Time to Bear Fruit – Luke 13:1-9

A text – Luke 13:1-9

13:1  At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

13:2  He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?

13:3  No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did.

13:4  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?

13:5  No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.”

13:6  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.

13:7  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?’

13:8  He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.

13:9  If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.'”

A reflection:

Three things are happening in this passage of the Gospel of Luke.

People are talking about recent sudden tragedies that happened to citizens of Galilee and Jerusalem. It might have been natural for folks talking with Jesus to assume these sudden victims were killed because of their awful sins. But Jesus does not let them go there. He says they were NOT being punished for their sins. He is saying that God doesn’t work that way. But he is also saying that just because we haven’t been wiped out in a sudden horrible event, we can’t ignore our own capacity to be sinners.

So the first two things happening in this passage are people talking about fatal tragedies, and Jesus teaching that God doesn’t punish extra bad sinners by wiping them out in obvious events.

But then Jesus does the third thing. He seizes the teachable moment and tells the parable of the fig tree. He sets up the conditions of the story – the owner waiting and waiting for the tree to bear fruit, being angry when it doesn’t and ordering its destruction, and the gardener begging for another season to give it every advantage and see what happens. The passage ends there. We, like the crowd around Jesus, are in suspense. Well, does the tree bear fruit or doesn’t it?

We have not been suddenly massacred by a tyrant. We have not had a tower fall upon us. We are sinners, like every other mortal, but we have yet another season to do what every fig tree is supposed to do: bear fruit. The question this passage makes me ask is this one: What kind of fruit are we bearing? In this world where there are disasters everywhere, what kind of fruit are we bearing? In these times when there is chaos and hate flying around us, what kind of fruit are we bearing? Even in the face of our own mortality, even though we are naturally going to fail and miss the mark, what kind of fruit are we bearing right now, while we have the chance to do so?

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for your gift of life and time, for our awareness of our failing and our time for repentance and fruit-bearing. Help us to be fig trees doing what we were created to do.  Amen.