Your Time is Coming
I know you probably read sermons to feel uplifted
for inspiration
to be encouraged.
Well, I don’t know what to tell you. There will be none of that here.
I want to start by reminding you that you could die at literally any moment.
A piano might fall on your head.
You could get run over by a dump truck.
The ceiling could cave in at any moment, crushing all of us instantly.
You might get stuck on an elevator, the power goes out, your cries go unheard, everyone around leaves you to starve to death.
You might slip on an ice patch on a steep hill and roll all the way down to a bloody death.
You could die turning left on a busy road where there should probably be a stoplight, but there isn’t.
This would be a good time to remind you to be nice to your preacher. Your preacher may preach your funeral someday. Maybe next week even.
In Luke 13, we find ourselves in the middle of a discussion about two local tragedies — unknown in any other ancient source besides Luke’s gospel. It’s clear from the dialogue, however, that in their day, these were well known local tragedies. Pilate apparently slaughtered several Galileans who had come to Jerusalem to make their sacrifices and if that weren’t bad enough, he mingled their blood in with their sacrifices. They were also talking about a tower that had fallen and killed eighteen people. These are the kinds of things people talk about when they happen in local communities. People share their perspectives. Ask questions. Develop theories. You know how it goes.
The text doesn’t say this exactly, but perhaps as they were discussing these local tragedies, Jesus could discern an attitude. A question behind the question. An unspoken assumption behind why Jesus’s conversation partners brought up the incident with the Galileans in the first place. Sometimes we bring up topics hoping that a conversation will go to a certain place. We don’t directly go there as it would be awkward if you’re either fishing for a personal compliment or wish to collude with a conversation partner in some good old fashion critical gossip. And so we come at it indirectly hoping the conversation goes to THAT place. Perhaps they were wondering, “what did they do to deserve this?” Maybe the conversation WOULD go to THAT place. A place of salacious and gossipy judgment. “What did THEY do to deserve THIS?” It was a common assumption both in Biblical times, but even today, that when bad things happen to someone, that it is their fault in some way. Misfortune is linked to sin. Jesus quickly dismisses this as hogwash. Did the Galileans suffer this way because they were worse sinners than others? Were those killed by the Siloam tower worse sinners? Jesus says matter-of-factly: no. Jesus not only corrects their bad theology, but he uses the opportunity to draw a lesson from their question. And in so doing, he teaches the lesson that the only person you can control is yourself. Don’t worry about what other people have done or not done when tragedy strikes — but take from it a lesson for yourself:
Death can come at any moment. Why not repent now?
The hot toy a few years ago at Christmas was a game called Pie Face. Players take turns moving a lever that at any moment could cause the arm of the pie face game to splat whip cream in your face. Part of the excitement of the game is in the complete randomness of when the pie is going to hit you or *hopefully* another player in the face. You don’t know when your time is coming. Only that it is coming.
And this is what Jesus is saying too in the first part of our Scripture this morning. The lesson Jesus is teaching is same lesson that Pie Face teaches you. You don’t know when your time is coming. Stop wasting time trying to justify why you deserve to have more time than someone else. The point is to repent. Make the most of your life now. A tower might fall on your head. A ruthless foreign despot may slaughter you on the way to church and sprinkle your blood in the offering plate. Your face might get pied. You just never know what is going to happen.
Next Jesus tells us a parable. And this one isn’t so much about random death, but rather about when is it that God finally gives up on us and makes better use of the created order. I told you this wasn’t going to be one of those uplifting sermons. Earlier in Luke’s gospel, John the Baptist had warned of one who was to come after him. He said in Luke 3:9, “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.” Is God ready to give up on us now or maybe a year from now. Heartwarming isn’t it?
You can break this parable of the fig tree down into three sections.
In the first part, we hear about this fig tree that a man had been looking after for three years. And for three years, the tree has not produced any fruit and so he says to the gardener, cut it down and let’s make better use of this land. That seems reasonable enough. Unless, of course, you’re the fig tree. And, I have news for you. You and I — we are the fig tree.
In the second part of the parable, the gardener, presumably playing the part of Jesus or God, says, leave it be for one more year. I’ll take special care to dig around it and fertilize it. If that works, wonderful. If not, then you can cut it down. That too seems not only reasonable, but generous. Gracious even. Until we realize — are we really going to have our lives together the way Jesus wants us to in one year’s time?
You may be wondering at this point — well, what about the third part of this parable? Maybe there’s a bit more hope there. And that’s the peculiar thing about this particular parable of Jesus. We don’t hear what happens to the fig tree. Did it start to bear fruit and thereby save its life? Did it continue a withered existence and get axed? Did a tower fall on it before the year ended? We don’t know.
We have a choice when it comes to interpreting this parable and the conversation that precedes it. Is this a message about judgment or about grace? Should the interpretive emphasis be put on the cutting down of the tree or on the additional year given to bear fruit. There is genuine exegetical merit in either direction. There’s a strong message here about the urgency of repentance. This much seems particularly clear from the conversation about the slaughtered Galileans and the Tower of Siloam. You never know when you’re going to get pie-faced. Yet, while this urgency of repentance remains in the parable of the fig tree, one could certainly see the intervention of the gardener — the plea for one more year where he tends to it with miracle grow and does everything possible to make this poor tree fruitful as a parable of the persistence and abundance of God’s grace. Even when the tree deserves to be cut down, God intervenes to try and foster its fruitfulness.
So is this a message about judgment and the urgent need to repent or is it a message about how God is always giving us second chances and bending over backwards for us?
I have these silicon orange grill gloves — that are meant for handling hot meat in a smoker or on a grill, but in our house they are used more often for a sillier purpose. They are special gloves for throwing my youngest son, Lincoln, on our bed. I don’t even remember how this goofy game began, but Lincoln loves for me to grab him, swing him around and literally throw him on to mommy and daddy’s bed. But Lincoln insists that I not do it with my regular hands. I have to go and put on these special grill gloves. This is literally what Lincoln thinks these gloves are for. They are for throwing him on the bed. Now, I’m happy to do this for a while — it is fun to watch him laugh and enthusiastically proclaim, “Again, again, daddy!” But at the same time, this child is starting to get heavy and after the 18th throw or so, I start to get tired and am ready to move on to something else. I have yet to reach Lincoln’s point of exhaustion for this game. He doesn’t take it too well when I want to stop immediately, so I’ll tend to tell him, okay, Lincoln, 3 more times, counting down to the last time. And on the last time, I’ll make a big production about it being the last time. And after I throw him the last time, almost without fail, Lincoln will say to me, “one more last time?” Think about that phrase for a second — “one more last time.” And to tell you the truth, sometimes, I do bend a bit on that “last time.” I’ll tell Lincoln something like, “okay, this one is the VERY last time, no more last times after this extra last time.” Sometimes this leniency seems to help him cope with our activity coming to an end. Sometimes it does not. The end goal, however, is that I want Lincoln to be able to gracefully accept that this activity is coming to an end. And as a parent, my experience has been that sometimes, the firm line in the sand is the best approach, other times an extra dose of grace seems to be more effective.
As we consider which way to go here — is this a passage about the urgency of repentance or a passage about the persistence of grace? I wonder if Jesus is in a similar situation that I find myself in with Lincoln. The end goal isn’t to send Lincoln to time out nor is God’s goal to cut down trees. The end goal is transformation and growth. Could it be that this is a passage and parable about both judgment and grace? Could it be that Jesus wants to retain the carrot and the stick?
We don’t know exactly what happened to this poor fig tree in the parable. But here’s one possibility that emerges later in Jesus’s ministry and further along in the Lenten season. Now, I’m hopping gospels here as well as genres from a parable to historical narrative, so I don’t want to make too much of this, but I do find it interesting that in Matthew’s gospel, just after Jesus had made his “triumphant entry” into Jerusalem, just before the main events of holy week were to transpire, Jesus saw a fig tree on the side of the road. This is in Matthew chapter 21, verse 18 and following. He saw a fig tree with nothing on it except leaves. He curses it, saying, “may no fruit ever come from you again.” And the fig tree withers.
Did Jesus just enforce that “one more last time?” Perhaps. That’s certainly a reasonable conclusion. But of course, the story doesn’t end there, regardless of which gospel you’re reading. Jesus goes on to endure the “curse” of the tree himself. As the Apostle Paul says in Galatians chapter 3, verse 13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’” Kind of sounds like “one more last time” to me — a persistent and abundant grace. In enduring that curse by becoming the curse, he suffered the worst the world had. He was hung a tree. After the one more year and the manure didn’t work. Jesus Christ became the tree and was cut down. And rose again on the third day. The central doctrine of our faith is that in rising again, Jesus gives us yet another “one more last time.” Grace is extended in a most generous way to all who choose to receive it.
What if Luke had finished the final part of this parable and told us what happened to the tree — resolving whether this teaching leaned towards the urgency of repentance or the relentlessness of grace, what would it have said? Well, as someone who has studied the scriptures deeply and been educated by the finest Biblical scholars in the land, my answer to you is:
I don’t know. I don’t.
Maybe Jesus ended the parable in this exact place on purpose. Maybe we are meant to live with this tension — knowing that both things are true — the need to repent is urgent. Full stop. Why go on living another minute without giving our lives fully over to God. This parable reveals this truth. It also reveals another truth: the grace of God is wide and expansive and is always working at not declaring trees fruitful when they are not, but at tending to them, fertilizing them, granting them more time, so that they can be the kind of trees God wants them to be. Grace is not a lowering of standards, but a nudge towards repentance. And another nudge, and another one and so on. Friends, as you live in this tension — may it provoke you to repentance. May it comfort you that God’s grace is real, abundant, and persistent. And may you not hear only one of these great truths to the neglect of the others. Amen.
