Luke 13:1-9
“His Mercy”
March 24, 2019 – Third Sunday in Lent
These days it’s called “blaming the victim.” Most of us know it’s wrong to blame a woman for being raped because she wore provocative clothing. We’re pretty sure it wasn’t the fault of the people on those 737 Max planes that they crashed and killed everyone on board in Ethiopia this month and in Indonesia last year. We’re morally sophisticated enough to recognize that bad things do happen to good people through absolutely no fault of their own.
Yet blaming the victim still occurs. According to psychologist David Feldman at Santa Clara University, it’s a natural human tendency. So we might tend to think that an unarmed young African American man shot to death by police actually did something to deserve it. Or we may suppose that California was somehow responsible for wildfires there last year because they did not maintain their forests well. Or you could even suggest, as I myself said until corrected by my son-in-law, that Ethiopian Airlines planes aren’t maintained as well as planes flown by American airline companies.
Responding to current events in first century Palestine, Jesus challenged the spirit of victim blaming. It’s a good reminder to us of just how short “news cycles.” Neither of the events mentioned here are found elsewhere in historical record. Josephus tells us Pilate committed other atrocities against the Jews, but this story brought to Jesus in verse 1, about Galileans murdered right in the middle of offering their sacrifices to God, is found nowhere but here in Luke’s Gospel.
Hebrew theology has always been tinged with the idea that misfortune is the result of evil-doing. In much of the Old Testament, sin and suffering go together like peanut butter and jelly. If you sin, you suffer. And, by the logical fallacy known as “affirming the consequent,” if you are suffering, it must be because you sinned. That’s what Job’s so-called “comforters” tell him. Job lost home and family and health because of his wickedness. In Job 22:5, Eliphaz said to Job, “Is not your wickedness great? Are not your sins endless?”
So Jews of Jesus’ time heard bad news and connected suffering with sin. If some Galileans met a terrible fate, then they were terrible sinners. But Jesus flatly denied that sin-suffering connection in verses 2 and 3, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you…”
Jesus short-circuited any notion that those who suffered Pilate’s persecution were worse people than those who didn’t. First century pundits should not suggest that those who died had it coming. For Jesus, those unfortunate souls were not much different from anyone else.
Reflecting on these verses, Henri Nouwen suggests that Jesus answered a different sort of question from the ones being asked by those who brought Him the news. In Nouwen’s terms, they are asking questions “from below.” Jesus responds with questions “from above.” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is a question from below. It’s not a bad question, but it seeks “to figure out who is innocent and who is to blame; who are the victims and who are the perpetrators, and how to deal with a God who either can’t or won’t intervene. God’s question is: ‘Are you reading the signs of your times as signs asking you to repent and be converted?’”[1]
Instead of assuming the greater sinfulness of victims, Jesus in verse 3 challenged those who brought Him the story, “but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Confronted with tragedy, Jesus asks us to listen for a question from above—not about whom to blame, but about our own spiritual condition. Stories of mass tragedy, like the cyclone along the southeast coast of Africa or the horrible shooting in New Zealand should call us to question our own spiritual state, not that of others.
Our Lord was in touch with current events. In verse 4 He offered another example. Eighteen people, possibly workmen, died when a tower on the wall of Jerusalem near the pool of Siloam fell on them. Pilate may have been connected with this tragedy as well. The governor commissioned the construction of aqueducts for Jerusalem to insure a steady water supply. He got money for the project by taking it from the treasury of the Jewish Temple. He stole the funds from God, by reallocating them to his building project. Those workmen may have been regarded as collaborators in this spiritual robbery.
When Jesus says, “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?” that word “offender” actually means “debtor.” God-fearing Jews may have viewed those workers as indebted to the Lord for taking tainted wages. Their deaths when the tower fell was God’s payback. “Debt” is also another word for sin, as when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our debts.” In any case, the common understanding was that those who died deserved it. They were great sinners.
Jesus repeated His point in verse 5, rejecting that common understanding of events. “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish, just as they did.” Without making God responsible for the tragedies, Jesus made it clear that God’s question about them has to do with one’s own heart. As Nouwen put it, “Will you repent, and be converted?”
The first century was not completely different from the twenty-first century. They didn’t have satellites and Twitter, but news of great catastrophes got around. They, like many of us, would look for someone to blame for floods in the Midwest or for jetliners falling out of the sky. As I said, blaming, even blaming the victims, comes naturally.
Jesus wants us to ask a different question. Given sudden, tragic deaths, are you and I prepared? Not prepared to evade the tragedy by safety measures or armed guards, but are we ready to meet God in our current spiritual condition? Or would it be a far happier meeting with the Lord if we would only repent and change our ways before we too perish?
His threat that “you will all perish just as they did” meant two things. It was a warning to Jewish people of what I mentioned last week, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70. They were to repent before that tragedy fell upon them. Jesus was also speaking personally to anyone who would listen. He was warning individuals to repent before the final judgment of God came. His warning is directed at you and me as well.
Most mornings at our house, we do the Jumble puzzle in the paper and Beth reads “Dear Abby.” Frequently the letter is like the one last week from some poor woman agonizing over whether to stay with her on-line boyfriend from another country who has lots of excuses for not meeting in person. So our mornings get punctuated by Beth’s exclamations like, “How can anyone be that stupid?” I gently point out that the letter was chosen just for that reason, so that women across America may gloat that they are at least smarter than that “stupid woman” who wrote to “Dear Abby.”
Yet Jesus is telling us that our response to both the personal and general tragedies of others, whether it’s a two-timing spouse or devastating natural disaster, should not be simple comfort in our own security and possibly blame for the victims. It should be to ask how we, how I need to repent from my own stupidity, my own sin, and so be ready for whatever God allows to happen next in our lives.
These are intense questions. The warning is dire. It sounds like a terrible threat—repent or perish! It’s not a popular message in our time. Yet threat is not all of it, neither for those people then, nor for us. The rest of the text is a parable, a story told by Jesus to illustrate and expand the point He made about current events being occasions for repentance. It’s a little tale about a tree that wasn’t bearing fruit.
Talking about a tree, Jesus harked back to the book of Job and that connection between suffering and sin. In chapter 8 of Job, Bildad talks about a sinner being like a plant which a gardener uproots from its place in the garden. He says, “its life withers away, and from the soil other plants grow.” Then in chapter 15, Eliphaz warns Job that a wicked man will be made like a tree whose “branches will not flourish. He will be like a vine stripped of its unripe grapes, like an olive tree shedding its blossoms. For the company of the godless will be barren and fire will consume the tents of those who love bribes.”
Jesus pictured a fig tree planted in a vineyard. Drive out to King Estates and you won’t find many figs planted among the grapes, but it was common practice back then. Trees were hard to grow in that country. If you found a spot with soil deep enough for the roots, you planted fruit trees wherever you could.
This particular fig tree was not worth it, though. Valuable soil was being wasted. The owner waited three years for it to become productive, but without result. No figs. He called his gardener, his vinedresser, explained the situation and demanded immediate action. If the tree will not bear fruit, then “Why should it be wasting the soil?” he says in verse 7. “Cut it down!”
Up till now, we’re hearing in story form the same point Jesus made about the tragedies, a warning, a threat. Repent, bear fruit, or you will perish. It implies that God has little time for unproductive people. If you don’t measure up, then you may be cut down in the prime of life, just like those Galileans, just like those workmen under the tower. In some ways it’s still the old theology. Sin and you will suffer—God will get you.
But verse 8 brings something new into the picture. The gardener, the vinedresser, intercedes with the owner on behalf of the tree. “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.” Once again, Jesus wanted to cut the connection between sin and suffering. Failure doesn’t have to lead to destruction. Those who are do wrong get another chance. God is patient.
One limit of painting God in human terms in parables like this is that we picture God in opposition to Himself. The landowner is God the Father, full of impatient wrath for unproductive sinners. The gardener is Jesus the Son, stepping up to intercede for us and turn aside the Father’s wrath. But our denomination rejects the theology that the Father is all judgment and wrath while the Son is all grace and mercy. Such thinking completely forgets that Father and Son are one God, that in our salvation they agree and work together, not against each other. And if we try to make Jesus the Son the gardener or vinedresser in this story, we’ll have to deal with John 15:1 where Jesus said His Father is the vinedresser, the gardener.
Jesus’ parables use human terms and individual personalities to show us how God’s judgment is always tempered with His mercy. Yes, His holiness and righteousness call for Him to pour out wrath on sin. At the very same time, His mercy offers us the grace of His patience, time to repent, another chance. That’s why the patient gardener appears here, the landowner’s right-hand man, doing everything possible to make the vineyard fruitful.
When the gardener pleads, “let it alone for one more year,” the word for “let alone” is the Greek word aphes. It’s the very same word we translate in other places as “forgive.” Aphes is what Jesus said on the Cross. “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”[2] The Son made His plea, patient forgiveness for sinners, despite the fact we all deserve judgment, despite the fact we do not know what we are doing when we turn from our Lord.
Forgiveness is made possible by what Jesus did in just the way patience for the tree is made possible by the work of the gardener. The vinedresser digs and fertilizes. Christ comes digging into our lives, turning up the dirt, calling us to repentance. And He puts in fertilizer full of nutrients to restore us to life.
As you heard me read from the NRSV, the fertilizer in verse 8 is manure, literally “dung.” The word occurs only one other time in the Bible, in Luke 14, verse 35, where it clearly means a dung heap. Robert Farrar Capon says that Jesus Christ Himself became our fertilizer. He refers to the passage we read on Ash Wednesday, II Corinthians 5:21, writing, “By the folly of the Cross, Jesus becomes sin for us, and he is relegated to the dump for us, and he becomes garbage and compost, offal and manure for us.”[3]
Capon made me think of our own garden where my wife tends her beloved roses. I make hardly any contribution. I don’t dig. I don’t water. I don’t prune. But every once in awhile I bring home an offering of fertilizer. When it’s legal I keep a couple of trout I caught. I clean the fish and fill a bowl with my gift to the garden: fish guts, remains of the living bodies of those beautiful trout I enjoyed catching. Beth is squeamish about fish guts, so I take a shovel and dig near a rose bush or two and plant the guts in the ground. It does wonders for the roses. Out of the sacrificed lives of those fish, beauty grows.
God’s mercy is that Jesus died and God planted His body in the ground. Out of His sacrificed life, He grows beauty into our lives. His death nurtures us like the death of fish nurtures roses. The difference is that Jesus has life to spare. He didn’t stay in the ground. When His sacrifice accomplished everything needed, gave us that merciful gift of aphes, patient forgiveness, He didn’t need to stay dead. The power of the life He poured out into our roots was so great it overcame death. Jesus rose. He rose for His roses. On Easter morning, He was made alive again, and He makes us alive again. So Capon continues,
And then he comes to us. The Vinedresser who on the cross said “aphes” to his Lord and Father comes to us with his own body dug deep by nails and spears, and his own being made dung by his death, and he sends our roots resurrection.[4]
Jesus is the gardener of the Tree of Life. He is the gardener who gives His own body to nourish the tender sapling of your soul. He is ever patient with you, offering yet another chance to repent and be renewed by the power of His life. It doesn’t matter how unfruitful your life has been, how little you have to show for yourself. All the tragedies of the world and of your own life are only opportunities for you to know His mercy once again. There is no need at all to perish. Confess your sins and welcome Jesus into the roots of your heart. And the fruit will grow.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2019 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] See Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 10th edition (New York: Crossroad/Herder & Herder, 2002), p. 62.
[2] Luke 23:34
[3] The Parables of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), p. 98.
[4] Ibid.