Sunday - Gardening

4: Or those eighteen men who were crushed by the fall of the tower of Siloam, were they worse than all the other men living in Jerusalem?
5: I say to you, It is not so: but if your hearts are not changed, you will all come to an end in the same way. Luke 13

This is the middle of three little stories in which something bad either happens(to the people) or is threatened (the non fruit bearing fig tree). The question is if the bad things happened because the people were bad or even worse than the rest of the people. It's one the bible stories I find really confusing. On one hand Jesus implies that the people who had been killed were no worse than the rest of the people in town. The tower didn't fall on them for being really bad or evil or something. But then He goes on to imply that if they don't get better at living better that bad things would happen. ie. the fig tree gets another chance to bear fruit before it gets chopped.

So which is it. Are bad things just chance? Does God make bad things happen to bad people or only to bad people who haven't changed for the better? How much better do we need? If the tree bears one fig next season does it get chopped anyway. 5? 25? This sort of calculus can drive me nuts. My usual response is to give up trying to figure it out and hope for the best.

I guess that the priest who said the Mass I went to today didn't know where to go with this reading either since he spoke a homily on Moses & the burning bush or calls to conversion. Which was another reading today.