Isaiah 55:1-9 • Psalm 63:1-8 • 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 • Luke 13:1-9
"At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. [Jesus] asked them, 'Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 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? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.' 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. 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?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
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“Jonathan and I were together. [Ben] was hugging a pillar in the middle of the floor. I turned and I saw him, and I saw concrete starting to fall on him. I called for him and starting running towards him…[unable to reach him,] I told him I love him, and that Jon and I were OK…and [I told him] to keep on singing…[He kept singing the words,] God’s peace to us we pray…” (“Quake Claims Future Pastor”, The Lutheran Magazine, March 2010, 21)
“We are in a state of suspension. People are tired and perhaps spent, feeling they can’t make it through another one. A friend told me that, from his window, he watched a church steeple crumble. We have the sensation of having met, face to face and in pitch dark, the big one. The worst part of the memory, many people say, is not the quake itself but the anxiety that came immediately afterward, when our cell phones were out and we couldn’t reach our loved ones. For two or three hours Saturday morning, all Chileans were very alone. We felt as if we were at the end of the world. Which in a way is true.” (“In Chile, Life Between the Tremors” by Alberto Fuguet, 3/2/10 New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/opinion/02fuguet.html, accessed 3/5/10)
These are the voices of Renee and Alberto. Renee is a survivor of the January 12th tragedy in Haiti, where a 7.0 magnitude quake has affected over one million and killed close to 150,000 people. Renee is the widow of Ben Larson, an ELCA Senior Seminarian, who with Renee was serving and studying in Haiti, months away from becoming a pastor, before this tragedy took his life. Alberto is a survivor of the recent tragedy last Saturday in Chile, an 8.8 level earthquake that has displaced over two million and killed more than 300.
Why did God let this happen? Is this some kind of punishment by God? Is this a visible sign that God favors us, and not them? These questions, and many like them have been asked by countless survivors, and grieving people all around the globe who are trying to find meaning in light of such suffering. This is not the first time these questions have been asked, and they are questions we have asked too. We most recently asked these questions following the tragedies of 9/11, the Asian Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina, and they are questions that were also asked of Jesus: “Were those Galileans Pilate massacred worse than all the other Galileans?” (Luke 13:2) “Does survival of tragedy prove God’s favor for those still living?”
Jesus chooses to reply, not only with a firm “No!”—that there is no explanation for why tragic death happens—but also, he throws in for good measure: “Oh…and, unless you repent, you too are going to die like they did.” Whoa! Jesus! Isn’t that a bit harsh? Given the high emotions of the tragedies his inquisitors are asking about, is this the time to tell them they are sinful, that they need to repent? Is this the time go against all that they teach us about pastoral care in seminary—that tragedies are not the time to challenge people’s deepest held beliefs about God? In the wake of grieving disaster, is laying on the guilt about living a more devoted life to God good to do now? Lighten up, Jesus!
But still, Jesus’ words don’t go away. “Repent…[or] you will all perish just as they did.” Now while there may be an element in Jesus’ words of asking us to repent in an individual, private way, commanding us to turn away from our brokenness to God’s mercy, Jesus follows this command up with a story to illustrate the kind of repentance he is asking for in light of these tragedies.
Like the ones who ask Jesus these questions about suffering, in the story Jesus tells, we can so easily put God in the role of the story’s angry landowner, who comes to find a suffering, dying tree in the vineyard that like Haiti and Chile, is not bearing any fruit. This angry God-landowner wants to cut it down. And we can just as easily put Jesus in his parable as the gardener who comes to save the fig tree from the bullying landowner, who tells him to “let it alone for one more year, [so Jesus] can dig around it and put manure on it…” How much more certain we would be in our answers to questions about suffering with a God whose desire to punish and bully and remove our fruitless suffering gets appeased by a Jesus who would come to rescue the suffering from God’s wrath. Unfortunately, God’s answers to our fruitlessness and lifelessness are much more messy and unpleasant than this neat and tidy picture.
Jesus’ parable more accurately shows our own temptation to be that bullying landowner—to want to blame the fruitless tree for its suffering; to want to wipe our hands clean of this death because death does not bear any fruit. Thankfully, Jesus intercedes as the tender gardener, but in a different kind of way. Jesus comes to point out to us, the landowners who don’t want to deal with death and the dying fig tree, that that tree is God. God is that dying fig tree that no longer bears fruit, that suffers lovingly and directly in the heart of its closed up buds and its bare branches, that feels the pain of our frail world. Jesus comes to tend to that tree which is dead—to that which has seemingly died—to that which is no longer thriving. Jesus comes so that he may forgive us for our denial of the suffering God, and give space and room for the healing and wholeness of this lifeless fruit tree to produce again.
Jesus comes and to tend to our branches that no longer bear fruit, to tend to our damaged roots, with his fertilizer of bread and wine…with his nourishing, life-giving waters that feed us with eternal life. “Let alone your wish for blame, for looking away from death,” Jesus says to us. “Repent. Turn towards the Lord your God, and join me in tending to the fruit trees that once were dead, but that I am bringing to new life, for the sake of the whole world that God loves so much.”
The window of time is small for the fruitless tree to bear fruit. Jesus asks for one year of tending to it, before he lets it die. This call to repent is a limited time offer. So let us not pass such an opportunity by. Repentance is not about giving up something to make amends for what we’ve done and left undone. We can never do enough. So many of us try and make Lent into a time to beat up ourselves to appease an angry God. But repentance is about becoming fruit-bearing people once again, and joining Jesus on his mission to serve, heal and mend the whole world. Repentance is about giving up our desire to look away from those who suffer, and turning towards those grieving, hurting and dying—where God is present, where Jesus is faithful, where this master gardener is giving tender care—whether they are in Haiti or Chile, across the world or in our own country, at work or school, or in our own home. Jesus is asking us to take the risk to get outside of our comfort zone, outside of ourselves, and join him in putting his compassion for the lifeless fruit tree into action: whether it’s clicking a mouse to give aid to earthquake survivors; whether it’s speaking “no” to belief in a God who punishes with suffering; or whether it’s teaching our children that we are unable to answer the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Jesus leads the way. He can take any dead tree—the tree of Ben singing in the rubble, the tree of Alberto feeling like the end of the world is at hand, and even the lifeless and tragic tree of the cross—Jesus can make them all live again.
Repent, or perish. Time is limited. Turn to this gardener Jesus, and live, so that he can tend to us, and we can bear fruit for others. Amen.
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