Third Sunday in Lent, Year C
Sunday, March 20, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Stamford, CT
1Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
3Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
4See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
5See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
6Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
7let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. – Isaiah 55:1-9
1At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.2[Jesus] asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?3No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4Or 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? 5No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
6Then 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. 7So 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?’ 8He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ” – Luke 13:1-9
My question for you this morning is this: How many figs? How many figs would be enough? If the tree in Jesus’s parable produced one half-withered fig, is that enough? One really good fig – is that enough? Need it be a more reasonable amount, say at least 20 per year – the low end of average for a mature fig tree?
And how many years? How many one-more-years can go by with no figs before the tree is cut down and thrown into the fire? How many years is it worth the effort to keep digging and pruning and watering and whatever else a fig tree needs? How much work is it worth to eke out a fig?
I think Jesus tells this strange little parable because he knows we are fig-counters. That is, we’re always asking what’s enough? This many good deeds? This many acts of charity? This much money given away? This much kindness, goodness, purity? This much prayer? Am I doing it right yet, Jesus?
Or how many one-more-years do I have left? How much time? How long should I work before I can rest? How much effort is worth the produce? Is my work worth it? Am I worth it?
The people speaking to Jesus want to know how much goodness will protect them from terrible fates. Those Galileans, the ones Pilate brutally killed – were they worse than the other Galileans? C’mon, Jesus, we know you know, you must have access to the heavenly accounting sheet, you can tell us. Surely it was because they did something wrong, something we haven’t done or something we can stop doing. Or the eighteen who had a tower fall on them? What did they do to deserve it? Those people surely did something! Because if they did, then surely we can worry less about something bad happening to us.
We twenty-first century mainline Christians might look down on their thinking. We may abstractly ponder why bad things happen to good people, but generally, I hope, we don’t assign blame to those who fall victim to disasters and disease. But we ask the same questions in other ways.
Did you notice that at least before the Delta and Omicron variants came along there was this stigma around getting COVID? Like unless you were a frontline worker maybe you just hadn’t been careful enough. I know when my family got COVID almost a year into the pandemic I was actually a little embarrassed to admit it.
Or what about cancer? Did the person smoke? Or heart disease – we may not say it aloud but we wonder about lifestyle choices. Body doesn’t look like the magazines say it’s supposed to? Probably something they’re doing or not doing. Mental health challenges – maybe it was their environment in childhood. Maybe – hopefully – we aren’t going to say it out loud, but we think it sometimes, don’t we? Congregation membership or finances dwindling? Surely if we or they just did the right thing we’d have averted the decline? Distancing ourselves from something bad, so that maybe, just maybe, we can maintain a sense of control over our lives, control over what happens to us. We want to be able to dosomething to fend off disaster, to hold off death, to hold off ill fortune. And part of what Jesus is saying is both that no one deserves the awful fate that befalls them and also that no one escapes death in the end either.
Ultimately it comes down to deeper questions: Are we good enough? Can we hold off the worst by doing enough? Do we have enough time? Have we born enough fruit? Enough to save us in the end from whatever demons pursue us? Enough to save us from death, from damnation, from shame? We’re fig counters. And counting figs makes us impatient with the tree.
And so Jesus presents us with this strange little parable and it probably unsettles us. Jesus means to unsettle us. The whole story sets us up to be outraged at the tree, ready with the landowner to throw it out, start over. That’s what I do with plants that don’t seem to be doing what they’re supposed to. Don’t you? We’re supposed to be all in with the landowner as Jesus tells the little vignette.
And then Jesus, as he is wont to do, drops in this twist, this strange plea from the one we expect both to obey the landowner and to know how to take care of fruitless trees. The gardener says “one more year.” There is no logical, rational reason for this. No likelihood that it will work. No reason for the extra effort involved here. It’s not the decision of a fig-counter.
I don’t think this parable is meant to be a one-to-one allegory. I’m hesitant to say too definitively who is God and who we are. But I will say that I too often act like the landowner ready to judge based on results, and God is generally one to say “one more year,” the one to give a bit more attention, a bit more love and care without stopping to count costs.
In Lent especially, but throughout our lives of faith we might be tempted to draw up an account of our own fruit-bearing. And that is absolutely part of our call to bear fruit in the world. To be doers of justice, bringers of peace, love self and neighbor, deepen our connection to God, serve others. Those are the things that bring life to us and to the world.
But too often we think that’s tied to God’s love for us. Too often we think God is just as much a bookkeeper of deeds, a counter of figs, as we are. The loving tender care of the farmer isn’t about producing the most fruit, earning the most money, working in the most efficient way, but about cultivating enough for everyone to live and thrive. God calls us to bear fruit not so that we can be the best trees or so that we can earn love, acceptance, or live ever after. God calls us to bear fruit so that the whole world is nourished and fed. So that the whole world together might feast and live and thrive. God’s not out to get fruitless trees, but out to set a feast for all.
What Lent is really about is God getting down in the dirt with us. Kneeling down, digging, watering. Jesus goes to the cross not because we don’t bear fruit but because God’s great love for us calls God into our lives, messy and sometimes without fruit though they may be. So come now, wherever you find yourself in this strange little parable. Come you who get caught up in trying to keep accounts. Come you who are quick to judge. Come you who feel barren. Come you who toil and sometimes can’t find anything to show for it. Come you who call out for mercy. Come, all, for God’s feast is waiting for you here at this table.
-Pastor Steven Wilco
Stewarding the Word 