Kindred in Christ,

If you’ve ever spent time with a child, you know their favorite question: Why?

Why is the sky blue?

Why do I have to eat vegetables?

Why do bad things happen?

At first, these questions are about curiosity—a child’s way of making sense of the world. And that curiosity is a gift. Asking hard questions is how we grow. Scripture itself is filled with people questioning God, from the psalmists crying out in lament to Job demanding answers for his suffering. Our faith is not afraid of questions.

Yet as we grow older, we realize that not all why questions have neat answers. And sometimes, our need to explain suffering isn’t really about understanding—it’s about control. We want a reason, a cause, something to make pain and injustice feel less random. The problem is that some answers only serve to justify suffering rather than challenge it.

Jesus speaks directly to this in our Gospel reading this week. When people come to him asking why tragedy struck certain people, he refuses to offer easy answers (Luke 13:1-9). Instead, he shifts the conversation: Repent. Bear fruit. Turn toward life while there is still time. In other words, the question is not why this happened, but what now?

This Sunday, we will explore what it means to let go of the temptation to explain away suffering and instead take up the work of repentance—the kind of repentance that isn’t about guilt, but about turning toward life. We will see how this struggle played out in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As a theologian, he wrestled with hard questions about injustice, but he also knew that faith without action was hollow. When he came to America to study at Union Seminary, he was disillusioned by the purely academic approach to faith. It was in the Black churches of Harlem—where he encountered a Christ who suffers with the oppressed—that he found the courage to return to Nazi Germany and resist.

In a world filled with suffering—the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, the violence experienced in our own country under the Trump administration—Bonhoeffer’s witness challenges us. Like him, we are living in a time of political and moral crisis. And like him, we must ask: Will we simply analyze suffering from a distance, or will we enter the struggle for justice?

I hope you will join us this Sunday as we continue our Lenten journey. May this season stretch us, challenge us, and ultimately draw us deeper into God’s love, mercy, and peace.

Alongside you,

Rev. Paul Ortiz