Who sinned:
This man, or his parents?
That’s not the question presented to Jesus today,
but it’s in the same vein.
Galileans and Jerusalemites
have both suffered as Jesus is speaking.
There’s an undercurrent
that the Galilean bumpkins
aren’t as good at following God
as their cousins
who have much quicker,
easier access to the temple.
But when Jesus is asked about them,
he reminds the crowds or his adversaries
that there were people in Jerusalem
who had something bad happen to them, too.
That’s what Paul Scott Wilson
calls the trouble in the text.
It’s the conflict,
the problem.
What is God trying to talk to us about?
Today’s passage
is in some ways a straight forward one
because people are literally asking Jesus
about a problem they’re facing!
While some are trying to catch him
between being a religious radical
and patriot-in-oppression,
Jesus never takes that bait.
Instead he tells a parable.
And as is often the case,
Jesus tells us before the parable
the best way to interpret it.
“Unless you repent,
you will all perish as they did.”
Ouch.
Unless we repent,
the government will kill us
and make us martyrs?
Unless we repent,
the central joist of this building
will come undone
and an earthquake
will make it fall on us?
For those who don’t know,
the central pin here –
Jim can tell us the real word –
went in miraculously timed
before the Nisqually earthquake.
I whined last week
about our current cultural unwillingness
to look beyond a text,
to not just look at the words
but to figure out what is deeper than the page.
I am not a gardener.
That is not my vocation
nor my spiritual gift.
Neither it turns out,
is the land owner in the parable.
A Biblical commentary helped me understand
that figs and grapes
don’t leaf, bud, or yield fruit
at the same time.
When the landowner comes into his field
the grape vines have been pruned
and cut away
and the fig tree is full of leaves.
My grandmother had a fig tree
that had huge leaves
and grew in a perfect way to climb.
When the landowner comes into his field
it looks like the fig tree is special
but it’s just on its natural cycle.
It hasn’t borne fruit yet,
but it’s also not worthless.
“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.”
Put another way,
“Please let me do my job.
This tree has needed to grow.
You don’t know what you’re talking about,
and I need to do some more work.”
Jesus said
“Unless you repent,
you will all perish as they did.”
Parables can never be read
as one to one comparisons
between us and God.
They’re always more fluid than that,
always have room to stretch and embrace.
The gardener said,
“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.”
Jesus is saying the same thing here
in two different ways
because God is the gardner,
not the land owner.
None of our passages this Lent
has focused on bewailing
our manifold sins and wickednesses.
A call to repentance
isn’t a condemnation
by a vengeful God.
As Jesus is asked
about those whom the state killed
and those who died by a mistake
of building and the earth,
he answers “God is still working on you.”
We want to draw lines in the sand
and throw the wrong people into the fire.
That’s not quite how we say it,
but at the end of the day
even in the fullness of our love
that’s just a human temptation.
We have such a hard time with grace –
God’s love for all of us
and God’s forgiveness for all the wrong we do –
that we’d rather see God
as the impatient landowner
ready to chop down the fig tree
than the gardener
taking his time
to get the tree ready
to yield abundant fruit.
Let it alone for one more year.
That’s what we’re doing here,
now.
I’m so proud of all of you
and the way you’re embracing discernment
about the future of this Christian community.
I’m proud of the Bishop’s Committee
for hammering down three potential paths for us.
I’m proud of the rest of you
for your big strong nods
that next year’s budget
won’t look like this year’s.
We don’t know what that means yet,
but the solid commitment
is just what God the gardener
is asking for in this parable.
“Unless you repent,
you will all perish as they did.”
Our discernment that we’re doing now
and the decision we’re making in May
is repentance.
It’s not saying we’re failures.
It’s not throwing ourselves in front of a train
as an act of mortification.
It’s turning to God –
like we’re doing during prayers this Lent –
and doing things differently.
Nothing about the text from Luke
suggests that perishing is about
spending eternity in a lake of fire.
Our friends in recovery,
for whom we pray every week,
know what this means.
They were perishing in their addiction,
and needed to repent.
Today Jesus tells those who hear him –
both in answering their questions
and telling them a story –
that there’s still time.
There’s no limit on the time
we have
to turn to god.
God wants to dig around us
and fertilize us
as we come to church each week
and hear scripture proclaimed
and feast on Christ’s body and blood.
God is working in us
from the moment of our baptisms
where everything has been forgiven
not because we’re good
but because God loves us.
God doesn’t want
any of us to perish.
The church gives us a call each year in Lent
and each Sunday when we’re called to confession
to turn to God.
Let God dig around you.
Let God work on you.
Return,
and bear fruit.