There’s an old joke about two hikers who meet an angry bear in the woods.  As one starts to run, the other shouts after him, “You idiot!  You can’t outrun a bear.”  The first hiker yells back, “I don’t have to outrun the bear.  I just have to outrun you.”

It seems to me that many of us approach sin in the same foolish fashion, thinking that just being “better” than others is sufficient.  I was reminded of that joke by today’s Gospel reading, the part when the crowd tells Jesus about the Pilate-ordered slaughter of some Galileans.  Luke does not provide a lot of information, although the statement about mingling the blood of the slain “with the blood of their sacrifices” suggests (according to some commentators) that the Galileans were massacred in the Temple while engaged in the ritualistic sacrifice of animals.  Luke also does not provide the words or motives of the persons who mentioned the killings to Jesus, but His response indicates that some must have assumed the Galileans deserved their fate.  For God to have allowed them to die in such a brutal manner was surely evidence that the victims had sinned egregiously.  I suspect that more than one in the crowd was thinking (to paraphrase the Pharisee in Luke 18:11), “Thank God I am not a sinner like those Galileans.”

It can be tempting to judge others for any number of reasons, including to make ourselves look better by comparison.  We (maybe not all of us, at least not all the time) may adopt the attitude of “I may not be perfect, but I am not as bad as that guy.”  Or “What I did wasn’t as bad as what that person did.  At least I didn’t . . . .”  The approach can be like a little child who looks to lessen or avoid a consequence by tattling on a sibling:  “Yes, I did forget to do my chores, but Billy was playing ball in the house and broke your lamp.”  It also can be tempting to celebrate when “bad” people get what they “deserve.”  I suspect that some in the crowd may have experienced schadenfreude, long before the Germans gave us that word, as they assumed that the Galileans met a just end.  How often do we feel joy or satisfaction when someone we don’t like – a criminal, a political figure, a rival sports team, perhaps someone who has a bumper sticker espousing an opinion we find offensive – suffers misfortune?

Jesus challenges these ways of thinking when He calls on the crowd (and us) to repent because we are no less guilty than the individuals who were killed by Pilate or the tower at Siloam.  Our Alleluia verse reminds us that God “takes no delight in the death of the wicked,” nor should we delight when bad happens to others.  It helps me to remember that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23) relying on God’s mercy, not our own goodness, for salvation (Titus 3:5).