The Third Sunday in Lent
March 11, 2007
Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 103
I Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
You have heard the question asked, many times I am sure, why do bad things happen to good people? On the other hand, we are not inclined to ask why bad things happen to bad people. But we should. We should wonder why bad things happen to anybody. Knowing our God and God’s purposes for his creation, we can be certain that God did not intend anything bad for his creation. God created the world good and he created all of his creatures to be good. So as much as we want to blame God for the bad things that happen to us, we can’t blame God. In fact, it is not even helpful to blame each other. But we are only human, and so when bad things happen to anybody we have to find somebody to blame. So when bad things happen to good people, we blame God, but when bad things happen to bad people, we blame them because we are certain that they deserve what they get. In ancient times it was common to believe that if bad things happened to anybody, even people who seemed apparently good, it was probably because they had been bad or done something bad to deserve the punishment they received. The mentality was to blame the victim.
This is where we find the people in Luke’s Gospel account today who want to blame the victims for a terrible atrocity which has been perpetrated upon them. It seems that Pilate has ordered the blood torture and possibly even the death of several Galileans as they are sacrificing their animals for worship. To add insult to injury, the blood of the animals has been mixed with the blood of the worshipers. The people who have come to Jesus are protesting, not so much against Pilate’s atrocities against these Galileans, but more because Pilate has defiled a sacred religious rite of sacrifice. As for Pilate’s victims, these protestors are actually critical of them. They are certain that the Galileans have suffered this atrocity because they have been sinful, so they deserve such punishment. In other words, they must have been bad or done something bad for this bad thing to have happened to them.
I wish we could say that this “blame the victim” attitude had dissipated with the dawn of the modern world, but the evidence is to the contrary. Even with the knowledge and understanding which come from modern medical and psychological and social science, no less our faith and experience of a God who created all things good, it seems that human kind still falls easily into the trap of blaming the victim. We still have a tendency to think that if something bad has happened to someone they must have done something bad to deserve it. And even though our laws and legal procedures have tried to address this issue, just ask a woman who has been battered or raped how she has been treated, or how she is looked upon by people in her family or community; a blame the victim attitude lies perilously close to the surface of people who can’t help believing that somehow she deserved it. Just ask a person of color, or a person who is destitute and living on the street. Ask anyone who is gay or lesbian, or trans-gendered. Ask anyone who has suffered ridicule or scorn and even harm from not fitting the norms of appearance or behavior in our society. They will tell you that the ill treatment they receive is the result of a negative judgment brought to bear on them for something they have no ability to control. We might call this the sin of people profiling, and we might expect to find it in the world, but there are still people of faith who believe that God made some of us to be lesser beings, or that we choose a life style that makes us lesser beings in the eyes of God, and such people deserve their lesser place in society and the consequences which come to them in it.
The people who report Pilate’s atrocity to Jesus are no different. They want him to agree with their judgment and blame. And they expect that Jesus will even add judgment and blame of his own. They expect to hear that these Galileans must have done something to deserve the punishment they received, and they expect to hear Jesus protest against Pilate for his defilement of a sacred religious practice. But as we know, Jesus has come into the world with a different message about sin and punishment, a message quite different from the commonly accepted one. A message we still need to hear today.
We should not be surprised that the people who come to Jesus are surprised by Jesus’ response to their ugly report. Instead of scolding the Galileans or even Pilate, Jesus scolds them. Jesus scolds them because he has been preaching and teaching and demonstrating a God who is not wrathful or vengeful. A God who does not wish anything bad to happen to people of his own making. A God who loves us so much he comes into our world for the purpose of redeeming his human creatures in their suffering and from their sin. A God whose capacity for love and forgiveness is equal to our capacity for being the good people he created us to be, whenever we are willing to repent and turn our lives to good purpose. Whenever we are willing to turn from judging and blaming people for the bad things they do and the bad things that happen to them, to find the ways God is able to redeem us in them.
This is the message Jesus wants to leave with the people in our Gospel story today, and this is the lesson he wants to leave with us. His parable of the fig tree is his last opportunity to teach an all important lesson of unconditional love and many “second” chances. Jesus wants us to see our life and our world through God’s eyes. He wants us to see God through the work of a gardener. Jesus wants us to imagine that we are trees planted by God. Trees that do not always bear the fruit we are meant bear. We breathe in the air, soak up the sun and the rain, and take nutrients from the soil, but we don’t produce the good things which should come of it. We take up space and require much tending to, but we don’t always do our part to make this earthly garden flourish. Jesus agrees that something must be done, but the only thing the owner of the orchard knows to do is to get rid of such a tree. He blames the tree. He judges it to be bad. And he wants it to be cut down.
Cutting down seems to be the issue for Jesus in this story. The ways God’s human creatures have of cutting each other down. Like the people who cut down the Galileans by assuming that their sinfulness caused their punishment. The same people who cut down Pilate for his atrocities. Then there is Pilate, himself, who literally cuts down people in retribution likely because of something they have done to displeasure him. It seems to Jesus that people only want to focus on the ways they can cut each other down and cut each other off from each other. But cutting down will not enable trees or people to bear any fruit, no less good fruit. Only water and fertilized soil and bright sunshine will encourage a tree to grow into the tree it is meant to become and to bear the fruit which is good and right for creation. It is no less so for God’s human creation.
So the gardener begs the owner of the tree to let him attend to the needs of the tree and nurture its growth. The gardener does not promise anything of the tree. There are no guarantees that the tree will bear fruit or that bad things will not happen to it. The only thing the farmer can guarantee is that he will do the right and good thing for that tree. It is no less true for us as a people of God.
Jesus’ revolutionary, even shocking response to the people who have come criticizing the Galileans that day is that our sin does not cause bad things to happen to us But our sin can cause us to do bad things. However, when we are willing to repent and turn from the bad things we do and the judgments of bad that we make against each other, our life begins to become the good fruit God intended for us to bear to the world. We are able to let go of believing that people deserve the bad things that happen to them. We can begin to see bad people and bad things that happen as people and things which can be redeemed. And that changes the way relate to them. That makes the difference between how the owner sees a tree gone bad and how the gardener sees a tree which is simply not bearing the good fruit which it was made to bear. Jesus’ parable makes it clear to me that God wants us to be gardeners in a world of trees planted by him to bear good fruit.
This is why parents and grandparents are so important in the life of their children, and why teachers are so important to a student’s intellectual growth emotional well-being. This is why the Church is so important to our religious and spiritual practices. This is why friends and family and the caring communities we belong to are so important in the ways we grow into our goodness. These are our gardeners, and we are gardeners to each other. These are the people we turn to, and these are the people who turn to us when others try to cut us down. We depend on each other to heal the wounds in our bark and in our roots, in our fiber and in our flourishing so that we can be nourished and nurtured to become the tree God planted us to be in the world.
It is easy to see how Jesus’ parable relates to the ways the Galileans have been cut down by these protestors, but Jesus’ response is even more revolutionary and shocking as it relates to Pilate. Jesus does not refute that our sin and separation from God will cause us to do bad things—against ourselves and others. But Jesus indicates that even a cruel and vicious person like Pilate can be redeemed. Even Pilate can return to being the tree God planted for good in this world. All he has to do is repent of his behavior and turn his life around to serve God’s purposes for it. But like the rest of us Pilate needs a good gardener, a very good gardener who will nurture the good that is in him, the good which will serve God’s purposes for his life. Jesus believes with all his heart that redemption is possible for all God’s human creatures, because God has sent him into the world to redeem us, both in our suffering and from our sin. He believes that all of us are capable of repenting of our sin and separation from God and from each other; if only we will.
Repentance is the theme in all of our scripture accounts today. Moses’ repentance came in a burning bush. God spoke to Moses and all of a sudden he could see his life as he had never seen it before. He turns away from the good life which has been granted to him in his adoption by the very same Pharaoh who has enslaved his people, and he will soon lead them out of Egypt to the land promised to them by God. Paul’s theme of repentance reminds us that once we repent of our sins and begin to grow to God, the good fruit bearing trees we become will undoubtedly endure many tests which are meant to cut us down. But just like any test we endure, a test can bring us down or it can make us stronger. It can show us the ways we have been growing in strength and courage as trees planted in God. Our psalmist extols a God who, in his loving kindness, waits patiently for those who eagerly seek him; like thirsty and undernourished trees, God seeks people who find themselves living in a barren and dry land; people whose souls begin to thirst and their flesh begins to faint for the God who can restore them to be the people he made them to be, like trees fed and watered to bear the good fruit of his creation.
Jesus’ parable would have us remember, however, that God does not guarantee that bad things will not happen to us. We know that Moses and Paul and the psalmist demonstrate the power of repentance to dramatically turn a life around to God’s good purposes for them; yet bad things will continue to happen to them. That is because of the sin which continues to prevail in our world. Sin which cuts us down and cuts us off from God and from each other. Sin which fails to bear fruit, the good fruit of God’s creation. It is important for us to remember that baptism and Eucharist and faithful attendance at worship will not guarantee security and protection from bad things which can happen to us. But God guarantees that he will be with us in our adversity and suffering. And he is always ready to redeem us in them.
Most of all, we must remember that, after all, we are human and we are subject to sin throughout our life. But God does not call us to be perfect; he calls us to repent of those things that keep us from bearing good fruit to the world. We need to remember that whenever we find ourselves failing to be the tree God has planted us to be we can be certain we will always find him, waiting patiently, pail full of fertilizer, trowel in hand, and water, lots of water—and sunshine, too. Enough to make us flourish in a good world where bad things happen; a world made for all the good that we can bring to it.