Life, Death and Figs!
Lent 3 20 Mar 2022
Readings
Isaiah 55:1-9, 1 Cor. 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9
Luke 13:1-19
13At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’
6 Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” 8He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. 9If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’
Today’s Gospel Reading is so relevant to current affairs. As I was reading through it and as I read various commentaries on it, all I could think of was Ukraine and the Western Nations trying to find a way of avoid a Third World War perhaps by blaming others or saying it is “part of God’s plan”. It is into this type of situation that Jesus is asked to give his opinion in today’s Gospel reading. After all, isn’t that what prophets do, place local situations into a cosmic framework? Yes, and this is what Jesus does by unveiling a divine imperative to his hearers.
With this in mind one can see the connection to the Old Testament Reading from Isaiah: Listen carefully to me, … Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. (vv2,3). And see how the passage closes: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (vv8,9). There is a vast difference from the way we think of things like the war in Ukraine and who is to blame and the way God thinks. We can apply this to so many other situations, just as Jesus does in the Gospel. As if to demonstrate this difference, Isaiah contradicts what I suppose is a modern saying but it is appropriate here. We all know that modern saying, “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” yet here Isaiah shows us a free lunch that God is offering if we listen to God. Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. (vv1&2). We don’t believe in free lunches; God, in divine grace does. God’s way is different from ours.
The event that the people are asking Jesus about was the execution, by Governor Pilate, of Galileans who were carrying out some ritual practice. Such an event could have personally affected Jesus on many levels.
- He was a Galilean, so this event could have impacted people from his own town, people he knew.
- Pilate was a direct appointee of the Roman empire who had a track record for being a blood-thirsty, violent ruler. It was this oppressive regime that people like Jesus, experienced daily, either directly or indirectly and wanted to be freed from it.
- The notion that Pilate mingled the Galileans blood with sacrifices insinuates that Pilate violated the Galileans ritual practice.
Luke is a clever writer – he is already dropping hints to his readers about Jesus’ death on the cross because at the end of the gospel, Pilate will mix the blood of Jesus, a Galilean, with Passover sacrifices.
What is interesting is that Jesus does not discuss Pilate in his response. Instead, he asks if his fellow Galileans who were slaughtered were worse sinners than other Galileans because of how they suffered. Both in the Torah (Deuteronomy 20-28) as well the popular understanding was that divine retribution from God required that punishments be proportionate to the crime or sin. To all that logic Jesus emphatically says, “No!”. My NRSV translation puts it politely, “No, I tell you” but it is given twice in the passage.
Jesus then refutes their logic for at least two reasons.
- The decisions of Pilate and Rome’s agents are not the same as God’s justice.
- Bad events that occur are not the result of human iniquity or divine penalty.
Here Jesus reminds the audience of the eighteen people who were crushed under a tower in Jerusalem. Like those Galileans murdered by Pilate, their unfortunate circumstance does not indicate the degree of their moral sinfulness. They were victims of a surprising, unforeseen disaster. Jesus uses these unpredictable, unchangeable incidents to prompt his audience to change what they can — their minds. Don’t change the unchangeable, change what you can.
What Jesus tells his listeners is that they can change. The word he uses for change is the Greek word metanoeo – often translated as ‘to repent’. To change their mind about their current commitments to injustice and unrighteousness is what he is call them to do. Changing one’s mind in this way leads to a change in one’s conduct. To repent means to go back and Jesus invites the audience to adjust the direction they are heading and to go back to God. If they opt to not return or choose to not change their minds, ‘unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’ Jesus is not saying that repentance will prevent them (or us) from a physical, catastrophic death. Rather, he is stating that changing their minds will prepare them for whatever they will experience, including producing fruit. And this leads into the Parable of the Fig Tree.
Paul Nuechterlein of Girardian Lectionary Study website say that this is a wonderful parable of prediction of the passion, but presented in a very subtle way. For him the tree represents the biblical promise to the people of Israel. It’s not bearing fruit. The voices of the prophets have died out, the hardness of the Pharisees who insisted on keeping the letter and not the spirit of the Law is what separates the people from God. The shameful thing for me, as a church historian is that the same thing can be said in just about any age in Christian history. God says, “Cut it down.” ‘Let’s start over.’
Jesus is the gardener, however says, “Give it one more year.” He says this on the way to Jerusalem to die. The Jesus as described by Luke knows exactly why he’s going up there. “Give me one more year and let me work the soil a bit and put some manure down.” Jesus understands that the revelation can’t happen this side of the cross, and so he begins to prepare his followers for the metanoia that will happen afterwards. “I’m just going to be working the soil right now so that next year…” — which is just another way of saying that a little while later it will bear fruit. The “it” that will bear fruit is the cross.
We often think of Jesus as a teacher. But he’s not primarily a teacher. He taught, but he’s more than that. He’s a revealer, the icon of the living God. He’s working the soil so that metanoia (change) can happen. Metanoia doesn’t happen because of teaching but his living example.
N T Wright in his book on Luke’s Gospel and the parable of the fig tree, takes an interesting line of interpretation. Jesus has been trying for three years to help his fellow Jews learn another way to peace besides armed rebellion. He continues to work for repentance. But Luke wrote his Gospel after 70 A.D. and so his listeners and readers know that the Jews failed to repent and so were cut-down by the Romans and Jerusalem destroyed. The fig tree was cut down.
This point about repentance for the Jews does no good unless we hear it for ourselves. The people who call themselves Christian… have they repented of living by the sword? No, not really, and because of that we have paid for it mightily — 50 million dead after two World Wars last century alone and many dead in other wars including the one in Ukraine where many debate whether Putin’s invasion was really done for religious purposes – the unification of the Russian Orthodox Churches.
We are now in a post-Christian era — the fig tree is once again being cut-down. Can a Post-Christian church finally get it right? The parable brings Good News: Jesus is the Gardener who not only wins more time for us but who, within a year’s time of having spoken this parable, literally hung on the tree himself and bore the fruit of God’s way of peace. Today, he still acts as the Gardener. One year has become two thousand, and our Lord comes to us in the Sacraments to dig around us and spread the manure. He feeds and waters us with faith in us, that because he was able to live God’s way of peace we can, too.
Thanks for some of the ideas and the good quotes taken from the following websites:
Jeremy L. Williams at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-luke-131-9-5
Paul Nuechterlein at http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/lent3c/
