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The Third Sunday in Lent, 14 March 2004 |
Luke 13:1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 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? 5 No, 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. 7 So 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?' 8 He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'" Questions about Relationships It is usually toward the end of the day when the phone call comes to my office. It has probably taken the person on the other end of the line all day to work up the courage to ask their question. It isn't always the same question, but many times it is a variation of the following: “Why is God punishing me?” Things are going poorly for this individual or family at the moment and they have connected the dots and found the picture unmistakable. God must have it in for them. For my part I try to be assuring to them. I don't claim to know the mind of God, but I assure them that God does not “have it in for them.” I am sure of this because of Jesus' death and resurrection. God is for us, not against us. But at the same time, these bad things do happen, and there does not seem to be rhyme or reason to it. We look to make sense of our world, and we find out that senseless and random evils exist and plague us from time to time. Our world is complex, and simple answers will not suffice. I don't mention that their question is one aspect of the age old philosophical conundrum, theodicy. They probably don't know, nor do they care, that this word describes questions like, “If God is all powerful, then how can God be good or just with all the evil that exists in the world.” Students in college Philosophy 101 courses have been writing papers on this topic for decades, perhaps even centuries. The ancients of various cultures puzzled over this question. Perhaps this is the first and most important question asked after one answers positively the question about the existence of God at all. Many religions around the world express the hope that wicked people will be punished and righteous people will be rewarded by the divine. The natural extension for some, however faulty the logic, is that when someone suffers they must be wicked. Our experience tells us otherwise. Often people, even those we consider good, suffer for no apparent reason. Likewise, people whom we consider wicked often seem to go through life rewarded for their wickedness. All of this leaves our world shaken and our heads shaking. What is the relationship between our behavior, the good and bad things that happen to us, and God? How do all these things fit together? I don't know that I begin to have the answers to these questions, at least not on the logical level. What strikes me as odd is that Jesus in our Gospel text for today seems not to help in the least. Muddy Waters In our text for today, the question comes up not once, not twice, but three times; two of them contemporary examples for Jesus to use, and one a parable that he tells. As Jesus addresses this topic, the answer to his own question muddies the waters considerably. At first it seems that he is telling us that there is no connection between Sin and the evil. His emphatic “No” to the question, however rhetorical, indicates just that. But then he goes on to talk about the repentance of the people who are listening, lest they suffer the same fate. Jesus is saying, in effect; “If you don't repent, you will suffer just like they did.” Perhaps Sin and suffering are not linked, but repentance and avoiding suffering seem to be. Again, our experience tells us otherwise. If we take what Jesus is saying literally, then we know that it doesn't always happen that way. Many people in Jesus' day repented and were baptized by John, and yet were swept away in the Jewish rebellion against Rome that was going on at the time. Others in Jesus day seemed not at all concerned about their broken relationship with God, they seemed to keep right on going without suffering any ill, almost like the “Energizer Bunny.” We are still puzzled, and no closer to an answer. That is, until we take a closer look at Jesus' parable and its implications for the two earlier examples that he gives. The Gardener and the Tree Jesus parable of the gardener is one of those peculiar to Luke's gospel. The theme is common and as old as the prophets. The garden, vineyard, or in this case, fig tree, is not producing fruit. It is not serving the purpose for which it was planted. The care given to it seems wasted. The owner, understandably miffed about this, intends to put the soil to better use. The gardener intervenes and pleads for one more season to nurture the plant to growth before it will either produce or be cut down. At first the meaning of this text for us seems plain. The time is short. Bear fruit now (be productive as God's chosen people) or endure the wrath of the owner of the garden and be cut down and cut off. How many of us have heard (and pastors preached) just such a message. But that is to misunderstand the nature of trees altogether. Trees that do not bear fruit cannot simply start to produce on their own. It takes the proper soil, fertilizer, water and sunshine for this to happen. It is indeed God's doing, not the tree's action. The gardener knows this and not only pleads for time, but pledges a plan to do just the things needed for the tree to bear fruit. The gardener knows not only grace and patience but also nurture and care. The tree will ultimately bear fruit. But if, as I suspect, Jesus is referring to himself as the gardener, then this is not the end of the story of the gardener and the tree. We cannot hear this story of Jesus in isolation. It has everything to do with the destination that Jesus intends in Jerusalem, his death on another tree. Taken in the context of Jesus own death, the story of the Galileans killed by Pilate becomes more meaningful and more poignant. Jesus does not need to repent, yet he suffers the same fate of cruel death at the order of the same person. When he talks of perishing as they did, he is talking about something that the reader of the Gospel must realize Jesus is himself going to do. For this gardener takes on the fate of all humanity, our suffering and our death, head on. He not only tends to the tree, but dies on a tree. He suggests that being cut off from God is a terrible fate, and then he endures that fate with us and for us. By joining us in our suffering, Jesus does not answer the questions about why we suffer. Instead he lives it. He shows us that it does not have the last word. Beyond our hope and comprehension is something greater still, of which by his death we can only catch a glimpse. For this purpose he tends the unproductive tree and dies with it, with us. For the Love of the Tree We are usually so worried about the pains and suffering we endure that we are blind to the fact that God has joined our life, our death, and created a new path into our future. God has done so because love overrules, not death, but the power of death upon humanity. Our suffering is strong and enduring, but God's love is stronger still. We cannot avoid the pains and evils of this world, but we do not have either to join them or be resigned to them. Instead we can follow Jesus. Jesus did not need to repent because he remained, at all times, oriented toward the one he called “Abba.” The repentance that he calls forth in this story may well be an encouragement for us to do the same: to turn away from the pains and evils that consume us, to turn away from the things that we use to distract ourselves from the reality of evil in our hearts as well as our world, and to turn our faces toward the God whose love is the only hope we have of changing the ending, if not the course of our story. For it is in turning to our gardener for help and hope that we might indeed become productive, just as a plant will turn toward the light that is in part fuel for its fruit. And we hope in this gardener because he has joined his fate with our fate, so that his destination might be ours as well. Thus oriented on our Lenten journey, we are now ready to face the tree of the cross, the place of fate, so that we too might arrive at the empty tomb and the end of suffering's power. This news means more to the people who call me late in the afternoon, with such burning questions of existence and suffering: that Jesus carries his cross for us and before us, that God's response to our suffering is not indifference but to join us in it. We may never understand it, but we know now that unexplained suffering and pain are not our journey's destination. So we cling to our beloved gardener, as if our very lives depended on him. Because, I suppose, in every sense they do. Rev. Dr. Luke Bouman
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