Bear Fruit or Else—Lectionary Reflection for Lent 3C (Luke 13:1-9)
Luke 13:1-9 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
13 At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. 4 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 other people living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.”
6 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. 7 So he said to the man working the vineyard, ‘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?’ 8 He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”
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Christians
get caught up in debates about whether we are justified by God’s grace or
through works. Often Paul gets pitted against James. Might grace and works be
part of the Christian experience? It has been said by many “non-believers” that
they like Jesus, but not his followers. Why might that be? Perhaps it’s because
Christians don’t do a very good job of following Jesus. We say we love Jesus
but don’t act like it. When asked about the way of salvation, Jesus asked what
the Law said and his questioner answered with loving God and neighbor (Luke
10:25-28). In Matthew is asked a similar question, concerning the greatest
commandment and he answers the same way: love God and neighbor. In Matthew, he
adds this clause: “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets”
( Matt.
22:34-40). Everything hangs on
loving God and neighbor. We can parse this, but in the end, if we do not act
with love for others then we fail to follow Jesus.
The
Lenten season invites us to reflect on where we stand with God and our neighbor.
Are we right with God? Are we in tune with Jesus? How would we know? If we look
to the two commandments Jesus put together, it would have something to do with
loving our neighbor. As for who that neighbor might be, Jesus offered a
Samaritan as an example (Luke
10:29-37). While we often refer to this figure and others like him as the “Good
Samaritan,” few if any in Jesus’ audience would have called any Samaritan good.
In other words, when defining the neighbor, Jesus has a rather expansive view.
Do we?
With
this preface, we come to our Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Lent (Year
C). In this reading Jesus offers a word about bearing fruit, or else something
might happen to us. It is a word that involves judgment along with a call for repentance.
The assumption is that repentance involves more than saying we’re sorry for our
bad habits. That is because Jesus has something to say about bearing fruit.
The
reading starts with a conversation about a group of Galileans who were killed
by Pontius Pilate. In fact, the wording here involves Pilate mingling their
blood with their sacrifices. That would mean the Galileans were in Jerusalem
offering sacrifices in the Temple when Pilate struck. Of course, it wasn’t
Pilate himself. It was his soldiers. But they acted on Pilate’s orders. But the
question Jesus asked didn’t have to do with Pilate’s authority in the matter.
It had to do with whether the people informing him of these events believed
this group of Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans. When
Jesus asked this question, he did so as a Galilean. He may have been on his way
from Galilee to Jerusalem, but he was a Galilean, as were most of his disciples.
It’s quite possible that most of the folks in his audience would have been Galileans.
Of course, Jesus asked a rhetorical question. He didn’t wait for an answer. He
simply let the folks know that unless they repented, they would perish like
them. In other words, everyone faces judgment.
In
answering their questions Jesus decided to offer another illustration. This
time the incident involved what we might say was a natural disaster. He asked
whether the eighteen people killed when the Tower of Siloam on them were
greater sinners than others living in Jerusalem. There is a long history of
religious leaders suggesting that natural disasters like earthquakes,
tornadoes, and hurricanes serve as forms of divine judgment. TV preachers like
Pat Robertson have been notorious for doing this. The truth is that there is no
evidence that sinners get hit harder than the righteous. Again, Jesus dismissed
such ideas, but he emphasized that if we don’t repent, we will suffer like they
had. In other words, judgment is a universal constant without repentance.
This
conversation involving questions of judgment and repentance is followed by a
parable. This time the parable involves a fig tree that fails to bear fruit.
The emphasis here is on the consequences that come for a tree that fails to
bear fruit. It is a reminder to us, that God expects that his children will
bear fruit (or else).
Jesus begins
by setting the scene. There is a man who planted a fig tree in his vineyard.
When he checked his tree, he discovered that it had failed to bear fruit. The
vineyard owner proceeds to tell his gardener that he had planted the tree three
years earlier, and each year he came to check on the tree to see if it had borne
fruit. But, to that point, it had failed to bear fruit. So, the vineyard owner
told his gardener to cut it down. It was wasting soil in his vineyard, so it
had to go. The gardener responded by asking for one more year to see if he
could get it to bear fruit. In the meantime, he would dig around it and put manure
on it. In other words, he would fertilize it and see if it would respond. If it
bears fruit the following year, then everything would be good. If not, he would
cut it down.
There
is in this parable both a word of judgment and a word of mercy. Though this
mercy did not remove the possibility of judgment. Instead, it provided the
possibility for a change in the status of the tree (and those whom Jesus had in
mind). There is the prospect of nurturing the tree to see if it could be saved,
but this stay of execution did have limitations. The expectation here is that fig
trees should bear fruit. If not, they will be removed. This isn’t the first
time we’ve heard something like this in Luke. In fact, John the Baptist had
something similar to say.
7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:7-9).
We find Jesus in several other places in the Gospel of Luke
emphasizing the importance of bearing fruit. Joel Green connects the two parts
of this reading, writing: “In the same way, the parable of the fig tree ends on
a note of clemency counterbalanced by the ongoing threat of imminent judgment.
God may have acted in mercy in holding back destruction for the moment, but
this stay of judgment is temporary. Grounded thus is Jesus’ final note of
urgency: Now is the time to repent and to live fruitful lives” [Green, Joel B.
The Gospel of Luke (NICNT) (Kindle p. 516). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.].
The
moral of the story it seems focuses on the need for followers of Jesus to
connect their confession of faith with behavior. Jesus expects his followers to
bear fruit, to reflect in their lives God’s purposes and expectations. It’s not
enough to say that you believe Jesus, without also living according to his
vision. What does that involve? To start with, it would seem that one should
love God and neighbor. As Matthew’s Gospel puts it, the entire law and prophets
hang on these two. To put it differently, if you love God and neighbor you
fulfill the law. That sounds simple enough, but life is never that simple. That’s
why we find in the Old Testament the so-called Ten Commandments in Exodus and
Deuteronomy. It’s also why there are over six hundred rules and regulations in the
Old Testament. People seem to need more examples of what loving God and
neighbor might involve. If only we could live a life of love then we wouldn’t
need rules about bearing false witness, killing, stealing, coveting, and the
like. Or to put it differently, if only we lived like Jesus and followed his ways, we wouldn’t need to worry about
whether we fulfill God’s laws and expectations. Unfortunately, we keep needing
to repent of sins and seek to nurture our lives so we will bear fruit.
When it
comes to this fruit Jesus speaks of, we might turn to the word Paul shared with
the Galatian believers. “The fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such
things” (Gal.
5:22-23). Note that Paul begins with love as the first fruit of the Spirit.
It all starts with love. Against this set of fruit, there is no law. The expectation
here is that all nine fruit should be expressed through the lives of those who
follow Jesus.
On this
Third Sunday of Lent, we hear this call for repentance together with a call to
bear appropriate fruit that expresses that repentance. While grace is there,
judgment still hangs over the conversation. Might we hear this word from the
Gospel of Luke in tandem with these words from Isaiah
55:6-7:
Let us, therefore, seek the Lord, forsake
unrighteousness, and turn to God so we might experience God’s mercy. That will
then lead to bearing the fruit of the Spirit, beginning and ending with the love
of God and neighbor.
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