Jesus, the Gardener

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 can 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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Today’s Gospel always makes me feel like we’ve walked into the middle of someone else’s conversation. It’s that weird parable about the fig tree and the gardener, this stuff about the “blood of the Galileans,” and about those people “killed by the Tower of Siloam” … events not mentioned anywhere else in all of Scripture. So most of us need a little history and some context in order to make some sense of it all.

It’s helpful to know that there was more than one occasion where political unrest under Pontius Pilate led to ugly confrontations and uprisings between Roman officials and the local Jews, Samaritans, and other people of Galilee living under Roman rule. As you might imagine, these uprisings often led to the deaths of many people. So, when Jesus talked about “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices,” he was probably talking about something like that.

By the same token, nowhere else in the Bible is there any account of the Tower of Siloam collapsing. We do know that the Pool of Siloam – where Jesus once gave a blind man his sight back – was a ritual bathing pool, somewhere on the south-side of Jerusalem. Apparently, at some time in the days prior to this Gospel story, a tower in the city wall near those pools collapsed and killed 18 people.

So, Jesus is asking rhetorical questions about these events – and answering them for whoever wants to know. They were things anyone hearing him would have known about, of course. “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” In other words, “Did the Galileans bring their fate upon themselves?” “Did they deserve to die because they were trouble-makers and rabble-rousers?” “Should they have kept to themselves?” “Should they have known better than to get into it with the Romans?” “Should they have turned the other cheek?” According to Jesus, the answer is “no.”

And what about those people who were crushed by that falling tower? “Do you think they had it coming to them?” “Was their number up because they deserved something the rest of the city’s people didn’t?” “Was God waiting for those 18 particular people to be in that particular place at that particular time so that they could be smited for their particular sins?” Again, according to Jesus, the answer is “no.”

If we’re still having trouble making sense of this – if we can’t quite get ourselves back into first century Palestine – let’s fast forward to the 20th of March, 2022. The Gospel of Luke, the 13th chapter, might sound something like this…

“At that very time, there were some present who told Jesus about the Ukrainians whose blood Putin had mingled with their sacrifices … what about the ones who died in the basement of that theater in Mariupal?” And Jesus might have said, “Do you think that because they suffered in this way that they were worse sinners than all other Ukrainians, or Russians, or anyone else for that matter?”

Or, “What about those 6 college golfers and their coach who were killed in the car accident in Texas on Tuesday? Did they deserve it?”

“Or the 5 people who died in 5 separate car accidents in and around Indianapolis, just this Friday? Could they possibly have had it coming?”

Or “What about the six million souls – give or take – who lost the pandemic battle with COVID-19?” Is their suffering a sign that they are somehow worse sinners than any of the rest of us?”

And what about the long list of prayer concerns in our bulletin? What about all of that cancer? How about all of those surgeries? What about all of the sickness and struggle sitting right here beside us today? At some point – and in instances so close to home – the rhetorical questions Jesus asks are hard to swallow – and maybe even a little offensive.

But that’s how Jesus means to get our attention and to assure us of something powerful and good and full of hope. No, God has not arbitrarily chosen to punish some and not others. No, when people die by the sword or by accident or by natural disaster, God isn’t trying to teach them a lesson or heap vengeance upon them or show them who’s the boss. No, when bad things happen to good people it’s not a test or a sign or a chance to weed out the good, from the bad, from the ugly.

Jesus is just acknowledging that bad stuff happens and, even though he’s Jesus, he doesn’t try to explain it, or rationalize it, or pretend we can avoid it. What Jesus does is hold it up before our eyes and remind us that, more often than we’d like to admit, the gift of our lives is fragile. And, more often than we’d like to admit, our lives come to their end – or at least encounter all kinds of struggle and sadness and disappointment along the way – without warning, without notice, without preparation, and without a whole lot of apparent mercy, enough of the time.

And then because of all of that… and because he’s Jesus... when he tells that strange story of the fig tree and the gardener and the owner of the vineyard? … he gives us something faithful and loving and gracious to do about it all in the meantime.

See, too many in the world would chop down the tree that wasn’t producing fruit and, so, too many expect God to do the same. Which is why, I think, we are so inclined to blame collapsing towers and unexpected disasters and deadly diseases on “fate” or “doom” or “the will of God” or God’s desire for more angels up in heaven.

But Jesus reminds us that “God’s will” is really all about second chances. God is like the owner of the vineyard, who gives us another year, or another day, or another minute to try again. To repent. To turn over new leaves. To plant different seeds. To try new ways of being in the world. To live new lives, in spite of ourselves.

Because repentance means to change, remember. To be turned around. To live differently. In many ways, I think repentance might mean we let ourselves be changed by the struggles of others; that we open ourselves up to the hardships that surround us; that we change our lives in order to make a difference in the lives of others.

We can repent by acknowledging that our lives – however long or short they may turn out to be – are blessed, generous, grace-filled gifts from God. And we can repent by not pretending we’re owed any of it and by not taking any of this for granted, for one more second.

And Jesus shows up to inspire all of that. Jesus, the Gardener, has our back. The love of Jesus means to care for us; to tend to us; to nurture and nourish us, like a Gardener tending to a bunch of less-than-fruitful fig trees, until we begin to turn things around, until we begin to live with that kind of repentance, more often.

As we continue making our way to the cross … as we continue to repent and to receive the forgiveness that’s promised to us there … we continue to draw close to this Jesus who doesn’t deny that evil exists, who doesn’t deny that death will come, who doesn’t pretend that this life of faith is an easy one every step of the way. (Calvary and his crucifixion make that clear.)

What we are promised is that ours is a God of second chances: second chances for turning and repentance and for change; second chances for love and forgiveness. And second chances – in spite of ourselves and the world where we live – for new life, for hope, and for God’s love in Jesus Christ, who keeps tilling the soil of our hearts; who keeps working the land of our lives; who keeps patiently planting seeds and pulling weeds and choosing to give us another chance, until we get it right…until we rest assured in the hope of God’s life everlasting, in this world and the next.

Amen

Midweek Lenten Lament for Greed

Matthew 19:16-26

Then someone came to him and said, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." He said to him, "Which ones?" And Jesus said, "You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother; also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself." The young man said to him, "I have kept all these; what do I still lack?" Jesus said to him, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, "Then who can be saved?" But Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible."

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In last week’s edition of “Christian Century” Peter Marty, the magazine’s editor and fellow Lutheran, told about a thing that happened in the late 19th Century, in New York City, that I was stunned to learn about. (Marty, himself, learned about it from a book by Stephen Nissenbaum, called The Battle for Christmas, which tells about the history of Christmas as a holiday of excess in our country and culture.)

Apparently, back in the late 1800’s, well-to-do New Yorkers paid admission to watch the city’s poor people eat.

They staged enormous public dinners at the old Madison Square Garden during the Christmas season, with more than 20,000 people in attendance. They called these events “galas” – (in my mind I see something like a modern-day Met Gala) – that featured galleries and box seating filled with wealthy people, dressed in their finest, ready, willing and eager to watch hungry children eat, like it were some kind of sporting event.

According to an 1899 New York Times article, titled “The Rich Saw Them Feast” children from, quote, “illimitable abodes of poverty and wretchedness,” stood in line to enter the arena for a meal while the wealthy, paying spectators found their seats. Those wealthy, paying spectators were described as “men in high hats, women in costly wraps . . . many who had come in carriages and were gorgeously gowned and wore many diamonds.” And it gets worse.

“As if to keep the rich from mingling too closely with the poor,” Marty explains, “gifts for the children were dangled from ropes and lowered by pulley systems attached to the roof.”

And, lest we think we’ve evolved beyond that sort of primitive, exploitative, obtuse expression of greed, privilege, classism, and humiliation, Peter Marty recalls that hockey game half-time in Sioux Falls, South Dakota – just last December – where a handful of public school teachers got on their hands and knees at center ice to scramble for and grab as many $1 bills as possible from a $5,000 pile of cash. (They’ve been doing this stunt since at least 2018, from what I could tell, so I’m not sure why it just made a stink last year.)

Anyway, whether we’re talking about the meals at Madison Square Garden in the 19th Century or the “Dash for Cash” sort of nonsense just last year, it all shines a bright light on our confused priorities, our misguided views about charity, and the power of greed’s sin in our lives, which is something worth lamenting in these Lenten days, it seems to me.

Greed is the sin that blinds us to what’s most valuable in our lives and in this world. And it’s more than that, too.

Greed makes us imagine all the things and stuff and money that we COULD have, or SHOULD have, or DESERVE to have. Greed is that sinfulness in each of us that compares ourselves with the neighbors or with our friends or with our family members even. Greed is that broken, shallow sinfulness that keeps track of what we don't have; it's that sin that turns wants into needs; it's that incompleteness within us that convinces us that having more will make more of us – either because life will be easier then, or because we'll have succeeded then, or because we'll finally have as much as _____________ (you fill in the blank).

And I'm not just pointing the finger, believe me. I had to look in the mirror more than once as I prepared for this evening. And one thing I see there, more often than I’d like to admit, is the way I keep track of things; how I compare with others; how I rationalize what I deserve or what I could get or what I should be able to have. (more square footage, more retirement savings, more money for college, more whatever …)

But what I try to do – even though it's harder to swallow – is imagine what others might be giving up in order for me to have all of that “more.” Which hits me hard whenever I consider things like those meals at Madison Square Garden, those teachers on their hands and knees at the hockey game, my friends in Haiti, the refugees fleeing Ukraine, or those suffering so mightily in other places, like Yemen, these days.

Because, if we're honest with ourselves – whether it's groceries or gasoline, square footage or our life savings, even – if we have more of whatever it is, it means there are people out there in the world who may not have as much, or even enough of what they need.

Some of you have heard my spiel about Mary Poppins and stewardship before, so I’ll keep it short and spare you the “Spoonful of Sugar” song and dance. But there’s this point in the movie where Mary Poppins sings that song and shows the kids how fun it can be to clean the nursery, to the point that they want to keep cleaning the nursery, even when the job has been done. Mary Poppins tells them, simply, "Come now. Enough is as good as a feast." Which is the lesson and the challenge for me, where the lament of my greed is concerned.

"Enough is as good as a feast." “Enough is as good as a feast.”

In other words, you can only get a room so clean all at one time. Just like you can only wear so many shoes at once. Or eat so much food. Or live in so many rooms. Or drive so many cars. Or whatever.

And while I'm pretty sure Jesus wasn't thinking a thing about Mary Poppins at the time, I do believe this is what he was getting at in tonight’s Gospel. This rich man wants to know what it takes to enter into the Kingdom of God, and Jesus doesn't pull any punches. "If you really want to know, sell your possessions, give the money to the poor and follow me." And he goes on, "It is harder for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle."

It’s not as sweet as Mary Poppins, so before we start rationalizing about how rich we aren't compared to those sitting around us … or about how much less we have than those who live next door … or about how much more we give away than some friends and family we know … let's notice that (even more clearly in Luke’s Gospel) Jesus says to sell all of your possessions – ALL of them – not 10%, not half, not what we might comfortably be able to do without – but ALL. (This is where every Christian I know forgets about their need to take the Bible so literally.)

Now, I happen to believe that grace changes hearts and lives more meaningfully than judgment and shame ever could, which is why I want us to see that Jesus gives us his own holy shot of sugar to help this medicine go down. Jesus says that, for us mortals it is, indeed, impossible. But for God, all things are possible. The power of God's resurrection in Jesus is our spoonful of sugar. The joy of God's forgiveness in spite of ourselves is our encouragement for tomorrow. The promise of God's unconditional love is all we need to make sharing our selves and our stuff – and wanting and needing less of it – part of our way of life in this world.

So, in these days, as we recall the sacrifice of God in Jesus Christ for the sake of creation – and as we lament our greed for such small things in the face of that cosmic kind of sacrifice, generosity, and abundant love – let’s recognize when enough is enough for us.

Let’s lament and be liberated from our greed.

Let’s lament for and with those who have less and let’s make due with less, ourselves, so that they might have enough, for a change.

Let’s lament and learn to give freely, with gratitude and joy, because Jesus promises, when we do, that we'll know more about the Kingdom of God – on this side of heaven, right where we live.

Amen