Lent 3C

To jump into my sermon today, let’s start with the end- the last part of that gospel reading. It’s a weird ending. This parable seems to end abruptly. And it’s not just that when we set out the lectionary we happened to end at this verse. “If it bears fruit next year, it’s well and good. But if not, you can cut it down.” 

That’s it. We don’t get a tidy conclusion. But that’s the thing about parables- they’re not just tidy narratives with a beginning, middle and end. Parables give us glimpses into God’s kingdom. 

Here’s a tip for parable reading: Whenever you see a landowner in a parable, that character is almost always a metaphor for God. So in this parable, the landowner is impatient about his fig tree not bearing fruit. It’s been three years and still nothing has come out of this tree, and the landowner is thinking that’s a waste of valuable space in his vineyard that could be taken up by a tree that’s doing something.

So if God is the landowner, who do you think the tree is — the one that isn’t bearing fruit, the one that’s in danger of being cut down next year?

Jesus doesn’t tell us what happens to the fruit the next year because we get to live into the end of this parable. It’s a cliffhanger that over 2,000 years later, March 19, 2022, we get to hear it and decide how it will play out. 

The other thing about parables is they don’t often stand alone. Jesus tells this parable in response- see Jesus had been asked to comment on the hot political issue of the day- the slaughter of the Galileans. And it seems like the question they have for Jesus is did those Galileans have it coming? Surely their death was the result of their sin so… what did they do? But Jesus evens the playing field. The Galileans that were slaughtered by Pilate were no worse than those killed by natural disasters.

I remember in college I took a class on social psychology and we learned about something called fundamental attribution error. It means when we see someone else’s behavior, we tend to attribute it to who they are internally. But when we see similar behavior in ourselves, we attribute it externally. The classic example given is that typically, if we see someone trip, we think, wow, they are clumsy and careless. They should work on walking. But if I trip over something, I tend to think it’s situational: ‘who put that rock in my way?’ or ‘these shoes aren’t made well’ or ‘why did gravity just shift right there?’ 

I think this is what we see happening in Jesus’ conversation with this crowd. They see the Galileans getting slaughtered by Pilate and they want to know what inside of those Galileans made this happen. But Jesus knew those slaughtered Galileans didn’t get what they deserve- nobody gets what they deserve because what do we really deserve? Did the fig tree get what it deserved?

Then Jesus tells them to repent. There’s that ‘repent’ word again. Like I told you last week, repent doesn’t mean we need to feel shame or self-hatred and it definitely doesn’t mean we’re only as good as we can live up to certain preacher’s expectations. The Greek word that Jesus used here was metanoia which could best be translated as ‘change of heart.’ It means to be transformed at our deepest levels. 

What’s interesting is that in this conversation, when they are talking about what the Galileans might’ve done to deserve this, they’re looking for a list of sins to avoid. What do they need to SUBTRACT from their lives in order to win favor from God. They don’t really want to repent, but if it will save them from God punishing them, they’ll figure out what sins to avoid. But in the parable, Jesus is more concerned about ADDITION- what are the fruits we produce? What are the changes and transformations that will produce fruit? How will our community and world be better because of our transformations?

Maybe when we want to see waste and uselessness, we should look for possibilities.  Maybe when we want to see comfort and complacency, we should see urgency to bear fruit.  Remember if God is a landowner, we can assume that Jesus is the gardener, the one who intercedes because he knows this fig tree is capable of so much more. The gardner who’s willing to risk his reputation because he sees the promise in this fig tree. I’ve read a few things that say fig trees can be very temperamental plants: apparently very young fig trees do not produce fruit. Also, the figs will drop prematurely if it hasn’t been tended by a process called caprification. Or a fig tree can lose its fruit to overwatering. Overall, it seems sterility of fig trees was a common problem throughout antiquity.* Of all the fruit producing plants to use in this parable, it seems Jesus sees that his people need some careful and skilled tending. 

In the parable the gardener requests one more year to bear fruit. What would you do with one year? We don’t know how much more time we all have but whatever amount of time it is, that’s what we have to write the end of the parable. Will we bear fruit? Will we live lives reflective of God’s glory so the people around us can see love in action? Will we let ourselves be tended by the gardener who sees so much potential in us? Will we let ourselves be transformed?

*"An Unfinished Story About a Fig Tree in a Vineyard" by Charles Hedrick in Perspectives in Religious Studies, January 1999