Luke 13:1-9
At that very time there were some present who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘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.’”
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I know God made us and loves us, but let’s admit something, right from the start here. Humans sometimes say awful, terrible, stupid things in the wake of tragedy or natural disaster.
Exhibit A:
In August 2009, the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America convened in Minneapolis for a week of official church business, as it does now every three years. Among other things in the agenda were two crucial votes regarding the church’s theology and polity regarding same-sex and same-gender relationships. As Minnesota weather is wont to do in late August, a severe weather system moved into the area. Debate was interrupted by the storm as the assembly took precautious for a tornado that would roar over the top of the convention center and go on to damage the steeple of Central Lutheran Church, right across the street.
Conservative Christian media outlets were all over it, interpreting the tornado as both a divine warning and a divine judgement; a punishment from God.
Nope.
Exhibit B:
Fast forward a decade to March 2019, where a weather pattern called a “bomb cyclone” hit the midwest. It dumped enormous amounts of precipitation over territories already laden with heavy winter snowfalls. Significant portions of Iowa and Nebraska have experienced severe flooding; damage estimates in the state of Nebraska currently exceed one billion dollars.
A number of vocal critics of President Trump have taken to social media, quick to cite this current disaster as fitting punishment for these states who voted for Trump in the 2016 election.
Again, nope.
Exhibits C-Z:
Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac, Superstorm Sandy, the earthquake in Haiti, the Sandy Hook school shooting, the recent mass shooting in New Zealand, pretty much any mass shooting and every natural disaster: each of them named by someone as the will, purpose, or judgment of God.
Nope nope nope.
It is a peculiar feature of being human, of having the power of thought and reason, that makes us relentless in our pursuit of meaning in the midst of grief and tragedy. Life hurts, and we want answers, and when we can’t find good answers, we stammer to fill the gaps with bad answers, all in the hopes that we will feel less pain if we can just answer the question, “Why? Why did this happen?”
Author and professor Kate Bowler, in her memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved reflects,
Anyone who has lived in the aftermath of [a crisis or tragedy asks] three questions so simple that they seem, in turn, too shallow and too deep. [1]Why? [2]God, are you here? [3]What does this suffering mean?
She continues,
[When my cancer was first diagnosed,] those questions had enormous weight and urgency. I could hear [God]. I could almost make out an answer. But then it was drowned out by what I’ve now heard a thousand times. “Everything happens for a reason” or “God is writing a better story.” Apparently God is also busy going around closing doors and opening windows. He can’t get enough of that. (xv)
[My] world of certainty had ended and so many people seemed to know why. Most of their explanations were reassurances that even this is a secret plan to improve me. “God has a better plan!” “This is a test and it will make you stronger!”...
Other people wanted to assure me that what I’d had was enough. “At least you have your son. At least you’ve had an amazing marriage.” I had been stripped down to the studs, and everything of worth I had accumulated was being appraised with a keen eye.
I became certain that when I died some beautiful moron would tell my husband that “God needed an angel,” because God is sadistic like that...
She reflects,
[We all want a] thorough accounting for the pain of life, and for the longing we have for restoration. (xv-xvii)
This is nothing new, of course. Back up a few thousand years and we have Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in the occupied territory of Judea, who orchestrates the brutal massacre of a group of Galileans at worship.
And people are quick to say that this must be God’s punishment; that God has let this violence occur for a reason.
Jesus says: Nope.
Similarly, in the neighborhood of Siloam, on the south edge of Jerusalem, a tower collapses during construction, and eighteen people are killed - a tragic accident.
And people are quick to say that this must be God’s judgment for prior offenses, theirs or their fathers’ or their fathers’ fathers’; that God has put this catastrophe upon them for a reason.
Jesus says: Nope.
Jesus is remarkably consistent in this message.
We can head over to John’s gospel, where Jesus heals a man blind from birth. The disciples want to know - whose sin is God punishing by this man’s lifelong disability, this man’s or his parents’?
Jesus says: Nope.
In fact, if we want to, we can go all the way back to Job, our archetype for senseless suffering in the world, and his friends, who are examples for us of what not to say to someone who is suffering. Everybody, by the end, assume that Job’s suffering is punishment for some unconfessed sin, some un-atoned for wrongdoing.
This time it is God himself who says: Nope.
Of course, God also doesn’t offer an alternative explanation. Neither does Jesus. In our gospel today, Jesus doesn’t try to give a better or alternative answer for why there is suffering in the world. He isn’t concerned with the question, “Why?”
Instead, Jesus turns the conversation toward repentance. And toward a hypothetical fig tree.
Repentance has been a theme of Luke’s gospel ever since John the Baptist showed up, and the call to repentance has always been about turning. Turning around, turning back, turning away from one path and turning toward God’s path; turning and returning to God’s promises over and over again. Turning away from the things that would bring harm, and turning toward God, the source of life.
I’ll admit that it seems a little harsh of Jesus to debunk misguided theories of suffering with the stern warning, “But unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
But what Jesus means here, on the road to his own tragic suffering and death, is that chaos and pain and death are all around us, and if we busy ourselves with trying to figure out the problem of suffering, we might miss the whole point of the cross. Don’t be distracted. Death is a terrible feature of life, Jesus says, but it will not get in the way of God’s work. Suffering is a reality, but it does not cut you off from God’s eternal love and mercy.
This is where the fig tree comes in.
By all counts, this mythical fig tree shouldn’t still be standing. For three years, now, it’s been a fruitless waste of space and soil. Its judgment should be swift and certain, especially if you take your gardening advice from John the Baptist, who warns, “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
But just when it seems that the circumstances of life have choked this fig tree and starved it and destroyed it…we meet a gardener who is willing to go out on a limb (yes, I see what I did there) for the future of this tree.
He says, “I think there is still some life here, some hope for the future. All is not yet lost.”
And the fig tree is not cut off. It stands to see another year.
But here’s the notable thing. The gardener - or Jesus, if you want - doesn’t answer any of the questions we might have about this fig tree or any other barren fig tree we might meet in life. He doesn’t explain for us why the tree is the way is. He doesn’t give a reason for its struggle or tell us some overly-optimistic story about the tree’s fruitful future.
He just gets down there....into the manure*. Knee-deep into the muck*, where everything is messy and stinky and muddy.
He digs in the dirt so that we, like that fig tree, might have grace to live another year.
The fig tree is this sign for us that when it feels like catastrophe and grief have taken everything from us, there is yet evening and morning, another day.
It’s like Martin Luther’s morning prayer, which begins, “We give thanks to you, heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ your dear Son, that you have protected us through the night from all harm and danger.”
What a way to start the day, right? With this acknowledgement that harm and danger circle all around us, but also, we can open our eyes each day and recognize, “I am still here. I am still breathing. Everything sucks, but I have not been destroyed. Grief has not erased me. I have not been crushed, and I have not been cut down.”
And this is what repentance is all about. Turning, each day, back to God, who is the osource of our life, whose mercies are new, each and every day.
And with each new day, we can make the movement of faith to trade in that grief-laden but dead-end question, “Why?” to the close-cousin but much more fruitful question, “What now?”
What now? This question is an act of faith that simply asks us to hold space. Not to solve suffering, but to make room within it for possibilities beyond our knowing; to see Christ’s blessing in our unfinished stories and our unanswered questions. Because we may never be able to anticipate what fruit, if any, will grow from the manure*, but we know that we have a gardener who promises to tend to us and give us water; a gardener who assumes on our behalf that his work is not in vain.
He will prove it to us through another tree - a tree upon which will hang all grief, all terror, all brokenness, all pain. And a tree that will not die when God suffers upon it, but a tree that will blossom with new life - not in a year, but in a mystic and glorious three days.
This is the blessing of the fig tree, of the cross, of our good gardener, of the tree of life; a blessing sung in the hymn, “There in God’s Garden,”:
Thorns not its own are tangled in its foliage;
Our greed has starved it, our despite has choked it.
Yet, look! It lives! Its grief has not destroyed it nor fire consumed it.
See how its branches reach to us in welcome;
Hear what the voice says, “Come to me, ye weary!
Give me your sickness, give me all your sorrow, I will give blessing.”
This is my ending, this my resurrection;
Into your hands, Lord, I commit my spirit.
This have I searched for, now I can possess it. This ground is holy.
Whatever you have searched for, whatever has felt like your ending, whatever thorns are tangled in the foliage: into Christ’s hands we commit it all. And Christ names even the dustiest, dirtiest mud “holy ground.” Take this and take to heart. It is your blessing.
*For full effect here, substitute in whatever alternative words you want for "manure," even ones that you can't say in a pulpit!