I mentioned when I first preached here at First Presbyterian Church in Allentown, that I’m not one to let an introductory clause go when it kicks off a passage of scripture. That Sunday morning in January the text we read from Isaiah began, “But now thus says the Lord,” begging the question. “What did this ‘now’ follow?”
Well, here we are again. The reading from Luke’s gospel starts with “Then he told this parable…”. Why then? Why this parable? What just happened or what were they just talking about that led Jesus to tell this particular parable? I think that matters! And I think it helps us figure out a way to interpret it.
So, here in the 13th chapter of Luke, Jesus has, as we’ve said in prior weeks, turned his face toward Jerusalem. That is, he knows his conflict with religious and political leaders is coming to a head. For some years he has been traveling around this corner of the Roman occupied world, preaching a good news of radical inclusion, of God’s expansive love, and to an empire that likes to control by force and fear, this sounds like a really bad guy to have around. He has been challenging leaders within his own tradition to consider their practice a bit differently, and for them, people under pressure from occupying forces to keep the peace through order, this sounds a little chaotic and untested. So Jesus is moving towards Jerusalem, towards the center of political and religious power, and he knows that his very life is not just at risk, but will end because of this conflict with all that the empire represents.
As he travels to the city one last time, he has the opportunity to engage with his disciples and followers, people in the cities and villages he passes through, even some of the very leaders who are trying to trap him in illegal or offensive teachings. Immediately preceding this parable, some of those who were with him started to talk about a group Galileans who had been murdered by Pilate while they were vulnerable, worshiping in their place of sanctuary, while they were offering their sacrifices to God. Jesus responds to them, questioning what they must have said to him, “Do you think that because the Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” “No,” he tells them and he urges them to turn themselves toward God.
He keeps going and changes the question from being about people who were killed by the murderous Roman ruler and instead were killed in a freak accident, when a tower fell, ending the lives of 18 people. To the question about these people, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem,” again, Jesus insists, “No, but all of you, repent anyway.”
He’s answering an age-old question that’s the opposite of “Why do bad things happen to good people?” It’s more like, “Did I sin as badly as those people who must have deserved that punishment?” The people he was talking to were looking to justify themselves, and get some reassurance of their own safety and salvation, by pointing the finger at those other sinful people.
It’s not an unfamiliar activity, right? Remember the discourse around the AIDS crisis, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s? It was not uncommon to hear some religious talking head on TV explaining that while the “innocent” people who were found to be HIV positive because of a blood transfusion were to be pitied, the gay men who were sick and dying “deserved” their illness because of their sin. It was awful. Similar arguments were made in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, some argued, because of the “wickedness” in that city’s Pride celebrations. Or in 2011 when the tsunami in Japan was seen by some as punishment for the number of “heathens” in that country.
People who say these kinds of things are looking to find a reason that they themselves might be counted as holier, more righteous, safe from divine judgement. But what they are doing requires them to make their own judgements.
To this, Jesus says, “Repent – turn around. Change your judgmental thinking and behavior. Let your own hearts and ways be changed by God.”
It’s In response to all of this that Jesus tells them the parable of the fig tree.
Now, we are blessed in this congregation to have among our members and church leadership some folks who know a whole lot more about figs than I do, particularly Commissioned Pastor Moufid Khoury, the leader for the Arabic ministry. Fig trees closest to the kind that Jesus and his contemporaries would know were commonplace in Moufid’s homeland, and he shared with us at the staff meeting that a tree wouldn’t have produced fruit, or at the very least fruit worth eating, in the first three years of its growth. It just doesn’t and everyone who plants figs knows this. The vineyard owner, Moufid told us bluntly at the staff meeting, clearly “had no idea what he was doing.” The vineyard owner was judging the tree’s ability to produce fruit by his own greedy and impatient desires and standards, standards that were drawn from complete ignorance.
There’s a similar kind of judgementalism lurking in our own culture today. Well, in some ways it lurks just beneath the surface, but more and more it is becoming lived out in the open, codified, even, in policy and practice. It’s a judgementalism born of the same same greed impatience, and ignorance of the vineyard owner. It’s a judgementalism similar to that of those who pester Jesus with questions and theories that *those* people who have faced a harsher reality than I have certainly must deserve it, certainly they must have done something wrong, certainly they must sin more or worse than I do, and any ill-treatment or unfortunate circumstance is deserved or at the very least makes sense. It’s a judgementalism that comes from a scarcity mindset with greed similar to that of the vineyard owner. There’s no time allowed for preparation or learning or growth. There is only immediate gratification and arbitrary measures of productivity.
This judgementalism takes form as suspicion of those who are different from the dominant culture, those who speak with an accent or a different language all together. It doesn’t trust people or parents to make wise healthcare decisions for themselves or their families, but instead insists that people deserve as punishment whatever situation they find themselves in or are sinning in trying to seek affirming care. It assumes that wealth and power are signs of blessedness or holiness, while poverty and vulnerability are signs of sin. It’s the judgementalism that determines some are worthy of life and others are just wasting the soil and should be cut down, have their humanity stripped, or be sent away.
What if we were to turn away from that judgementalism? That’s what Jesus’s call to repent is – a call to turn our lives and hearts away from the ways and standards of the literal or figurative wealthy vineyard owners and and power-hungry princes and kings of this earth and turn them toward God’s kindom values, God’s desires for all creation. What if we were to turn away from making declarations about the worth or lack of worth of others? What if we were to turn away from judging the lives and humanity of others in away that makes it easy to cut them down, cut them off, see them as a waste of resources? What if, instead, we were to turn toward them with the care and nurture of the gardener?
The gardener illustrates, I believe, what a repentant life looks like in this vineyard – what a life turned toward God’s purposes and values, a life with divine vision and patience looks like. The gardener is not bothered by the three years the fig tree has taken so far in becoming a productive part of the vineyard. He’s not bothered because he is there in the vineyard, day in and day out. He’s not just popping in looking for a particular, out of season, irrationally-expected fruitfulness. He knows the fig tree’s life cycle. He knows it’s potential. He knows it is right on track for a fig tree, and he knows its worth, whether or not the vineyard owner can see it.
The gardener sees that the tree is in its period of rest when there is unseen growth taking place. The tree isn’t wasting soil; it is dropping its roots into that soil, establishing a network that will feed its growth and secure its place in the land. It’s sending out shoots and branches that will house the birds of the air, keeping them off the vines in the vineyard. It is unfurling leaves that will collect the energy from the sun and produce food for itself and other inhabitants of the ecosystem. The gardener sees the tree and knows what is coming, so he goes ahead and says “give me one more year before you cut it down” because he knows so intimately and trusts so fully that this tree will bear fruit that he isn’t worried about a year.
And then he sets about making sure that that happens. He does the work himself of standing in the gap between the vineyard owner and this precious life. He digs in the dirt. He gets messy – like really messy. He’s not too afraid or too precious about his own cleanliness or position or righteousness to get his hands down in the manure to tend to the life of this one tree that is at risk of losing it all.
Friends, there are whole communities of people in our nation and around the world at risk of being cut off and cut down. There are immigrants and newcomers who are under undeserved scrutiny. There are people in the LGBTQIA+ community, particularly young people, who are losing access to their healthcare and stripped of their dignity. There are children with disabilities whose appropriate education is being threatened. There are people who fear their financial access to education is at risk. There are fig trees in our own vineyard that are being judged as not worthy of resources, and in the face of all this Jesus calls us to repent.
Jesus calls us to turn toward the most vulnerable. Jesus calls us to stand in the gap between those who can pull all the strings and those who may be chopped down in their ignorance. Jesus calls us to learn the needs of those who are being called unworthy, and serve those needs. Tend to their roots, dig out the weeds around them, provide them the nutrients they need for fruitful living.
We are called to be gardeners who care for those on the receiving end of unrighteous judgement. We are called to be gardeners who witness to the truth that no life is a waste in the vineyard of our God.
