Year C Lent 3
Luke 13: 1-9
Preached at Christ Church Christiana Hundred, “Jesus is…” series

“No, I tell you.” Jesus says these four words twice in today’s gospel passage. Throughout the gospels, when Jesus says he’s going to tell us something: it’s important. It’s even more urgent than his usual wisdom. What is the context for these four words today? Today’s gospel opens on a scene of a group of people sitting around, discussing something that some Galileans did and how they are now facing a terrible punishment. Suddenly, Jesus says, “No, I tell you.” He calls on those around him to listen to the context of what this means in God’s kingdom. The Galileans ugly death, which is so casually referenced, is not a result of some bad seeds they had sown. Our God is not a God of “just desserts” and “getting what’s coming to you.” Our God is a God of grace! Regardless of any struggles these Galileans faced, any weaknesses they had, or bad decisions they made; their misfortune is not an invitation to us to judge them. Their mistakes are not an excuse for us to elevate ourselves above them. On any given day and at any given moment, we are all equally capable of losing our way.

What is it that makes these little moments of judgement so dangerous to God’s kingdom? Jesus teaches us that when we judge each other, we not only limit the power of God’s extravagant grace in our own lives, but we deny that grace to our neighbors. Because when we judge, we are limiting our own ability to receive God’s grace. Our act of judging wastes space in our hearts where the holy spirit could be working in us! When we have less space to receive grace, then there is less grace in our hearts to pass along to our neighbors and to the world that always can use it. To illustrate this point and the importance of compassion, Jesus tells us the parable of the fig tree: a story about a vineyard owner, and a gardener as they debate the future of this struggling tree.

The first person we meet is the vineyard owner. He’s had the fig tree for about three years, and it still has no fruit on it. When we first meet him, he’s rather grumpy. On my first read, my first impression of him on my first read is that he’s definitely the villain. He’s frustrated, and he’s impatient. He’s ready to give up on this tree. Ultimately, he is terrified of failing. Come to think of it, I can relate to those things! I’ve acted out of fear of failure. I’ve grown impatient waiting for the right time for something. I’ve had things that I have wished, and hoped, and dreamed for, and then, I’ve nurtured those dreams, only to have them not go quite according to plan. Then, I’ve found myself just slamming my head into a wall. Who hasn’t? Things don’t’ always go as we plan or on the timeline we plan. Sometimes it’s as simple a frustration as running out of patience, and sometimes it’s as utterly desperate as running out of hope. There’s this whole spectrum in between the two, and with the limited information in this parable, we don’t know where the vineyard owner falls on this spectrum. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. That part is not the key to understanding what Christ is trying to teach us. What matters is that wherever the vineyard owner’s inability to nurture this fig tree is really coming from his inability to nurture himself. How can he pass on what he himself cannot receive?

Enter: the gardener. Before we talk about what the gardener does see, let’s talk about what he doesn’t see. He looks at this fig, and he doesn’t see fault. He doesn’t see failure, inferiority, or hopelessness. Instead, the gardener sees an opportunity to make a choice for hope, grace, and love. In his response to the vineyard owner, it seems that the gardener is asking himself, “Has this tree really been given its best possible chance?” When the gardener pleads the case of the fig tree to the vineyard owner, we can hear that he is grounded in God, whose grace can bring new life to any situation. Our God is a god of resurrection! The Gardner ensures the tree’s best possible chance by committing to giving his best to the tree. At the end of the parable, we never learn the fate of the tree, but Christ does this on purpose. The tree’s fate does not impact how we are called to action. The gardener’s commitment to love and nurture that tree is never worthless! Our God loves us with the same committed, relentless, grace, and this is the model that Christ is calling us to strive for! We need to remember that whatever happens to this tree, it was given it’s best possible chance by the love and grace of a faithful gardener.

In the gardener, we are reminded to strive to be loving and nurturing while showing compassion to everyone we meet. In the vineyard owner, we are reminded that we are constantly tempted by stress, impatience, fear, and hopelessness, and that when we give into these temptations, we are divided from God by our own judging. How can we as disciples be gardeners as often as possible? The answer lies in the final piece of this story we should all identify with: we are all also fig trees!

The fig tree hasn’t born fruit in three years, and depending on what your most recent season of fruitlessness was, three years can seem like a short time or a long time. Maybe this tree wants to bear fruit and doesn’t know how. Maybe all it needs is a little strength from its neighbor. Maybe the fig tree was meant to be planted somewhere else – or become something else. We all need the nurturing love of our God and of Christ made manifest in our neighbor; this is the love that supports and sustains us through our fruitless, struggling, seasons. Think about any acceptance speech for any accolade you’ve ever heard: the speaker always thanks the people who supported and nurtured them along the way – the people who helped ensure that they had their best possible chance. In my fig tree seasons, I’ve leaned heavily on those people.

In a gospel that started out with a casual chat about the latest happenings, we end up with a profound lesson on compassion and the extravagant, nurturing grace that our God gives us and calls us to give each other. There’s no place in God’s kingdom for us to judge each other.

Out in this beautiful world, we will meet people who look at us like the vineyard owner looks at that tree, and we can’t control that. We can control how we respond to those people. We can control our own choice to approach others with love, grace, understanding, and the best of whatever we can give in that moment. We’ve been praying for that for a long time and we continue to pray that every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, praying for God’s kingdom to become manifest on earth: Thy kingdom come. When we say that prayer, we are praying to help manifest a kingdom that is a place of second chances, extravagant grace, and relentless nurturing. Amen.