Gospel: Luke 13:1-9
For those who have been part of our forum series on the Lucan parables, today’s Gospel reading will sound very familiar. During our discussion on this passage we struggled with the difficulties in the text: murder, dying unprepared, and finding the balance between giving something a chance to live or cutting it down. This is a challenging text, as is indeed much of what Jesus says.
Let’s break this into two sections. The first five verses are based around events that had recently occurred and of which Jesus had been made aware. First, a group of Galileans who had traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the temple were killed on the orders of Pilate. The rationale for these murders isn’t clear; perhaps it was out of fear, or a rumored threat of rebellion, or simply intolerance for their religious customs. All we know is that they were dead, their blood mingled with the blood of the sacrifices they had been offering. Then we have the collapse of the tower in Siloam, a water storage tower that was part of the system that provided water for crops in the Kidron Valley and drinking water for the people of Jerusalem.
Two horrible incidents, both unexpected – and both at the root of an important lesson from Jesus. When the news was shared with Jesus, he responded not with concern but with questions for those with him. Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? Or 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? The questions he posed were used to challenge some long-standing religious assumptions: that suffering is punishment for sin, and that something terrible happening to someone gives others the right to assume it happened because they were worse sinners.[1] No, Jesus was saying, those who died weren’t worse than anyone else. This was the first part of his teaching moment.
Then we move to the second part of this teaching moment: four verses about a fig tree that has been unproductive for three years, a parable that is by extension a commentary on the first five verses. Along with being a major part of the agricultural economy of the time, fig trees were deeply tied to prophetic literature, allegories for those in need of repentance. It’s a tree that’s not fulfilled its purpose, instead standing empty in a vineyard for three years. As with the killings at the temple and the collapse of the tower, we don’t know the answer to the obvious question: Why? In this parable Jesus gives us no indication as to why the tree is barren. Is the soil not rich enough, or has there not been enough rain, or did the person who planted it not know what they were doing? We don’t know. All we do know is that the owner of the vineyard has run out of patience. It’s time for the tree to go.
It appears as if it’s time for the unrepentant to go.
But then the gardener speaks. Give the tree one more year. Let me tend to it. Let me enrich the soil. See how it looks in 12 months and then decide. Be merciful. Look even more deeply behind the allegory; see the gardener as God and the tree as one facing judgment – as one of us who hasn’t been what we’re supposed to be. I’ll withhold passing sentence. Continue enriching yourself. Continue trying to bear fruit. Continue working to be the child I want you to be. Accept the gift of my mercy.
The gardener has successfully argued for clemency for the tree, preventing its being cut down for one more year so that it can bear fruit. We too are given more time to fully live in obedience to God and God’s call to us: to love one another; to serve one another; to grow into the children we’re supposed to be; to care for the world as God intends. In this parable Jesus reminds us that while the time of judgment may still be on hold, time nonetheless may be short. As we’ve already been reminded by the news from the temple and from Siloam, we never know when our time will come.
The chance to live faithful, obedient lives as God intends is now. So at the end of all of this, Jesus says simply this: Now is the time to act. Now is the time to enrich the soil in which we dwell. Now is the time to live a life filled with the fruits we’re called to bear. And this chance isn’t presented to us for anything we’ve done. It’s given to us for one reason and one reason alone: the love and mercy of God.
As I mentioned earlier, Jesus uses this parable partially to challenge the common view of things in his time. He came to flip everything the world thought it knew on its head to make way for the new world, the coming kingdom of God. It’s here I turn to the words of the late-19th and early-20th century pastor and writer Walter Rauschenbusch who said
Jesus was not a child of this world. He did not revere the men it called great; he did not accept its customs and social usages as final; his moral conception did not run along the grooves marked out by it. He nourished within his soul the ideal of a common life so radically different from the present that it involved a reversal of values, a revolutionary displacement of existing relations. This idea was not merely a beautiful dream to solace his soul; He lived it out in his own daily life. He urged others to live that way. He held that it was the only true life, and that the ordinary way was misery and folly. He dared to believe that it would triumph.[2]
We are called to that true life. We are called not to simply accept the ordinary way, but to follow the extraordinary path. We are called to the triumph in which Jesus believed and according to which he lived. We are called to accept the gift of whatever time with which we’ve been graced to nourish ourselves, to bear fruit, and to be signs of life for the entire world.
Amen.
[1] Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III. The Gospel of Luke, p. 363.
[2] From “The Social Aims of Jesus,” an excerpt from Christianity and the Social Crisis. A Rauschenbusch Reader, p. 13.