The sermon begins by putting the passage into context. In the previous chapter our Lord had told the story of the evil servants and the surprise return of the master. After hearing this story of judgment, the audience brought up the case of the Galileans who had recently been slaughtered by Pilate. The sermon continues. . .
Now our Lord is taking up and dealing with something that is very common among us human beings. I suppose there is no more exact way of discovering where every one of us really stands in our relationship to God and what our true position is than in our reaction to the things that happen round and about us.
By our reactions we betray what we are and how we think. Our Lord made this point many times. When he speaks at the end of Matthew 12 about men having to give account for every idle word, he says: 'What really shows what you are is what you say'. In other words, when we hear of something, a calamity like this terrible earthquake that has happened in the last week in North Africa or anything similar, our reaction proclaims exactly what we are. Our response to such an event really makes a proclamation as to our whole position, our whole view of life, our whole and total attitude towards God.
