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. He 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. 7o 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 round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”’
A few years ago I regularly went with my friend’s family to the Royal Exchange in Manchester (we had a season ticket. 5 shows for £60, bargain!). And a few times we watched plays by Shakespeare, I saw Much to do About Nothing, and Hamlet and a few others. Now, I’m not a huge fan of going to watch Shakespeare, a lot of the time I don’t have a clue what the play is about. I have never seemed to be able to acquire the ‘ear’ for it. There are too many words that I’m not sure about the meaning of and the sentence structure seems off and I just can’t always know what’s going on.
It can be the same with the Bible, we simply don’t have the ‘ear’ to hear what it is saying. I remember listening to an audiobook once about how to interpret it. And the writer said something that changed the way I see the scriptures. He said that ‘the bible wasn’t written for us, it was written to us.’
This is not surprising, after all, it’s at least two thousand years old, written in a completely different context and in a different language (in this case, ancient colloquial Greek)
So, when we come to a passage like we have today, it’s good to be aware that this passage wasn’t written to us, it doesn’t have the anecdotes that make sense to us, it doesn’t have colloquialisms that we would understand, it’s not constructed in a way that we would expect, so it’s not always easy to decipher it’s meaning. But it is written for us, so we can glean a message from it that applies to us.
Two disasters are mentioned at the beginning; one caused by human being, and one clearly an accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pontius Pilate, whom we know from sources outside the bible was an odious bloke, probably killed some Galilean pilgrims to the temple whom he thought were at risk of causing a riot, hence the reference to their blood mixing with the sacrifices of the temple. The other is something Jesus’ contemporaries obviously knew about when a tower fell over killed eighteen people.
Why does he say, ‘do you think they were worse offenders than anybody else?’ and, ‘unless you repent, you will perish like they did?’ It seems harsh, doesn’t it? What’s going on here? I have spoken about this before; Jesus is speaking into a world where there is a general view that, if something bad happens to you, then it’s because you’ve done something wrong. That’s the general way that it’s looked at, bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. This idea goes all the way back into the Old Testament writings. Do good and it will go well with you, do bad and it won’t go well with you. I’ve spoken before about how nowadays people think of Karma as a real thing, what goes around comes around.
Now there are places in the bible that support this kind of narrative, but there are other places that completely shatter it, such as the book of Job in the Old Testament. That’s designed to show that the prevailing narrative isn’t correct, Job suffers badly even though he did nothing wrong. Jesus too acts against the same narrative elsewhere in the gospels. Here in our passage, it’s the same, tragedy strikes two groups of people, the temptation in both cases for the people of the time is that they deserved their fate, one done by a human, and one at a twist of fate. But in both cases, they would be seen as God’s judgement on the wrong things they have done. But Jesus says, ‘do you really think you’re any better?’ the implication being, ‘of course they’re not, we’re all in the same boat.’
The call to repentance and to faith applies us all. Our lives could be snuffed out at any time, so it’s important that we turn to God while we have the time, as we do not know when the end will come for any of us. It’s designed I think to stop us becoming complacent and thinking, ‘oh I’m ok, there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m safe.’ No, we need a real faith in Jesus and all that he has done for us, and when we hear this message we need to respond.
In the parable a vineyard owner has planted a fig tree and has come to see if it will grow any fruit, for three years he’s done this, then he says to the gardener. Look, tear it down as it isn’t growing any fruit. The gardener begs for patience and says “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’ The implication being, that the tree will be cared for and tended once again to give it a chance to grow, but if it doesn’t, then cut it down.
Why does this parable directly follow what has gone before> it’s there to remind the people of something despite the message above, and it’s about God’s patience? God rightly expecting us to do good to one another (that’s the fruit), after all he planted a fig tree in the vineyard, so it’s right to expect that there would be fruit. Yet we see that God is patient when it doesn’t produce the fruit, he is expecting us to.
We like the idea of God judging others for the things that they do wrong. Those who hurt innocent civilians in war for example, we are seeing that right now; And quite rightly we say, Lord, bring your judgement on those perpetrators. We see when something bad happens to a person that we don’t like and think ‘aha, they must have deserved it’. But no, it’s right that they need to turn from the ways that are wrong, but it’s also right that we turn away from our lives that we need to turn from as well. With the assurance that yes God is patient with us we do have the time to do that, but we still need to turn away, nonetheless and turn to Jesus in faith. God isn’t a harsh taskmaster, he isn’t, he’s kind and patient loving. This doesn’t mean that the message to repent isn’t urgent, but it reminds us that he is also infinitely patient with us.
Lent is the time when we focus on these things in our lives. Every Sunday when we confess together, we ‘turn back’ to God, reminding ourselves of what he has done for us. That’s what Lent is about, time in the desert, of self examination, of turning back to Jesus and doing what he would have us do. Let’s keep going through this season, as John the Baptist says, ‘produc[ing] fruit in keeping with repentance’, demonstrating that we have heard the call to repent, and seeing its outworking in our lives.
Amen.