Lent 3 - Luke 13:1-9 (Isaiah 55:1-9 and 1 Corinthians 10:1-13)
Paul Swartz - March 6 and 7, 2010
Turn on the television news or pick up a newspaper in any given week and you will find a report on some catastrophic tragedy somewhere. Only the locations change. Earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, Taiwan; a tornado rips through a small community in Kansas destroying buildings and businesses, floods creating cascading mudslides that wipe out homes, a terrorist or disgruntled employee goes on a shooting rage — all of which wreak untold havoc and alter lives forever. And one does not have to be a grieving relative or a victim to ask at some level the very same question: "Why?" It just doesn't seem fair. What had any of those folks done to deserve such tragedy and misfortune?
Our text this morning tells of some people who approached Jesus and asked for His opinion about such an incident which took place at the temple in Jerusalem, when Pilate ordered some Galileans killed while they were in the act of making animal sacrifices to God. Jesus knew their thinking and the underlying question that plagued them: "Why do these kinds of things happen?" Jesus responds to the popular equation of sin and death with a question of His own: “Do you think the people involved were so wicked that the tragedies were God's judgment upon them?
In Jesus' day, the assumption was that disease, suffering, and death bore a direct correlation with human sinfulness: the greater the sin, the more likely the misfortune. And to some degree, like it or not, we still think this way. Calamity strikes and we wonder what we did wrong. We scrutinize our behavior, our relationships, our diets, our beliefs. We hunt for some cause to explain the effect, in hopes that we can change what we are doing and so stop whatever has gone (or is going) wrong. But what this really tells us is that we are less interested in truth than consequences. What we crave, above all, is control over the chaos of our lives. It was no different in Jesus' time. People longed to understand and control their misfortune. What had those people done to deserve their fate? Jesus is sharp and abrupt in His answer and certainly less than pastoral: “Nothing, but I tell you unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
It’s hard to let God be God. We long to explain things only God can know. We human beings have spent centuries trying to find cause and effect patterns for every good and every evil. We want to make sense of things that make no sense so we will even put words into God’s mouth that are our own rather than God’s.
What Jesus wants to emphasize is that death is always close and not necessarily controllable or explicable. Death happens, He says, and it can catch you by surprise, even when you’re praying. And though you might intend to repent of sin at the end of your life, what's to say you'll have the time to do so? So, pay attention!
Some may think Jesus is not being very compassionate, but He is not aiming to comfort the crowd; He wants to challenge them and us. So He simply sidesteps the huge question of why there is pain and tragedy in the world, by making it clear there is not necessarily a rational explanation for these tragedies. But notice, what He doesn’t say: “It was God’s will! Instead, Jesus is saying, don’t look for cause and effect explanations. Focus on the purpose of human life. For Jesus, the question is not, "Why do people die the way they do?" but, "Why are we given life?" To make that point, Jesus tells a parable of the fig tree to underscore God’s judgment and the need for repentance.
In this parable of the fig tree Jesus reminds the people of His day that Israel had a noble calling: God had planted them on earth for a particular purpose. They were to be a special people, agents of God's mercy in the world, and they were to bear fruit and to “be a light to the nations.” In other words, instead of calling God into question and asking, "Are the misfortunes of life God's doing?" Jesus turns the tables and asks, "What are you doing in the world?" You are being called to repentance because you have not blessed others as God has blessed you. You are not doing that for which I planted you!
Jesus indicates in His story that their lives have been barren and the Landowner has grown impatient with their inability to bear fruit. “For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree.” For three years God has been waiting for people to turn their hearts toward Jesus, but there has been little repentance. Instead of repentance, the resistance to Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom has intensified. Since there isn’t any fruit on the tree, the Owner of the vineyard says, “Cut it down!” Yet, within the story, there is a tone of hope, with the Gardener refusing to give up, pleading, “Don’t cut the tree down!” But there’s also urgency, “Give me one more year!” The Gardener pleads with the Owner for a one-year reprieve. Here is a parable of God’s justice in conversation with God’s mercy.
Jesus is the Gardener, isn’t He? He asks for the gift of another year of life, knowing full well that John the Baptist had earlier declared (Luke 3:9) that the axe already lay at the root, poised to strike any tree that was not bearing fruit. The year of reprieve the Gardner pleaded for was “the year of the Lord’s favor” which Jesus proclaimed, and it would be a time of forgiveness, restoration, and second chances. The Gardener refuses to give up asking that He be given time to stir things up, to prune the branches, and carry manure a little longer so that with tender care and nourishment they will blossom and produce to the glory of God.
Could this be the year? We can hear that as a threat that there's not much time left. Indeed, some evangelists press us with the question, "Where will you be if you die tonight?" But Jesus' parable moves in the direction of promise more than threat: "I'm going to do everything I can to help this tree live and bear fruit. I'm going to dig around it and put down manure. I'm going to find every way possible to get to hearts that are hard as packed down soil."
While we're speculating about why certain people died at Pilate's hands or why the others were killed by the falling tower, Jesus, the Gardener, is working on our hearts. Yes, those stories were real, just as real as every tragedy we can name: flood or earthquake or military tyrant, cancer or heart attack or an innocent child caught in the crossfire of drug warfare.
Such realities remind us that our time is finite. Stories like these dig at our hearts. They get to us with the truth that we can't keep putting everything off until tomorrow.
But being scared to death can rob us of all hope. Life can then seem utterly arbitrary--if I die, I die. There's nothing I can do about it, so why try? Into the midst of such despair, the Gardener comes. “Don't cut the tree down. Let it alone for one more year.” Jesus, the Gardener, wants us to live! His passion for us is marked by great urgency--don't wait! Look at your life and dare to ask the hard questions:
· Am I stingy in my love for others?
· Am I withholding forgiveness for old wrongs?
· Do I refuse to believe that I can be forgiven, carrying from year to year a growing burden of guilt?
· Am I so busy making a living that I've forgotten to make a life?
· Do I allow “good things” to edge out that which is really best?
· Am I spending more time “in front of the mirror” preparing how I will appear on the “outside” than I am giving to nurture that which lives “inside” me and will, as a result, affect my outward appearance (countenance) and what and how I do things?
Jesus digs at us with questions like these. Jesus digs at our hearts in the outstretched hand of every homeless beggar on the streets, of every child not fed. "What have you done?" Jesus asks, and "What have you left undone?" Such questions, like the parable of the fig tree, move us toward “repentance,” a word that means to turn around, to believe things can be different, to trust that the One who calls us to turn around will be there even when we fail.
Could this be the year for such turning around? That’s the question we should be asking about ourselves and our congregation. Could this be the year for figs? Through this parable Jesus calls the people to renewal, to bear fruit. We need to take this whole matter seriously as a congregation as well, for our potential is mind boggling. Like Israel of old, our Lord is telling us today that our church, our congregation — King of Glory — was planted for a purpose and if we are not carrying out that purpose then it would be better if we were uprooted and destroyed. That is not very nice; it is not very comforting. But there it is, straight and to the point. The terms are established by Jesus and not by me or anyone else.
Often all we can think about when we hear of tragedy is what happened, and why, and how things can be so unfair. Such questions are common questions, but ultimately they have a way of distracting us from the question. The question does not concern how bad things can happen to good people like us, or the good folks beset by tragedies around our world. The Lenten question—the cruciform question—is “How do we stand before God?”
Many folks have come to believe that any difficulty, any struggle is wrong and unjust. We want to believe that no one should suffer, that we should be able to go through life without bearing the effects of unfairness and injustice. That has occurred because a long time ago we stopped trusting in a God whose presence makes tragedy and suffering and unanswered questions bearable. Our difficulty is that we don’t want God, we want answers, and many of us will go wherever we can find easy ones.
"Why?" we ask. "Why did this happen to them? Why did this happen to me?" Probably for no good reason. Bad and good things happen all the time. The notion that only good things happen to good people was put to rest when Jesus was put upon the cross. The more crucial question is, in all circumstances of joy and pain, can you trust God to be God? Can you love God out of sheer gratitude for what He has done for you without linking your response or determining your love to the good or bad things that come your way in life?
There are no easy answers to life's tough questions. The Church of Jesus Christ is not built upon easy answers. Instead, it is built upon a singular recognition that in the presence of the God we know in Christ we get a God whose love in our lives challenges and enables us to live without all the answers, a God who is willing to dig around our hearts, patiently encouraging us toward repentance and faithfulness and fruitfulness. We get a God who has given God's whole life to us, so that we might come to learn how to give our lives to God more fully. Beyond what's fair, that seems to me to be a pretty good deal.
We might not do things this way. We'd probably be far more impatient than God. "You've had your chance," I'm tempted to say. "The year has passed and you still haven't shaped up!" But I am not God, nor can I put my words in God's mouth. Still, the Gardener comes. "One more year," he says, "I'll do everything I can to bring this tree back to life." “Who knows? asks the Gardener. “This could be the year for figs!”
Could this be the year we turn more fully to God?
