Of Tragedies, Fig Trees and Vine Dressers
Exodus 3:1-8A,13-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9
Topics that have recently trended on Twitter and on many blogs include the Academy Awards, the resignation of Pope Benedict, and the arrest of Oscar Pistorius for murder.
If there were digital sources of news and commentary at the time of Jesus, I am sure the two incidents that Jesus speaks about in today’s Gospel would have trended to the top. The first was the killing of certain people in Galilee at the order of Pilate, the Roman Governor. Apparently, Pilate had them killed while they were offering animal sacrifices and then had their blood mingled with that of the animals. The second incident was the death of 18 people in the area of Siloam in Jerusalem. Their lives were suddenly taken as they were crushed to death by a falling tower.
Both incidents got people talking. They were the hot topics of the day. People were asking if those murdered by Pilate and those killed by the tower were in some way deserving of their fate because of their sins. You see, the Jews at the time believed that if something bad happened to someone, it was God’s Will, and that person must have sinned, and what he or she suffered was a deserved punishment from God.
The fact is, even in our contemporary world, we sometimes think the same way, don’t we? When a meteor exploded near Chelyabinsk, Russia, right after Pope Benedict XVI announced he was resigning from the papacy, immediately people start saying, “God is angry.” The same was said when Hurricane Sandy devastated the New York tri-state area. We deserved it, of course; New York City being the modern equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah. AIDS is the punishment from God for sexual immorality. And the reason I suffer from cancer is because of the sins of my past life.
When I was growing up on Long Island and a parishioner at St. Raphael’s in East Meadow, there was an endearing elderly couple, Charlie and Grace McNally, who attended the 7:00am mass every day. Charlie and Grace were former school teachers and never had any children. One Lenten season, Grace fell down the front steps of the church one morning as she was leaving mass and broke her hip during the fall.
She had immediate surgery, but something went wrong and within a few days, she died. Our parish priest, Fr. Whelan, stood by her husband Charlie’s side during the entire wake and was amazed at what he heard as people passed by to offer their sympathy.
One person told the grieving widower, "God must have had a plan for this, so you have to simply accept it." Another said, "It was God's will and we must live by it." Still another said, "Somehow God planned this to test your faith!!" And another said, "There is a sliver lining in every cloud. You will find God's reason behind this eventually."
Clearly, these were people struggling to deal with their pain and wanting to offer the husband some sense of hope in the face of his loss, but Fr. Whelan left the funeral home filled with a very strong sense of anger at what he called the "babbling" he heard that evening.
So he went back to the rectory and rewrote the beginning of his funeral homily. Now it started with these words, "My God does not push old ladies down church steps!!!"
He then went on to explain that God is not responsible for all the brokenness of this world, adding that if God is the author of death, how can he be at the same time the author of life as shown through the resurrection? Fr. Whelan said that either God is the God of the living or the God of the dead. You can't have it both ways.
In today’s gospel, Jesus refuses to get drawn into the “blame game debate.” As to if the tragedies that concerned the people were the result of personal sinfulness, Jesus says, “You are horribly mistaken.” Or as verses 3 and 5 put it, “By no means.” Instead, he moves the conversation in another direction. He says that both incidents – one of horrible human cruelty and the other a random accident – remind us of the fragile nature of life and the uncertainty of our having a tomorrow. Since that is the case, we need to focus on our own sins and our own need for change and repentance. We need to use the time we have to turn from sin. If we do not, Jesus says, “You will all perish as they did.” Eternal death awaits the sinner.
To emphasize his point, Jesus tells the parable about a fig tree that hasn't borne any fruit for three years. The owner wants it destroyed. But the man in charge of cultivating and cutting and pruning appeals to the owner to spare the tree: "Sir, leave it one more year," he says, "and give me time to dig around it and manure it. It may bear fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.”
Repentance is what today’s gospel is all about. As a matter of fact, in a passage of only nine verses, Jesus says it twice: “Repent!” Do we think he was kidding? I don’t think so, because he goes on to tell us the consequences if we don’t. In the matter of repentance, it's so easy sometimes to find ways of avoiding responsibility. But, clever as we may be at covering up and rationalizing our misdeeds, the consequences are merely postponed -- never avoided. No amount of covering up can free us from the consequences of our actions.
Repentance begins deep within and turns life upside-down for us, and right side up for God. Repentance reverses our priorities, upsets our values, turns our pockets inside-out. Repentance shatters our systems of security and hangs us on the thin thread we call the "Will of God." Repentance revolts against the sin we have loved and reconciles us to God, whom we have not loved.
As dark as today’s gospel seems, there is good news in all of this. In the "Parable of the Fig Tree," Jesus seems to be assuring us that while repentance is a matter of spiritual life and death, nevertheless God is patient. We have a Father who is the Good Vine dresser. He is the God of second chances. He helps us to meet the conditions required for a return to Grace. Like the attentive vinedresser, He provides us with the nourishment we need for spiritual growth.
This Lent, the Lord grants us another opportunity to turn away from the sin and selfishness that infects our life and to bear fruit – to live as those good, generous, forgiving, compassionate people that God expects us to be and that we promised to be at our baptism.
Lent is a time to repent of our own sins, not the sins of others. Lent is a time to plow up the ground, prepare the soil, heap fertilizer onto our souls, seek the Lord's will and way, and trust in the Lord's love and forgiveness.
This is the only day, the only Lent, we have to do what God expects. The future is not certain for any of us. Just ask the victims of Pilate or those killed by the falling tower. Now that's a message worth tweeting!
