Sunday Musings at The Cottage provide a break from the news, starting each week with short and surprising reflections on scripture passages, poems, or quotes from books. This Lent, I’m focusing on the lectionary readings (used by many Protestants and Roman Catholics) from the Gospels on the life of Jesus. Sunday Musings go to the entire community of both free and paid subscribers.
I finished this week’s Sunday Musing a bit earlier than usual — so you’re getting this one on Saturday!
The Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent has too often been used by Christians as a story about Jews who fail to accept Jesus — and has lend to all sorts anti-Semitic uses. An alternative reading (one quite popular with American fundamentalists) is that the story is of “turn or burn” Christianity. Today’s lectionary text made me want to run with a different option! Nevertheless, here we go . . .
Luke 13:1-9
At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 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 others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
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. So he said to the gardener, '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?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
Whenever I hear this odd story from Luke, I think about the years I lived in Santa Barbara, California where fig trees are both huge and plentiful. One of my favorite old fig trees was at the Mission. In the middle of their graveyard, the twisted trunk of an ancient fig had grown wide and tall, a fruited canopy for the dead. Tomb and tree — a study in spiritual contrasts.
That’s what today’s story is — a study in spiritual contrasts. And it is the third in a series of Lenten foils regarding power: first, control versus dependence; second, revenge versus vulnerability; and this week, violence versus forbearance.
The most obvious thing about the texts from the first three weeks of Lent? They are political. There’s no avoiding it. Basically, this reading is Jesus responding to the front page of the Jerusalem Times.
The first Lent text clearly described Caesar’s empire of bread, power, and protection — complete with Satan tempting Jesus with a vision of the earthly kingdoms. The second began with Herod plotting to assassinate Jesus, and Jesus’s dismissive response to the threat. And, today, the text features Pilate — dreaded, hated Pilate — the governor so brutal that the Emperor Tiberius removed him from office and recalled him to Rome to be put on trail for a genocidal attack on a Samaritan village.
Caesar. Herod. Pilate. The Unholy Trinity of Roman imperialism.
Luke begins this selection with two news stories that everybody was talking about — the murder of Galileans at the Temple and the collapse of a tower on eighteen people. In the first instance, Pilate had Galilean pilgrims killed in the Temple courtyard, and their blood mixed (either figuratively or actually) with ritual sacrificial blood there, a shocking defilement of both these particular Jews and the Temple itself.
The second episode, the tower collapse, may have been related to Pilate’s great project at the time — the construction of a new aqueduct. Pilate had pillaged Jerusalem’s treasury to build it and had (mostly likely) used slave labor to make it happen. The people in Jerusalem rioted against him. And some historians have suggested that the tower collapse may have been an act of sabotage either by Pilate (to keep the workers in line) or angry Jews in an attempt to stop the entire thing (in which case, it would have involved political suicide).
As humans are prone to do, people wanted to place blame. The Galileans, the eighteen — they’d come up against Rome and lost. Did the dead deserve their fate? Rebellion resulted in death. Roman justice after all. Maybe Pilate got his point across. Maybe the citizens of Jerusalem were terrified into submission.
That is, after all, what empire does — theft, enslavement, murder, defilement. These two events reveal the very nature of imperial violence.
Maybe that’s why Jesus wants his hearers to repent. Jesus doesn’t think that their personal sin caused this — no one is more or less of an offender than any of those who died. No one, in this sense, deserved to die. People just die, especially people held in thrall by violent kingdoms of this world. Because that’s what every Rome in human history always does — kills in order to survive. And Jesus surely doesn’t desire revenge.
Instead, we need to “repent” of collaborating with Roman violence, repent of giving in to kingdoms built on injustice, repent of blaming victims for their suffering, and repent of believing that the murderous power of empire is the only power. But how? How do we do that without becoming like Rome? Can we resist empire without giving violence for violence?
Answering these implied questions, Jesus tells a story. He contrasts the murderous reign of Pilate to the garden with an unfruitful fig tree. The owner of the vineyard orders the gardener to cut down the barren tree. Perhaps the gardener secretly welcomed the idea of destroying the landowner’s tree. But instead of taking an ax to the tree, the gardener begs, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”
Did you know that trees have legal rights in Judaism? That’s right — it is called orlah and it forbids eating the fruit of newly planted trees during their first three years of life. Orlah is drawn from Leviticus 19:23-25:
When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall regard their fruit as forbidden; for three years it shall be forbidden to you; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all their fruit shall be set apart for rejoicing in the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that their yield may be increased for you: I am the Lord your God.
Christians tend to read the impatient landowner as God — and Jesus assuaging God’s wrath against Israel with a plea for divine patience.
But that’s ridiculous. No Jew hearing Jesus’ parable could have thought that the landowner was God. Because God won’t break God’s own law about trees and fruit.
The landowner isn’t an angry God. The landowner is Caesar. The landowner is Herod. The landowner is Pilate. The landowner is all these murderers — those who destroy people and trees — the breakers of the Law, profiteers at the expense of God’s creation, effectivity the rapists of the land of milk and honey.
Jesus contrasts their rage with another vision — the land isn’t “wasted.” The land is holy. The land needs tending, patience, and care. Trees take time to grow and fruit. The goodness of the Law knows this. The Law not only governs human relations but the very life of creation, the contours of God’s kingdom.
It is almost as if Jesus was saying, “The Kingdom of God is like a vineyard of young trees. A wicked ruler seized the land and tried to cut down all the trees because they were not profitable. They added no treasure to his stores; he was eager for the wealth the land would produce. But the faithful gardeners refused to wield the ax. Instead, they protected the trees as their wisdom taught, they enriched the land, and they trusted the trees would fruit. The Kingdom of God is like that — a vineyard worked with patience and manure.”
Therein is the moral of the story: Caesar’s empire is impatient for power — built on theft, enslavement, death, and defilement; God’s kingdom is that of patience for healing — established in the giftedness and generosity of creation, tended with faithful service, growing new life, and fruitful. The first clears the land and ends in death; the second tends and trusts divine fecundity.
I know you are angry and want to destroy Pilate, Jesus affirmed the horror felt by his followers. Resist Caesar; resist every empire. But don’t meet Caesar’s violence with more violence. Instead, remember the Law. Remember the slow work of God’s kingdom.
The third Sunday in Lent once again says that there is a choice to be made. Are we citizens of Caesar’s empire or God’s?
Tomb or trees?
INSPIRATION
Put your hands into the mire
They will learn the kinship
of the shaped and the unshapen,
the living and the dead.
— Wendell Berry
We are really and truly one, one humanity with a shared fate, one with the natural cycles of life, one with the living and the dead. Only as we plunge our hands into the manure do we find kinship with God, our neighbors, and our deepest selves.
— Diana Butler Bass (from an unpublished sermon preached six years ago on this same text)
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
— Song of Solomon 2:13
Therefore keep the commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing.
— Deuteronomy 8:6-9a
The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payment for offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace. The kingdom is a way of living, not in eternity, but in time, a way of living with out why, living for the day, like the lilies the field–figures of weak forces — as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk. The kingdom reigns whenever the least and most undesirable our favor all the best and most powerful or put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails when ever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn.
— John Caputo
START YOUR SUMMER RIGHT!
SOUTHERN LIGHTS CONFERENCE
May 27 - 29, 2022
Epworth By The Sea
St. Simon Island, Georgia
For 17 years, Southern Lights: An Adventure In Progressive Christianity (formerly January Adventure) has encouraged attendees to think more deeply about their faith and live their lives as followers of Jesus in today's fast-changing world.
This year Southern Lights will be hosted and led by me and Brian McLaren and features Anthea Butler and Kaitlin Curtice with special musical guests Odessa Settles, Solveig Leithaug, and Ken Medema.
You can register to attend the event live or watch it virtually in the comfort of your own home. Either way, all registrants will also have access to stream the event until July 15, 2022, so you can re-watch your favorite sessions.
For more information and to register CLICK HERE.
Now in Paperback!
ORDER YOUR COPY HERE: Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence.
A 2021 best of the year in Spirituality and Practice, Englewood Review, and So What Faith. The book that Christian Century called “Diana Butler Bass’ Love Letter to Jesus.”
A PRAYER FOR UKRAINE:
O Lord, God of life, as you care for all creation, give us your peace. May our security come not from weapons, but from respect. May our strength come not from violence, but from love. May our own wealth come not from money, but from sharing.
May our path be not one of ambition, but of justice. May our victory not be one of revenge, but of forgiveness. Unarmed and confident, help us to defend the dignity of all creation. Sharing today and always the bread of solidarity and peace.
Amen.
(from Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)
Clearly, assuming Jesus told this parable or it isn't completely pulled out of context, God is not the owner. And, in any case, something else is going on. I read Luke with its penchant for smoothing things over in a world which is going to be around for a while. I think Jesus was against the zealot movement and warned it was doomed to disaster.
Fantastic insight! Thank you