Greening Our Lives
Reflection for March 23, 2025 (3rd Sunday of Lent)
Scripture: Luke 13: 1-9
Well, it’s been long-awaited, but this week we were finally able to celebrate the arrival of Spring!
Spring, delightfully, is the time of greening. Of dormant seeds sprouting in their hidden places in the soil and slowly making their way up to emerge into the day. There are a number of blooms in my garden right now: hyacinth, daffodil, tulip buds. And around Vancouver, especially this past week or so, we’ve seen buds and blossoms re-appearing on once barren trees.
Today in our reading we have Jesus using the image of a barren tree - a fig tree - in his teaching. This text comes at the end of a long section of teachings and parables in Luke’s gospel, which begins a chapter earlier (in Luke 12:). Luke tells us that thousands of people have come to hear Jesus speak, and it’s at the end of this “marathon teaching session” that he decides to finish with a parable, using the image of the fig tree.
The parable of the fig tree
In the parable, a man comes to check on his fig tree and finds that it isn’t producing any fruit. In fact, it hasn’t produced fruit for the past three years. Impatiently, the man says to the gardener, ‘It’s been three years, and no fruit! Cut it down.’ But the gardener says, ‘Give it another year, and I’ll fertilize it and hoe around it, and then come and see. If by then it still hasn’t borne any fruit, then you can cut it down.”
Tilling & turning
At our Jazz vespers on Friday, I described Lent as a time when we are invited to go deep down, deep within, to discover the seeds - the potential of our holy identity and purpose as children of God: seeds that may be lying dormant within us, yet to be awakened by the impulse of the spirit; or that may even be entombed in some way within us, because of us something we’re going through or carrying that has resulted in us burying part of ourselves deep down, making us feel barren and not able to produce the fruits of the spirit.
When this happens, our inner soil needs tilling and nourishing. And this is what the spiritual practices we’re encouraged to engage with during Lent are designed to do: to till and tend the soil of our soul and spirit, and bring us new life - or even back to life.
Using the language of Lent, we’re asked to seek repentance, remembering that in the Bible, "repent' means to have a change - or literally, a “turning” of the heart, and the mind; a change of habits and impulses to see and do things in a new and holy way: to see things the way God sees them, and to then change one's behaviour so that one's habits, impulses, thoughts, and actions lead us into the way of relating to others that is aligned with the way Jesus shows us.
Jesus, in his parable of the fig tree, does a lovely job, I think, of linking the idea of repentance with this notion of turning - in this case, talking about how the gardener is planning to dig around and till - literally “turn over”- the soil of the fig tree, making it more receptive to the nutrients he will then add.
The barrenness of suffering
Now, one of those things that might be holding us back from allowing God to awaken the potentiality within us is, that might be causing us to feel barren spiritually, is the weight of suffering we can be carrying, from bad things happening to us or those we care about - whether that be something random (no reason) or from the willful actions of someone else, or as an experience of systemic neglect or oppression. It can cause a spiritual crisis, especially if we are asking WHY - why is this happening? Why is God allowing this to happen?
That seems to be what Jesus is sensing is going on when, in the earlier part of the reading, Luke tells us some people in the crowd manage to make their way to him and tell him about the Galileans who had been killed by Pilate while making sacrifices at the temple, and whose blood Pilate had then, gruesomely, mingled with their sacrifices.
Luke doesn't tell us why Jesus was being told about this. Perhaps it had just happened and this was the first time the news had reached those in the crowd… Perhaps because they knew that Jesus and his closest followers were Galileans - and there was concern about family and friends? Or perhaps they were wondering about how Jesus, as a Galilean, would respond to Pilate's actions?
What we do know is that Jesus immediately dismisses the unspoken question: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you..” And to make sure they get his point, he mentions another tragedy - this time a tragic accident where eighteen people were killed when a tower fell on them. And again, he says: “Do you think they were worse offenders/sinner than anyone else? No, I tell you.”
That’s the pastoral message.
Repentance & new life
“But”, Jesus says, I will also tell you this: unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” He says that twice.
Now, up to that point, as I noted earlier, up to just before he gets interrupted with the news of the killings by Pilate, Jesus had been teaching the crowds - about how to live faithfully to God’s will, and what happens when you don’t (ie, the parables of the rich fool and the unfaithful slave, ch.12)
So I’m inclined to see what’s going on here in this reading today as two things:
Jesus gets his “flow” interrupted by some listeners who really wanted (for whatever reason) to give Jesus the news about the tragedy at the temple, and recognizing a pastoral moment/opportunity, switched his focus briefly to be present to the moment and reassure the people that contrary to the wide-spread, taken for granted, deeply held belief of the time, that if bad things happen to you, it has to be because - in some way - you deserve it - that contrary to that popular belief, this was not God’s will, that these people didn’t suffer and lose their lives because they were bad people and had angered God.
But then he’s seeking to get back on track with what he’s been teaching about up until that point, so he finds a seguay - “No, those people weren’t worse than anyone else… but anyway, since we’re talking about bad things happening, you will perish like they did, if you don’t repent.”
And that’s when Jesus tells the parable of the fig tree.
+ + +
Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians tells that early christian community:
“… the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:18)
Luke's gospel presents us with one repenter after another: the woman who anoints Jesus' feet (Luke 7), the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16), Zacchaeus (Luke 19), and the thief on the cross (Luke 23). All these stories, several of them unique to Luke's gospel, feature people with conflicts, afflictions, and fears. And it’s their encounter with Jesus - with his love, his wisdom, and his assurance of a God who loves them beyond measure and would give everything for them so that they could know fullness of life - it’s that encounter which tills their soil, turns their way of seeing and understanding themselves and God, and leads them to their salvation, to being able to know the joy of being God’s beloved, seeded with holy identity and potential.
As are we. Those stubborn fig trees that we can often be. Christ wants to activate in us what we have already been designed for, what’s already encoded in us. May it be so, as we allow our Gardener God to till and tend us. Amen.
PRAYER:
Gardener God, may we allow you this Lent, to hoe around us and water us, until what is fruitful in us can emerge and be seen. And in so doing, may we discover that your patient, redeeming work is more decisive in our lives than the tragedies and dangers. In Christ’s name, Amen.
Luke 13: 1-9 (NRSVUE)
At that very time there were some present who told Jesus 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 other people 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. So he said to the man working the vineyard, ‘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 around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.’