Text: Luke 13:1-9 (Revised Standard Version)
There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? 3 I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Silo′am fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. 9 And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
“It’s just not fair!”
We hear kids say this all the time. “How come he gets to stay up and I don’t?” “How come she gets to go with you to the store and I have to stay home?” “How come he gets another cookie?”
“It’s just not fair!”
But it’s not just something we hear kids say. We adults are also very much in tune to fairness, and we give it other names, too, like equality and justice. This election cycle, just as every cycle before it, is concerned – legitimately – with issues of justice, equality, and fairness and how the various candidates plan to address these issues.
And on any given day, we see news reports on TV about protests that have to do with a perceived lack of fairness or an injustice of some sort or another – I think of the “Black Lives Matter,” the “Occupy Wall Street” movements and the standoff between Ammon Bundy and Federal authorities, for example. All of these movements can be summed up with the same words that kids use: “It’s just not fair!”
There’s another aspect to this, though, one that kids usually don’t get – but we certainly do. It’s the sentiment that finds expression in questions like “Whatever did I do to deserve this?” “Why is this happening to me?”
You’re driving along one day on the freeway. You’re a careful driver. You don’t take chances. Then along comes a car that broadsides you and sends you into the ditch. Your car is totaled. You suffer injuries and have to be hospitalized for a while. You can’t work. The bills mount up.
You ask yourself – you ask God – “Why me? What did I do to deserve this? This is just plain not fair!”
In this instance, the answer is simple: Nothing. You did nothing to deserve what happened. It was not some punishment meted out to you by God. It simply happened.
Then there are those other times, though, where you ask that same question, “What did I do to deserve this?” but you know, and you know full well, that you brought this misfortune down on yourself. You have no one to blame but yourself. Maybe you didn’t pay close enough attention to your bank balance, and it’s now in the red. Maybe you said something at work about your boss, and now you have to deal with HR. You can shake your fist at heaven as much as you like, but you know that you are the author of your misfortune, and no one else.
Two different kinds of situation; and of the two, I would say that the first one is the most difficult for us to square with our understanding of God and how God works. If we make a mistake, and we recognize it, then we can – more often than not – make amends.
But the first kind of misfortune, the things that happen to us out of the blue – like that car accident, or a sudden illness, or unexpected job loss – these are the things that we can’t explain, which leave us shaking our heads, and make us question the order of the universe. We ask that oldest of all human questions: WHY?
What, though, does any of this have to do with today’s lesson? What does any of this have to do with suffering Galileans, or people who were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and got crushed by that falling tower, or – of all things – with fig trees?
Well, the question of suffering, of fairness, of why bad things happen to good people, is as old as time. In today’s lesson we have references to two horrible events – we’re not given a great deal of detail, but we have enough to know that they were disasters in which people lost their lives.
The first has that arch-villain Pontius Pilate at its center. By this point, he’d been ruling Israel for four years. He was so monstrous that people had rioted more than once, and he’d had no qualms whatsoever about putting down those riots with a viciousness that alarmed even his overlords. There is a record of Pilate being reported to the Emperor himself for one such action, this one having taken place after the Crucifixion, and he had been recalled to Rome to give an account before the Emperor in person for what he had done. Think about that for a minute: Somebody being called on the carpet for viciousness and cruelty by an Empire that had taken viciousness and cruelty to a previously inconceivable level – that puts Pilate right up there with Stalin and Hitler, and Pol Pot! So, this Pontius Pilate had mixed the blood of Galileans that he had executed with the blood of their Jewish sacrifices. This was as offensive, as appalling as it got.
Then we have those eighteen people on whom the Tower of Siloam fell. We have next to no information about them, except that they were killed. It may be that they were just common laborers, guys out doing their jobs, and the obviously poorly-engineered tower toppled over onto them.
But what did it mean? The people who came to Jesus and reported both of these events probably expected him to agree with the point of view that held that these people had somehow, in some way, done something “wrong” and had opened themselves up to God’s wrath.
But Jesus chose instead to turn these events into a teaching moment. He said to the crowd, “No, these people were no worse, no more sinful, than any of you.” He didn’t address the issue of individual sin, but rather the unwillingness of Jerusalem and its leaders to ignore the message of God that he brought. The fig tree is Jerusalem; in Mark’s version of this parable, that tree gets cut down and burnt. In Luke’s retelling, though, we read something else: The landowner – God – gives them yet another chance. This chance is secured by the gardener, who, of course, is Jesus himself.
And here’s an interesting thing – as David Lose tells us, “nowhere in Luke do we find a picture of an angry, vindictive God that needs to be placated by a friendly Jesus. Rather, Jesus portrays God as a father who scans the horizon day in and day out waiting for his wayward son to come home and as a woman who after sweeping her house all night looking for a lost coin throws a party costing even more than the coin is worth to celebrate that she found it. Luke’s Gospel overflows with the conviction that ‘there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance’ (Luke 15:7).”[1]
Far from being an angry, even vindictive landowner who just says “get rid of that tree,” the God we read about here today is a God who’s always ready to forgive, always ready to welcome us with his grace, always ready to rejoice with us. That’s who God, the landowner in today’s story, is.
To see a vengeful landowner, we need only to look in the mirror. That landowner reflects how we think the world should work – we want things to be fair! And that means that bad guys should pay the price for their crimes, and good people should reap the benefits of their good works.
So maybe the gardener in today’s lesson is God – the gardener who says, gently, to the landowner’s (our) insistence on harsh judgment, that maybe the ultimate answer to sin isn’t punishment – even in the name of justice – but rather mercy, reconciliation, and a new life.
God does not cause our suffering, but God is always with us in our suffering.
He’s with us, because he’s experienced it, felt it, too! We need to bear in mind that Jesus tells these parables while he’s on the way to Jerusalem. He’s in his final days on earth, days that will end horribly and painfully.
We traditionally think of Jesus dying on the Cross as the only way that we could be reconciled to God – we had sinned against God, and someone had to pay the price, so God took human form as Jesus and died there for us.
But in light of today’s lesson, there might be an additional aspect to the story that we might miss if we focus just on the suffering, the pain, and the judgment: That maybe the Cross is about God identifying with us, being in solidarity with us, and above all, loving us.
God in Jesus loves us enough to take fully take on our lot and our lives. In the Cross we see just how far God is willing to go for us, to be with us. In the Resurrection, we see that God’s love for us is stronger than anything, even death!
So what can we say in the face of injustice, unfairness, suffering, and loss? Even with faces streaked with tears and hearts that are breaking, we can say that God is with us. We can say that God understands what our suffering is like, because he has felt it, too. We can say that God has promised to redeem all things – and that includes our suffering, and the suffering of those whom we love. We can say that suffering, injustice, and death do not have the last word in our lives and world. And we can say that God will keep waiting for us, will keep loving us, and will keep calling us to turn away from all that bogs us down, so that we might be drawn again into his loving embrace!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] http://www.davidlose.net/2016/02/lent-3-c-suffering-the-cross-and-the-promise-of-love/