LENT 3

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: LENT 3
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: March 15,1998

TEXT: Luke 13:1-9 - The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
"No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."

ISSUE: This passage is rich in its meaning. It is an instance where there is an effort to trick Jesus into taking political sides. He is more concerned with focusing on our need to recognize our own inner need for change, repentance. The Parable of the Fig Tree focuses attention upon our need to bear fruit, and while we are under judgment, there is still the loving grace of God to which we may respond. In Lent we do need to examine our lives and realize there is a limit to God's dealing with us, but so far his grace prevails.
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The gospel reading this morning is another one of those rich passages of Scripture that is pregnant with meaning. It tells of the awesome impending judgment of God suspended with the hope of and in favor of God's grace.
The scene is one in which Jesus is confronted by some anxious folk that are putting to him another one of those trick questions. Remember when scribes brought Jesus the coin and asked him if it were appropriate to pay tax to Caesar. And Jesus simply replied that they should give to Caesar what was Caesars, and to God what belonged to God. If he had said that tax paying was okay, the people would have rejected him. If he said that paying tax was inappropriate then the Roman authorities would have punished him. The scene today is similar. Jesus is put in an awkward position. This time they tell him that people worshipping in the Temple have been murdered by Pilate and their blood mixed with the Temple sacrifices. It is as if they want Jesus to condemn Pilate along with all the Romans. If Jesus does this he is considered an enemy of the Roman state. If he does not condemn the Romans then he is seen as insensitive to his Jewish brothers and sisters, and to the cause of the rebbles of his time who participated in guerilla warfare against the Romans.
In order to avoid getting caught in this dilemma, Jesus shifts the issue. The people of Israel are condemning the Roman Goverment and ways without looking at their own. "No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will perish just as they did," Jesus says. Jesus is saying in effect that his own people must change; they themselves must be repentant, and examine their own behaviors and who they are as the people of God. This issue is relevant for us today. We often see the problems of the world as the fault of someone else. In out time there is often great criticism and condemnation of the gay community by the heterosexual community, without the heterosexual community wrestling with its own problems of promiscuity and unfaithfulness in marriage. While the Romans may be seen as cruel, pagan, and inhumane, Jesus says that the leadership of Israel has not been bearing much in the way of good fruit either. He tells them the parable of the barren fig tree.
Let me pause with a little information on fig trees and how they got planted in Jesus' time. It's a little mid-eastern cultural lesson. Wealthy landowners lived in the larger towns and cities. In this case the landowner planted a fig tree in his vineyard so he could have some figs along with his grapes. Fig trees take three years to mature. After they mature, according to the O.T. book of Leviticus 19:24, you were not allowed to eat the figs the first year the tree blossomed. These figs belonged to the Lord in thankful gratitude. While the tree is growing in the farm, the hired hands, or vinedressers, or gardeners tended the trees and vines, cultivating them.
Now the wealthy landowner in the parable continued checking on his tree for that three years and there's no fruit. He waited three years for it to mature; then, another three years and still no fruit. So he tells the hired hand to cut it down. It's worthless. No fruit! Get rid of it. You see, this is an act of awesome judgment on the part of the landowner. But the hiredhand intervenes saying let me clutivate some more and put more manure (shit - poop) on it, and just maybe next years we'll start getting some figs. "If it bears fruit next year well and good; but if not you can cut it down."
Some scholars believe that the parable is an example of insulting humor that would have had the local peasants rolling on the ground in laughter. (Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus Cycle C, 55f) If the fig tree is a metaphor for Israel's unfruitful and poor spiritual leadership over the centuries, it is laughable to think that one more year of manure (shit) is going to accomplish anything. You can see why Jesus ultimately gets crucified.
In the parable, God, the landowner has been waiting for an inordinary long period of time for his people Israel to be a light to the nations of the world. They have failed and become an exclusive club often condemning, excommunicating the poor, and blocking the way of understanding the God of love and forgiveness. The parable seems to be saying that Israel herself is under the judgement of God, and stands in need of salavation. Their salvation is their own renewed awareness of the truth of God as redeemer, lover, and compassionate, as well as being a judge of cruelty and injustice. Yet Israel seems hopeless, and God is ready to cut her down. Where will her salvation come from?
In the parable the tentative saving grace comes from the hiredhand. Let me cultivate and manure it some more and maybe given a little more time, it wil bear fruit. For the early Christian community, as for Luke, it is likely that Jesus is seen as God's hiredhand who is the intercessor, the savior of the barren tree, the empty spirituality of the world. What's being said? The world of God is judged by God and is being called to repentance. It is being called to be the light to the nations of the world. It is called to reveal love, seek justice, to be forgiving, and hold out hope to the hopeless. But, the messengers have lost their way. Hopeless human can only be saved by the grace of God whose hiredhand Jesus Christ intervenes revealing the compassion of God calling a lost world back to its senses.
All of us who have been baptized have been chosen to participate in the way of Christ Jesus. We are to put our faith and trust in him. We are to live as the people of God, the blossoms of love, the revealers of healthy sweet digestible nourishment. It's not so much that we do great and good works but that we reveal a loveliness of trust and godliness. Maybe like the lights on a Christmas tree. They don't do anything necessarily but they enlighten, the create an atmosphere of warmth and joy and hope in the darkness. We are invited into the body of Christ by virtue of our baptism to be a shared leadership with him that brings to the world a profound spiritual sense that God is with us and among us. There are times in our lives when we can't do a thing in certain situations but be there in love as a channel for God's grace to flow. Can you sense with me that while there are always things we need to do, should do, could do, that the world also needs a spiritual sense of the presence of God in a crude vacumn of godlessness expressed in hate, violence, emptiness, loneliness, greed and mistrust? Instead of laying blame, or complaining about how awful the world is, we ask ourselves am I a part of the problem, or am I (we) being the fruit of hope on the tree that stands in the center of the garden, of the world?
As members of the church, members of the Vestry, the Volunteer Fire Department, a teacher in Sunday School, the choir, at work, school - wherever we may be - there are good things to do and to get done. But at the heart of what we do, is it our agenda that we are pushing, or is it God's agenda of patient long suffering love that we serve and witness to? We all know well that we are in need of repentance, change, that enables us to put our spiritual lives, our relationship with God first and foremost. We all are busy, but our doing, our busyness can be frustrating, pushy, manipulative, self-serving, self-gratification, maybe even empty and meaningless without a life rooted in a relationship with God though prayer and knowledge of Scripture which reveals God. Don't you remember a teacher in school who may have taught English or math, but while you don't remember a word that he or she may have said, they just evoked a loving presence. Moses in today's O.T. Lesson learns the name of God: the name is I AM WHO I AM. God IS, God is PRESENCE. God is BEING THERE with Moses and his people.
People come to Jesus in the lesson today worried about the people that died in the Temple and when the Tower of Siloam fell. Were they worse sinners than others? No, says Jesus, we are all sinners, and we are all going to die. Jesus himself is going to die. We need to repent and stop worrying about whose going to die, and where to place the blame. We are all under the judgment of God. Stop, change from, worrying about all that. But first and foremost accept the grace, the loving power of God, to live and to be the fruit of God's presence in the world. Jesus Christ is the savior, who retards the judgment and restores us as the servants of God. Embrace the grace.