Lent III, Year C
March 23, 2025
Here we are on the third Sunday in Lent. I don’t know about you, but this year feels a bit more Lenty to me. In a world where there is so much confusion, anger, and fear, when the powerful harming the powerless seems to be more visible, Jesus reminds us today that yes, there are some bad actors causing great harm, but if we are going to make any kind of lasting change, we must first begin with ourselves.
Expecting others to repent without requiring it of ourselves is a dangerous precedent. We have turned away from the Way of Love, failed to be good stewards of God’s creation, ignored the needs of the poor, and, in the words of scripture, ‘spent our money on that which does not satisfy.’ The time is at hand for repentance—not only for Wall Street tycoons and self-serving politicians—but for all of us. This is Lent when we are to examine ourselves and get on a good road. Lucinda Williams would say that we gotta “Get Right With God.”
In our Gospel today, Jesus is asked to comment on the political issues of the moment, the slaughter of Galileans at worship and the disaster of a building collapse. In the painful struggle of trying to make sense of something senseless, the age-old logic of “You ain’t been living right” sneaks into our consciousness and our understanding of God. We have just got to blame someone–it’s their fault this happened.
Here Jesus addresses the problem of sin and suffering and where we tend to go wrong in trying to justify why people suffer. This was clearly a horrific offense, mingling the blood of those Pilate had killed with the sacred sacrifice of the animals. It reminds me of Bishop Oscar Romero who was gunned down at the altar for speaking out against his government on behalf of the poor and suffering. The crowd addressing Jesus pointed out that those who had been killed were Galileans like himself. There was quite a bit of prejudice in Jerusalem against the Galilean Jews, so it is easy to figure out why they concluded that “those people” were to blame.
Yet Jesus sees something else behind their question and addresses that first, sniffing out the self-righteousness and their eagerness to find out if Jesus thought they deserved it. He deals with Pilate and “that old fox” later in the Chapter, which we read last week. Jesus flips the question back on the crowd and demands their repentance, knowing that true change first begins within. The thing about self-righteousness is that when we get caught up in making sure that we are helping God out by seeking vengeance, we conclude that we’re the good guys and ignore our own complicity.
It is what is in the heart of each person and their community that Jesus is concerned with. Because judgment will come, but not in the way we think. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?” Jesus asks them. “I tell you, No.” Frankly, if God was in the business of meting out cruel retaliation and curses in relation to our sins, there probably would not be anyone left on the planet.
Too many times we even hear in the news that a disaster occurred, like the towers of Siloam falling on those eighteen people, because “those people’s” supposed sins caused God to respond in that way. What is the reason a fire or a hurricane or a dust storm killed people, we want to know? Why are the poor looking for food and shelter, surely it’s because of their bad choices. And what about God? Why did God do this to me? Yet tragedy befalls the just and unjust alike.
In his well titled book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” Harold Kushner writes, “God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for our misbehavior, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God’s part.”
The word used here in the Greek text for repent is metanoia. Metanoia literally means to change one’s mind, a change in the trend and action of the whole inner nature, intellectual, affectional and moral. What Jesus is really getting at here “repent or you will perish,” is not a case of sinners in the hands of an angry God, but a God that knows unless there is a change of mind and heart, a return to God and away from vengeance, and a turn to the transformational work that we need to do, away from selfish pursuits and self-righteous payback, we will all perish.
Now Jesus isn’t talking about sinners perishing in a burning hell for eternity, he is addressing the desire to take up the sword and go after those who have wielded the sword on the Galileans. That leading a revolt into Jerusalem was going to end in more bloodshed. Those that want to battle evil with the same tools that are causing the horrific suffering will also die. And those that continued to wage violence instead of repenting and returning to God’s way, would find that the very walls will eventually crumble and fall on them while the enemy closes in. There are political and military consequences to not heeding the call, Jesus is warning. And in 70 AD that’s exactly what happened when the Temple was destroyed.
Hatred, self-righteousness, vengeance, violence, all lead down one path no matter how justified one is in that pursuit. The painful truth is that we are all complicit much of the time, and even our inaction contributes to others suffering, but we don’t want to examine that. We just want to point out who we should blame and make them pay.
Which is why I think Jesus starts talking about a fig tree.
First of all, in case you were as puzzled as I was about why a fig tree was in a vineyard, apparently it was common to plant fig trees in vineyards so the birds would eat the figs and not the grapes. So the fig tree wasn’t really fulfilling its purpose if it wasn’t producing figs.
Unfortunately, this parable is often misused–misinterpreted to support the prosperity Gospel: look how God blesses the fig tree with special care and fertilizer – that must be because the tree is special and faithful. It must be a good fig tree, favored by God, deserving of this extra attention.
Julio Gonzalez points out that, “This interpretation is attractive for those of us who ‘like to think that we have comfortable houses, when so many are homeless, or a substantial income, when so many are poor, or all kinds of food to eat, when so many are ill, because we have somehow been particularly faithful.”
That is NOT what Jesus is saying in this parable, but instead the opposite. The tree is given blessing and special attention because it failed to be faithful, it failed to bear good fruit. “Could it be that our apparent advantages and privileges are also a warning about impending doom lest we bear fruit?”
I think the fig tree parable is much more about how we are to care for each other. When we see someone not bearing fruit, struggling with life–in today’s terms we might call it “being unproductive,” or “inefficient” or “useless,”–we too often respond with, “Cut it down! It’s not worth anything.” But just wait a minute. Isn’t it the job of the man who owned the vineyard to make sure the plants had what they needed to flourish? A man owned this plot of land. And he was expecting it to produce fruit without his participation.
So the gardener explains to him what needs to happen. Give the tree another chance. Again, are we not the gardener, too? We often want to place God and Jesus as the actors in these parables, but they’re often about the roles we play. The choices we make and God’s grace in the equation. The grace here is to stop the hand that wields the axe that wants to cut down the tree and instead do all we can to help that tree flourish, not expecting the tree to just magically figure out how to bear fruit by itself when it hasn’t been given what it needs.
The gardner tends to the soil, puts a lot of…manure around it, waters it, and cares for it. That’s community, that’s the body of Christ at work. You put extra care and attention not to those that were able to bear fruit, but to tend to those who need a little help. Instead of blaming the tree, the gardener offers grace. When we change our minds, repent, we change our way of thinking and this vineyard owner gives the fig tree another chance. That’s grace.
And in Jesuslike fashion, we don’t know how this story turned out! And in Jesuslike fashion it might be precisely because we are to tend to those who are not flourishing and offer sweat and care and grace and leave the rest to God.
Former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said this about the rest of the fig tree parable: “Jesus tells a parable about a gardener determined to tend a fruitless fig tree because he is open to a future possibility that he does not control or manage. The task of the disciple is to witness and then wait, to take our best step and leave the rest to God. We labor now for a future we are not meant to control.”
“In the final analysis,” Kushner writes, “the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.” That is repentance. How will we hold ourselves accountable and how will we tend to those who are suffering without determining whether or not they are worthy.
We have choices. Are we too quick to want to chop it down, blame the fig tree for not bearing fruit? Or do we work together, repenting, asking for God’s grace, and doing all we can to nurture, build up, and help the fruitless fulfill their purpose.
Magdalena's Musings 