When a fig tree is so much more!!! 

Karen Sloan - 23/03/2025

Reading - Luke 13:1-9 

What would I like to hear in a sermon? Particularly today.

Well after the last few weeks, with the things that have been happening around the world, I would want to hear something positive and meaningful about faith and our role in the wider world.  That’s what I would like to hear.

So this sermon is as much for me as for you all.

But to do that I think firstly we have to understand where we are in the 21st century.

What is it to be human today, for we have different versions of it.  One version can kill others randomly, and plant bombs on planes and cars and buildings because of an ideology that insists you are either for or against them.  A version that can destroy the nature world, deny freedom to people, and abuse an economic system for wealth and power. That leaves others in poverty for their own comfort.

Yet we also have a version of being human that displays caring and love amidst tragedy, that works for justice and peace, daily thinks of the other, and when needed responds with compassion to those suffering.  A version that supports the weakest, the poor and the marginalised.

We see it every day, I am sure we have seen it this week, this contrast between the evil and the good in the world, yet both are driven by people, sometimes the same people.  People with a history, with ideas and beliefs, and with relationships that can be either positive or negative. Sometimes it is driven by faith, depending on how the faith is interpreted.  God can be the saviour or the destroyer. 

How are we to find a way forward.

Let’s find our starting point. I believe wholeheartedly in a God who doesn’t come to judge, who doesn’t send vengeance because we have sinned or are bad people.  Who does not sit outside of humanity, flaying those who have not done the right thing, whatever that is.  Rather I  believe in a God who is with us, shares our burdens and fills our souls with hope and light.  A Spirit who is life giving rather than life destroying.  Who even in our darkest hour is ever present.

We live in the 21st century and bad things happen to good, peaceful and loving people.  And to neglectful, crazy, mean and sometimes awful people as well. 

And today this is what the scriptures says, what Jesus says.

It is poignant that in the reading from Luke Jesus is told some distressing news from Jerusalem.  Soldiers are believed to have killed some Galileans within the temple area while they were in the very act of offering sacrifices.  The horror of the scene is captured in the words, Pilate mixed their blood with the blood of their sacrifices.  Seems too close to home, doesn’t it?

What about the next incident, an accident at Siloam, a pool or water reservoir near the walls of Jerusalem. The tower probably overlooked the pool.  Pilate ordered the construction of an aqueduct to upgrade the water supply, but people have died building it.

Two events, one murderous, one an accident, both shocking.  But neither is God’s doing! Jesus asks, do you think they were any more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem, I tell you no!  What about Pilates actions, they are not Gods!!! He is not acting under God’s authority.

Even in the Old Testament, while Proverbs contains the idea that the righteous are rewarded and the sinners punished, we have the book of Job, to counteract this. Job, a fine upstanding Jew still ends up on the ash heap.  Because life can be hard and suffering plentiful regardless of what we do or not do.

We know this, but often people, in terrible situations revert back to the idea that they must have done something wrong, that God was punishing them for their wrongdoing, even though it is not clear what it is!

And I have plenty of chaplaincy moments that reflect this.  People who believed they were not worthy of God, had made too much money, or somehow had let him down and thats why this terrible thing has happened to them or their loved one.

An awful idea to place on the loving, ever present spirit of life, who even in our darkest hour is ever present. Jesus completely rejects this interpretation here as he does elsewhere in the gospels.

But neither does that let us off the hook completely!

Because there is more to today’s reading than this.

Sometimes we are required to take responsibility for things that happen.  Sometimes we are required to open our eyes, and change our ways, least we make things worse.  Sometimes we need to repent, which actually means to turn around, or at least think again about what we are doing.

For in the reading we also hear about a fig tree, the parable of a fig tree. Remember Jesus always used earthy images for his parables, as Richard said last week, because he was a human being.  Living in a time of great suffering.

Jesus presents us with an image of a fig tree, one that is not doing so well.   But the gardener is persistent, let it keep growing he says, even after 3 years, let’s tend it, let’s work on it. To see if it will bear fruit. Jesus calls the people listening to him to repent using the image of the fig tree as a guide. We can all turn things around if we try.

So it’s not that Jesus thinks that we are above having to repent, for the image we hear in Luke is used in Matthew after the temple moneychangers have been expelled by Jesus.  In Matthew the fig tree shrivels the next day.  In Luke we are given more time to get our act together.   But it is not that we are judged by an external deity, ready to reap vengeance. Rather, in Jesus eyes, we are judged by those around us, we are judged by what happens to the least of these, we are judged by the lack of care we take for human and non-human alike.  And our judgement will be seen in the way our societies work and our world suffers. 

 In other words, what we do does matter. It matters a lot! 

So  what should we do?  Remember this is a sermon as much for me as for you.

I think we have to tend our garden of love, and compassion and inclusion, nurture and fertilize  it.  Find out what gives life to us and to others and follow it.  Even when it’s pretty hard. 

And even when, on occasion, we have to reflect on what we are doing, and not doing as the case may be, and make some adjustments along the way. It’s okay to have to be reminded of the path and way we are following.

For if we are to change the world, even our little corner of it, its with God’s love, not vengeance.

Amen