When Bridges Fall

A Meditation on the Cross and the Tower of Siloam

Insert in here the usual apologetic excuses for not posting yesterday. We actually taped a whole podcast before noon, but it was awful, even by our already low standards. We were interrupted by children so much we lost our train of thought. The final straw was the cat leaping up to vomit on me, which caused me to drop everything and yell loudly. I was most annoyed and figured it was probably a sign and portent for how the whole week will unfold. If that turns out not to be true, and all the tasks get ticked off my list in a blinding glory of efficiency, we may try again at some moment. But seriously, don’t hold your breath.

Photo by Lewis Purcell on Unsplash

So anyway, as I was casting about, wondering if I should even try to blog, or if I should just give up and go rearrange the deckchairs of my life, ignoring Matt looking deep into my eyes and saying, I kid you not, “If I die, I want you to take the insurance money and pay off the house, and also, if you’re in the car and it’s falling into water, roll down the window as it’s falling or you won’t be able to get out,” I found myself watching a clip of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore tumbling into the cold Patapsco River in the early morning hours. If you haven’t seen it, here is one of the many clips of it falling. You can see that a large container ship slowly bashes into one of the main supports. It is only a matter of seconds for the whole bridge to collapse. It’s been declared a “Mass Casualty Event.” Scrolling down the feed on X, almost everyone posting is extremely suspicious. And why wouldn’t they be? No one really seems to be in charge of roads and bridges. Everyone is wandering around, doing what is right in their own eyes. Meanwhile, bitter debates about that central truth, “Christ is King” continue unabated.

The words of the second psalm from Morning Prayer today seem especially appropriate:

⁵  Nevertheless, for God alone my soul in silence waits, *

for my hope is in him.

⁶ He truly is my strength and my salvation; *

he is my defense, so that I shall not fall.

⁷  In God is my help and my glory; *

he is the rock of my might, and in him is my trust.

⁸ O put your trust in him always, you people; *

pour out your hearts before him, for God is our hope.

⁹  As for the children of men, they are but a breath; *

the children of men are deceitful; upon the scales, they are altogether lighter than a breath.

It’s so hard to imagine that life can be “but a breath.” Everything about this world seems solid enough until suddenly it crumbles and those caught in the wreckage die suddenly and unprepared.

In every such case, whenever I can finally cease my scrolling, I always wander back to the upsetting moment when Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, is asked about a similar terrible circumstance. We might call it a tragedy, and certainly it was tragic, but it is more like a human rights atrocity. Jesus had been telling everyone not to be anxious about anything, to expect division, to dress for action, not to trust the Pharisees, and many other instructions that probably did not make any very great impression on the gathered crowd. Luke explains that “there were some present at that time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” “Some” and “at that time” are so vague. I would have loved to know what the “some” looked like and the manner in which they offered this horrifying piece of information. Were they belligerent? Were they trying to get him to talk about something more pertinent to them? Had their minds been wandering? Or did some portion of his discourse ignite this thought? Or, better yet, had they been scrolling on their phones during the sermon and happened to stumble over the Breaking News hashtag?

Somehow Jesus gets right to the heart of the matter. They appear to be sharing interesting news, and he asks them, “Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?”

I always think the crowd must have muttered, ‘Yes, obviously.’ Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? Isn’t there karma? Or retribution for not paying it forward or being unkind? Had those Galileans done something to anger Pilate? Or was the horror of their blood being mixed with their sacrifice something that happened at random? This is the biggest and worst question of being human. Why do bad things happen at all, but why do they happen to some people at particular moments?

There are so many reasons. Ship Captains are incompetent. Government bureaucrats don’t do their jobs properly. Infrastructure loses power. Governors of outlying provinces lose their tempers or make bad political calculations. People decide to be out very late at night. But the biggest and most salient reason that bad things happen is that we all—every single one of us without exception—sin. The peculiarity of some particular bad thing might be beyond sorting out, but in the broader, more general sense, bad things happen to us because we hate God and yet want all his stuff.

This we may deduce because of the way Jesus goes on, almost in desperation. “No, I tell you,” he says, “but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Silam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will likewise perish.” Then he tells another pithy parable about a fig tree.

And yet here we are, walking in the way of the cross yet one more time, girding up our loins to listen to the record of God’s great salvation that he accomplished in his own blood. The fact is, there is a way never to perish. Oh sure, you’ll die, perhaps unfortunately and with all manner of accompanying terror. But you won’t die in such a way that it makes any difference. Jesus going to the cross, to pour out his own blood as the sacrifice, means that you don’t have anything to worry about—ever. Not really. All the things that wake you up in the morning, drenched in a cold sweat, are completely inconsequential compared to the deep, total safety you have when you repent and put your trust and hope in the pierced hands of Jesus, the King and Ruler of the Universe and you.

So anyway, maybe also give this song a listen if you feel like you might have a hard time getting through the day:

Have a nice day!