[Machine transcription]
And he said to the vine dresser, “Look, for three years now, I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?”
And he answered him, “Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down.”
Amen. Please be seated.
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen.
You know, growing up in a small town in Texas, I became used to hearing and even using all sorts of interesting expressions and sayings. As I was looking at the gospel lesson for today, it made me think of one in particular. Now, this saying would come up in a discussion among people, maybe a couple of three people, and they would be talking about somebody else to whom something tragic had happened, maybe some type of traumatic life event. And so the phrase, “he or she must not be living right,” implied that this person had done something to bring bad luck or misfortune upon themselves. Maybe more accurately translated, we would say, “they ain’t living right.”
Perhaps it might even be suggested that this was some type of judgment from God. Now, the conversation would go something like this: “Did you hear Steve got fired from his job?” Well, he must not be living right. “Or hey, I heard Jim had a heart attack.” Too bad, I guess he’s not living right. “Or did you see Vicar Davis lost all his hair?” I think you get the idea.
Now, this all sounds kind of funny, but we do often judge others on their behavior or how we perceive them to be living, especially in their ability to do good or be good. Now have you ever known someone, perhaps a friend or family member, who something bad happened to, and you thought to yourself, “Yeah, they had it coming?”
Or have you secretly taken even just a little bit of pleasure in someone else’s mishap or hardship because it didn’t happen to you? Maybe you weren’t that insensitive, but maybe you merely thought it was deserved. Deserved because this person wasn’t going to church enough, or because their faith wasn’t strong enough, or maybe they had no faith at all. Maybe they had sinned against you. Maybe you just didn’t like them. But you judged them based on your perception of how they were living. You somehow concluded that God was punishing them for something they had done wrong, maybe some particular sin that you had firsthand knowledge of.
Now we are constantly judging others because of their behavior. I know because I do it myself all the time. This almost two-year-long pandemic has unfortunately given us this opportunity to see that we do this. We’ve made our own conclusions about others for their attitude and their behavior, whether they’ve gotten sick or not, or even, God forbid, died. If you don’t wear a mask, then you’re not loving your neighbor, or you’re selfish, or you don’t trust science, even though God has given our brains to comprehend science. If you do wear a mask, then you’re scared, or you don’t trust God enough to keep you safe. If you haven’t gotten the vaccine, then we can’t trust you to be around other people. You must want people to get sick and die. If you have received the vaccine, then you must be afraid of dying, or you’ve put your faith in science over God.
These are just some of the many judgments we may have about others, maybe even our own Christian brothers and sisters, maybe even right here in this church body. Now, my reason for bringing this up is not to have yet another COVID discussion. We’re all tired of it. We all have opinions, some stronger than others, but these last two years ought to serve us as a reminder that the world wants us to make judgments based on behavior and outcomes. The world wants us to believe that bad things happen to bad people, depending on what your definition of bad is. Now pagans would refer to this as karma, but some Christians may even say it’s God’s direct punishment for sin.
But what happens to us when the tables are turned? What do we thinkers say when something bad happens to us? After all, why do bad things happen to good people? Our most likely response is to question God. “Lord, why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this?” Instead of looking at our own sin as the cause of suffering, we want to use the good that we do as a reason why we should not suffer.
We act like that Pharisee in the temple who bragged, “God, I thank you that I’m not like other men, especially this tax collector.” I find it ironic that this Pharisee is taking this opportunity to praise God for breaking the Eighth Commandment. Now we point at others and we see those who are far worse than us, the tax collectors of our world, and we say, “Lord, I’m better than those people. I go to church as often as I can, unless I have something better to do. I love my neighbor as myself. Well, some of the time. I keep your commandments, most of them at least.”
The truth of the matter is we’ve done a lot to deserve God’s judgment. If we see someone suffering with trouble and torment, we can respond in one of two ways. We can say, “They earned it, they should have made better choices.” Or we can say, “Lord have mercy.” Instead of saying, “They must deserve it,” we ought to say, “I deserve the same.”
But we also must be careful that when bad things do happen to us, that we don’t fall into this despair of thinking that God is somehow mad at us and punishing us for something specific that we did. When we try to connect these dots between these particular sins and punishment, we are like those in the gospel reading today who asked Jesus the question about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
Now we don’t have a historical account of what this was about, but we can assume that these Galileans traveled down to Jerusalem to offer Passover sacrifices in the temple, and that at some point some of Pilate’s soldiers entered the temple, killed them, and mixed their blood with the blood of the animals on the altar. Of course, this was an abomination, a desecration at the altar and the temple. Now, the people in the crowd assumed that these Galileans were disgraced this way because they were guilty of some particularly grievous sin, and that God had put his direct and divine judgment on them specifically for those sins.
And this suggestion from them resulted from their belief of what was taught by the Pharisees, that calamity or disaster was a punishment for sin. Now their insinuations went unsaid, but Jesus knew what they were getting at. That’s why he quickly rebukes them and says, “Do you think that the Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?” He was saying to them, “You are judging them based on the result.”
He then asked about those who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them. This was yet another incident. It was not described in detail in the scriptures, but we can assume that this was some accident that occurred during the construction of a Roman tower. So Jesus again asked, “Were those killed at Siloam the worst sinners in all of Jerusalem?” For both examples, Jesus quickly admonishes the crowd, “No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Not that they will just die physically, but they will die a spiritual death in a state of unrepentant and unforgiven sin.
Now these events were to stand as a warning to those who witnessed them or had even heard of them. Jesus is showing them they are all equally sinful and they’re all in desperate need of forgiveness. Now like those in the crowd, we want to be able to sign blame or have something to point to as the cause for suffering. We want to be right about this, but God has not revealed any of it to us. These instances were not an example of God’s wrath or discipline against a particular person or group of persons for some of their specific sins. God allows and even uses these tragic events to warn of his coming judgment. These events were a caution and a call to repentance.
But now Jesus makes this clear as he teaches the parable of the fig tree. The fig tree was a valuable commodity because it was the most productive of the fruits, but even unproductive fig trees were wasteful occupiers. All they did was drain the nutrients from the soil. But as with all those parables, Jesus doesn’t explicitly point the finger at these unbelieving Jews in the crowd and say, “You are the fig tree.” But they are. They’re not producing fruit, the fruit of repentance.
God, who is the owner of the vineyard, has visited the tree time and time again over the last three years, expecting to find fruit, but he never does. He’s been patient. Rather than dig up the tree the first year, he allowed it the opportunity to grow and be fruitful. But now he asked the vinedresser why he should let the tree use up the ground. The tree is just taking up space. It’s time to root it out and put a new tree in its place. The vinedresser, who represents those called to preach repentance, perhaps even Jesus himself, asked the Lord for a little more time.
“Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and put manure on it.” The vine dresser wants to cultivate and fertilize the tree with the hope of bringing it into production, that the tree may come to bear fruit, that the tree would have another year, that its people may come to repentance.
In our youth Sunday school class last year, we were discussing the end times and all the various beliefs about what’s going to happen. Someone asked, “Why doesn’t God just allow Jesus to return because this world is so corrupt? What about all this crime, natural disaster, death, and destruction? Why doesn’t he just end it all?” Well, he doesn’t for the very reason Jesus gets at in this parable of the fig tree. God is merciful and patient. He wants all to bear fruit. He wants all to come to repentance.
St. Peter tells us in his second epistle, that the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. And these signs calling us to repentance are here for us to see if we only pay attention. The tragic events we see in the news, like the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd and subsequent riots that tore up this country, the collapse of the condo tower in Miami that killed hundreds, and yes now the Russian invasion of Ukraine, floods, fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, the suffering and misfortune that happens in our daily lives to us and to others.
We ought not look at these things and think of them as divine punishment, and we should definitely not speculate that they were somehow God’s way of making bad things happen to bad people. We should also not hold ourselves in such high esteem to think that these things don’t happen to us because we are good. Has someone you know been really sick, suffered a financial setback, lost a loved one? Have you? For them, did you think they must not be living right? Or for yourself, did you ask, “What did I do to deserve this? What haven’t I done right?”
Brothers and sisters, God wants us to be righteous, not right. That’s why we are here, why we are Christians. We know that righteousness comes through faith in Christ and not because of any good that we do. God promises his grace to all that repent, and this includes those who suffer misfortune or untimely, even violent deaths. They too go with God’s grace when they die in repentant faith, faith given by the Holy Spirit through his word in sacrament.
He gives his grace to us through these so that we may, in the words of John the Baptist, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Daily repentance in the memory of our baptism when our old Adam was drowned and we were redeemed by the water that buried our sin. God gives us his grace as a gift, unearned and undeserved. He gives it to us in the good times and bad times, when we do good and when we do evil. He gives it to those who we perceive to be blessed and those who are in abject pain and suffering.
Jesus teaches repentance so he can forgive us, not so he can punish us. Jesus longs for us to come to repentance and promises that he will deliver his forgiveness. He is our intercessor, our vinedresser. He pleads with the vineyard owner, God the Father, for more time that we, the fig trees, may be fruitful. That Jesus may yet dig around, tend to our soil, and cultivate us by his word. That he may fertilize and nourish us through feeding us his body and blood, that we may not perish but have eternal salvation that he gives us through his own suffering, death, and resurrection. Thanks be to God for this gift of salvation through faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ alone.
Amen. Now the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
