Luke 13:1-9
1Some who were present on that occasion told Jesus about the Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. 2 He replied, “Do you think the suffering of these Galileans proves that they were more sinful than all the other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did. 4 What about those eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think that they were more guilty of wrongdoing than everyone else who lives in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.”6 Jesus told this parable: “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ 8 The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertilizer. 9 Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’”
Philippians 4:6-7
Don’t be anxious about anything; rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions, along with giving thanks. 7 Then the peace of God that exceeds all understanding will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus.
Who likes Figs?
I love Figs! Or at least I thought I did, because I love fig newtons. So when I saw fig tree seedlings for sale at my local nursery, I bought one.
I bought a desert fig. The figs are green when ripe, and the desert fig is tolerant of drought conditions and poor soil, which was good because I had very poor soil that didn’t hold moisture in my herb garden. And while I love planting, harvesting, and preserving, the daily grind of watering and weeding is definitely not my cup of tea.
So I planted my little foot long fig seedling and waited for it to grow. I did not have to wait long! It grew and grew and grew. It grew up and it grew out. The roots spread sideways wider than leafy branches and very shallow, like a cross between a spider and a centipede! If figs are happy they will fruit twice a year, spring and late summer, and this was a happy fig, even though my soil was hard as a rock, well, my soil was mostly rocks! Soon we were having to chop roots off to keep them from digging up our garden paths and cut back the branches that were shading out the herbs.
About the only thing that will cause a fig tree to not produce fruit, is too much nitrogen, applied too close to the base of the tree. The excessive nitrogen will burn the bark and encourage too much leaf growth at the expense of fruit.
I soon discovered that fresh figs are wet, slimy, not very sweet, and strangely crunchy. We’re not even going to talk about how they get pollinated. Seriously. Don’t look it up, or you may never eat fig newtons again.
In order to make fig newtons, you need to make the figs into jam first. They sweeten and gel very well once you cook them down a bit! They don’t even need pectin.
I did it! I grew and made my own fig newtons, from scratch!
As I said last week, Jesus liked to use ordinary, familiar things as metaphors for spiritual concepts. Things like yeast, chickens, and figs, that the people in the first century would have been very familiar with. But for us 21st century city dwellers, Jesus’ metaphors may seem strange and unrelated. Then there’s the first century socio-political context that Jesus didn’t explain because everybody knew what was going on at the time, just like we can’t escape the news today. So it takes a little research to fully understand scripture.
You’re going to want the scripture handy, so please take out your bulletin.
The “occasion” referred to in verse 1 was Jesus teaching a very large crowd of people. Luke 12:1 describes, “a crowd of thousands upon thousands… so that they were crushing each other”
In this teaching session, sometimes Jesus was teaching on what he wanted to say and sometimes Jesus was responding to questions and comments from the crowd. Right before our reading Jesus was talking about the coming conflict, and it looks like Jesus is talking about both his crucifixion and the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome that Was coming in 69AD. Warning them to pay attention to the political climate and that there will be consequences for the choices people were making. Biblical scholars argue about whether Jesus was talking about the political consequences of the Jewish Rebellion against Rome, or if Jesus was talking about the hypocrisy of people who claimed to be religious but didn’t practice neighbor-love, but I think it was both. There was a general lack of personal and social holiness all around.
So in the second half of verse one, somebody relates the story of some Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. In the time leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem there were several incidents like this. Jewish rebels would attack Romans, and the Romans would hang out at the Temple and wait for these ultra-religious rebels to come make their offerings. It made the rebels easy to find, so the Romans did it. This in turn would fuel the rebellion because, how dare those Romans mingle the blood of “righteous men” with the blood of the sacrifice! But it also made other people angry, because if these rebels would stop attacking the Romans then the Romans wouldn’t keep sending soldiers to the Temple to catch them. The rebellion against Rome was a politically contentious issue, because objectively, the Romans were one of the nicest occupiers Judea had ever had!
Have you ever been to a lecture or panel when a member of the audience stands up and rambles on with no question in sight? I’m getting the feeling that what happened in verse 2 is that Jesus managed to pull a question out of a long wondering comment! And that question in verse 2 is pretty politically and religiously charged!
“Do you think the suffering of these Galileans proves that they were more sinful than all the other Galileans?
This question is politically charged because the rebellion against Rome was a very politically divisive topic. It’s religiously charged because Jesus calls out the common belief that suffering is punishment for sin.
Hopefully, if you’ve been in the United Methodist Church for a while you have been taught that God is a God of Grace not of punishment! The storms and tornadoes happening across the Bible Belt are not punishment for the horrible legislation some of those states have passed against women and Trans folks. I mean, do we really think that the people of Alabama are any more sinful than the people of Idaho, or of Oregon?
Jesus responds, “no, I tell you,” in verse 3, but some people get confused and think that Jesus is telling people to change their hearts and lives, or else, because Jesus goes on to renew his warning about paying attention to what’s going on in the world from the end of chapter 12 because there is a chapter break in the middle of the conversation! Remember – chapters and verses are much later additions to the Bible whose placement is pretty random. Also, Koine Greek doesn’t have punctuation – so the placement of commas to suggest phrasing and periods to end sentences is pure conjecture by Biblical translators and editors!
Given the context of the teaching session that begins in Chapter 12 verse one, the chapter break falls in the middle of this teaching session, so it makes sense that Jesus is still on the same topic of the coming consequences for political unrest and social injustice.
The example of the tower of Siloam in verse 4 serves as reinforcement to Jesus’ response, that, no, God wasn’t punishing the Galilean rebels because the people crushed by the tower of Siloam were innocent people who just happened to be too close to the tower when it collapsed. They didn’t have building codes at the time, so sometimes things fell down. The idea that sometimes shoddily constructed buildings just fall down randomly, would have been common knowledge at the time.
So Jesus’ main teaching in this passage can be summarized as:
Did God punish these people with death for their sins? No. Just no.
And…
Will there be consequences if people don’t change their hearts and lives? Yes. That’s how life works.
Most of the time we reap what we sow.
So here’s where we come to the fig tree as a metaphor for how God responds to us when we need to change our hearts and minds, starting with verse 6.
First of all, the author of Luke is very clear that this is a parable – that is, a fictional story meant to illustrate a point. Do not take parable’s literally!
A second thing to note when interpreting parables is this question, “which character in the parable is consistent with the personality of God?
There are those who interpret the characters in this parable to be:
The Vineyard Owner is “Father God”
The Gardener is Jesus
And the Fig Tree is the sinful person.
This interpretation is primarily based on the Penal Substitutionary Theory of Atonement. Atonement is basically another word for salvation, penal refers to punishment and substitutionary is about substitution. The idea is that Father God, the God of the Old Testament is a super angry dude sitting on a cloud in heaven who cannot even bear the sight of sin, therefore the Angry Father sent his son to earth as a substitute for us to take the punishment we all deserve. How many of you were taught something like this?
I like to call this the Heavenly Child Abuser Theory of Atonement.
This Atonement Theory is a fairly new invention. It only dates back to the 1800’s, and the beginning of the Evangelical/Fundamentalist movement.
It has 4 major problems:
- If you actually READ the Hebrew Bible, God is constantly sending prophets with messages of mercy, to the worst people! The whole point of the book of Jonah is that God’s mercy towards Nineveh, who were Israel’s enemy, was greater than Jonoah’s mercy. Jonah wanted the Ninivites to die, and was mad when they repented and God delivered them.
- The second major problem with Penal Substitutionary Atonement is Trinitarian theology. If we believe that God is One – Creator, Christ and Spirit, then all of God has the same personality. Speaking in Trinitarian terms, God didn’t send Their “son” as a sacrifice to God’s own anger. Trinitarianly, God put on flesh, Godself, to bring us a message of Grace. Penal Substitutionary Atonement divides the Trinity into separate persons who separate motives, rather than One God with one motive.
- The third major problem with Penal Substitutionary Atonement, is that, like all Atonement Theories, it is a theory that some people claim to be the truth. All theories are attempts to explain reality. Theories are not reality itself. Let me say that again: theories are attempts to explain reality. Theories are not reality itself. The exact mechanics of Salvation is a mystery, in the mystic sense of the word mystery. That means it’s something that we have faith in, but do not really understand.
- The fourth major problem with Penal Substitutionary Atonement is its emphasis on the individual. The whole concept of “personal salvation,” and Jesus dying for “my” sins is a 19th century invention. The Hebrew Bible rarely speaks of individual sin, King David is one of the rare exceptions. Most of the time prophets were sent to Kings to speak of the sins of the whole nation. Sins like exploiting the poor, worshiping idols, or an unfair justice system. The Covenant of Abraham, of Moses, and of Solomon were covenants between God and the whole nation, not between God and one person. The early church was also very communal. With rules requiring sharing of resources within the local church and among all Christians, as Paul frequently exhorted churches in his letters to send money to support apostles and churches facing persecution. As United Methodists we embrace the concept of personal and social holiness – the idea being that some sins are between you and God, but most sins are systemic – our current failure as a country to welcome the immigrant among us and treat them as native born, is a systemic sin – something we are all a part of, even if we disagree. And even sins like adultery are more than just personal, because the end of a marriage affects the whole community.
Given that I am clearly not a fan of the Heavenly Child Abuser Theory of Atonement, allow me to present to you an interpretation of this parable that is more in alignment with a Methodist understanding of Grace.
A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard.
I think the man is a man. Given the context of the whole teaching session with the crowd, with people asking questions and making comments about guilt and punishment, I think the man is a human. The owner is us. People who think the world is ours and can all too easily get caught up in the idea that punishment is the way to enact justice. Which can lead to questions like: If people don’t do what they ought to do, then why doesn’t God punish them? This is the age old question of theodicy:
Why does God allow evildoers to prosper?
Why doesn’t God just cut them down?
Why does God allow evildoers to take up space and resources that could go to people who actually produce good fruit?
So I think the owner of the vineyard is all of us who have ever asked God, Why do you allow evildoers to prosper?
I think the gardener is God. The God who gives second chances. The God who offers mercy. The God who so loved the world that They came down here, not to condemn the world but to save the whole world.
The God who spent a year teaching, healing, and changing hearts and lives – metaphorically fertilizing people with the gospel message of Grace, Justice and Neighbor-Love.
Jesus as the gardener is a very Methodist interpretation of this parable.
A Contextual, or historical-critical interpretation might go something like this.
What if the man was Rome?
Judea was the fig tree.
The vineyard was the Roman Empire.
And the Gardener was, once again, God.
God who came to try to help his chosen people give up the madness of violent rebellion and instead refocus on what actually changes people’s hearts and minds – What built the popularity of Christianity to the point that Christianity became the dominant religion of Rome: Neighbor-love. Because the early Christians cared for the sick, fed the hungry, loaned money to those in need, welcomed strangers, were non-violent, and were compassionate to All People, Christianity conquered Rome with love.
Rome was ready to cut Judea down, and Rome did wipe Judea off the map in 69AD.
So in this interpretation, perhaps God was delaying Rome to give Jerusalem and Judea a chance to embrace neighbor-love. Perhaps Jesus was there to fertilize the hearts and minds of the people to occupy Rome with love?
Perhaps the parable of the Fig Tree was a warning that Rome was coming to wipe Judea off the map, and if they didn’t stop fighting Rome and start bearing the fruit of neighbor-love, then being cut down would be the natural consequences of their actions.
The irony being that a Fig Tree should thrive in a vineyard, because grapes use a lot of nitrogen from the soil and Fig Tree’s need not too much nitrogen to fruit, the first century people who heard this parable would have been confused that a fig tree, that usually fruits twice a year, and goes down to fruiting once a year if stressed, would fail to fruit at all when planted in a vineyard. I think this is the purpose of the metaphor of the fig tree – to point out that there’s no reason for the fig not to fruit in its current conditions. The Fig Tree – God’s people shouldn’t need to be fertilized in order to produce the fruits of the Spirit.
And yet, God the Gardener was willing to hold back Rome long enough to give the people a chance to change their hearts and minds. God is willing to mediate, delay or hold back the consequences of our actions to give us another chance.
When people allow God to change our hearts and minds we “bear fruit,” in the form of helping others in meaningful ways.
Church, for many of us, the season of COVID felt like life as we knew it got cut down. Everything changed literally overnight and we kept hoping that life would go back to the way it used to be, but by now we know that life is never going back to the way it was before. Churches shrank. Families are divided along political lines. The Fig Tree of our Country that should be bearing the fruits of liberty and justice for all, clearly isn’t. People who claim to be Christians are calling compassion a toxic idea! There are wars and rumours of wars
But Paul wrote in the midst of Roman build up to wiping Jerusalem off the map, do not be anxious about anything.
Do not be anxious about anything.
Do not be anxious about anything.
Because God is still our Good Gardener.
Even if the Fig Tree gets cut down, God keeps gardening.
Judaism is still here.
Christianity occupied Rome with love.
When everything changes, God keeps gardening.
When a plant that is no longer producing is removed, God is making space for something better.
When we replace a big sprawling tree with a little seedling, it looks pathetic.
It’s small, and takes more effort to get it growing.
It’s easy for us to feel discouraged as we watch the Big Old Tree of mid-Twentieth-Century Church being cut down. Cut down as more local churches close every year. Cut down in worship attendance. Cut down in social influence. Cut down in financial resources.
But God is not done gardening!
I see seedlings of new life in the way Haven Dinner is growing.
Seedlings of new life in our ministry partnership with Rahab’s Sisters and Family Promise.
Seedlings of new life in our community relationships with METBA and the neighborhood association.
Worship attendance is down, but engagement with the church in other ways is up.
God is doing a new thing, it just doesn’t look like the old familiar Big Fig Tree, and we just can’t quite see what that new seedling is going to grow into yet.
So rather than being anxious about what we don’t yet understand, let’s lean into Paul’s advice from Philippians 4:6-7 and ground ourselves in prayer. Tell God all our concerns and our wants and our hopes, and give thanks that God is doing something so new that we can’t quite see it yet!
Then let’s rejoice that we worship a God of Grace who is still willing to dig around our wild, wondering fig roots to change our hearts and minds so that we can be a part of what God is doing next.
