Lent 3: Love and Urgency

Luke 13, 1-9, March 23, 2025

Gardeners love the story of the fig tree. My story would be about a wisteria vine that we’ve had for thirty years; it went through about a five-year period in the past ten years when it would neither completely die nor thrive. Everyone needs second and third chances, and the lives of plants provide a wonderful metaphor for that.

In my version of the parable of the fig tree, when the gardener and the landowner meet up a year later, the gardener says: I think we need another year. In my version of the story, this could happen an infinite number of times, and the landowner always says okay. Seventy times seven, to borrow from another gospel. But I don’t think this is what Jesus has in mind. I think that Jesus wants us to figure out this repentance thing right now.

         However, Jesus tells the parable of the fig tree to prove a point, and I’m not sure that another chance is it, as appealing as that might be.

         The preceding chapter of Luke is chock full of teachings—hard sayings—about urgency and repentance.

·      This very night your life is being demanded of you!

·      Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit

·      Blessed are those servants whom the master finds alert

·      You must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

         This is what the crowd is listening to when someone interrupts Jesus to ask him to comment on the day’s headlines: Rabbi, did you hear about the Romans’ latest atrocity? Pilate oversaw the slaughter of some Galileans. It was a horrible, bloody scene; their blood got all mixed in with the blood of the animals they were in the middle of sacrificing!

Jesus uses this story to reiterate what he has said before: You, too, could be struck down without a moment’s warning. Your life could be changed forever as if by a thief in the night. Let these events be a warning to all: repent before it is too late.

         Jerusalem was—in those days as in so much of history—in crisis; Pilate was a repressive overlord, a pawn of the Romans. The collapse of the tower of Siloam, while random, simply adds to the sense of chaos of the moment, a moment in which there is more bad news every day. 

I worked really, really hard on my wisteria. Not only did I do a lot of cutting, fertilizing, replacing the arbor, and redirecting the vines, but I worried about it every time I went past. Why aren’t you blooming? What’s wrong with you? What am I doing wrong? Let me try one more thing, for one more year.

         But this is not what our gospel gardener says. The gardener says “Let it alone for one more year.” Let it rest. For one year. Let God do the work. See what happens. Let go.

         Resting in God is in fact, a form of repentance.

         Repentance means turning away from what separates us from our best, most holy and created selves.

         Repentance means being ready for God to intervene in our lives without warning, neither as reward nor as punishment.

         Repentance means learning we cannot earn God’s grace and favor.

         Repentance means turning around, turning to that place of knowing, really knowing, that God is the gardener in our lives.

In her commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, Sr. Joan Chittister writes:

“We cling to our own ways like snails to sea walls, inching along through life, hiding within ourselves, unconscious even of the nourishing power of the sea that is seeking to sweep us into wider worlds.”

What are our own ways, to which we cling with snail-like tenacity? Perhaps we cling to timidity or to pride like snails to sea walls. Maybe we cling to self-doubt, or misplaced efforts to control the uncontrollable, or apathy in the face of the opportunity to make a difference.

We struggle, I think, in our faith journey, with whether our God is a God of judgment or of love. The fig tree story illustrates the answer which is a good Anglican answer: yes, both. God judges the tree because it doesn’t bear fruit. God lets the tree alone for another year because it can bear fruit. We turn toward God, and God is there. Judgment exists because God is loving and God responds to injustice. Without God’s judgment, there is no good news for the poor and the oppressed.

I struggled a bit this week to come up with a title for today’s sermon. I decided to call it Love and Urgency.

In the chaos of our own time, our work is to stay as close to God as we can, to listen carefully to God’s call to respond to injustice where we see it, and to find our way to that response. It may be writing postcards, doubling down on prayer, handing out red cards to people who might be victims of harassment from immigration enforcement. Most of all, God calls us to stay together, steadfast in our own faith that our loving God has a heart for the poor and oppressed and, with us in God’s army, will not let them suffer forever.