if you still don’t have any figs, we’ll do something about it.”

The evil in this world sees a barren tree and wants to cut it down. It must have done something to deserve its fruitlessness.

But God says, “Wait. Leave it be for just a little while longer. This tree has been through a lot. They’ve been kicked out and cut down and stepped on. They may even be close to death. But I am an expert at bringing life out of death. And I know just how to take care of this tree.”

In the face of destructive evil in this world, God is a good, good gardener.

A gardener who is unafraid to get down in the manure of our lives.

One who doesn’t minimize our suffering and desires nothing but our flourishing.

We cannot always explain why some people suffer and some people don’t, but we can trust that God is at work. 

We do not have to believe that everything happens for a reason, but we can believe that God is working through all things to bring good into the world.

Our Lenten call is not to explain away, minimize, or run from evil. But to face it head on. To till the ground right out from under it. And plant our seeds anyways.

Now I’ll admit, in the context of a tree that can’t bear any fruit, a little digging and a little manure may not seem like much. 

And that’s certainly how I felt bringing Just Dance to a kid like Travis who has been through so much! “Surely,” I thought, “this isn’t going to make a difference in his life.”

But as soon as that first song came on, Travis hit the dance floor. Smile wider than the side stepping our dance routine called for. Laughter louder than the thumping of the music. Joy bigger than the pain. 

And by the time we got to the last song, Travis was running out the door saying, “wait to start the music! I’m going to go see if my friends want to come dance!”

The evil in this world tries to cut down God’s beautiful children and tell us it’s our fault we’re falling. 

And our small plots of goodness can seem like so little in the face of such suffering.

But we have a God who digs in for us.

We have a God who meets us in our suffering.

And we have a God who goes running out the door to invite everyone into God’s good garden.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.