God's Grooming

 

Text: Luke 13:1-9

Focus: repentance

Function: to help people see how God enables us to be faithful.

13:¹At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. ²He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?³No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. ⁴Or 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? ⁵No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.”

⁶Then 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. ⁷So 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?’ ⁸He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”

Good morning the beloved of God.

We are in Lent still and again, our passage speaks to us about God’s judgment.

It is heavy. However, I believe it is important to understand the purpose of what we call God’s judgment. God is Love and God loves us because we are God’s offspring. And just as parents are entrusted with the raising of their own children and teaching them values, respect, faith, honor and encouragement so that they can succeed in life, God is a loving parent who wants the same for us.

When we hear the word judgment, we cringe a little because we have falsely equated judgment with revenge. God does not take revenge on us and God, if God ever was, is no longer concerned with revenge since the judgment for sin was carried out on God’s own self through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus on the cross.

God is concerned with our well being and development. God has given us the Spirit so that we can thrive in God’s love. We thrive by faith, trusting and resting in God’s love for us.

By faith, we thrive in God’s love.

That is another reason why it is important for me to preach God’s love and our responsibility to respond with love toward others.

God believes in us and wants us to thrive.

So, the passage has Jesus talking about tragedies that have happened and the fact that God permitted them to happen. One was an accident, a tower collapsed, the other was oppression, Pilate, the Roman Governor over them, polluted their worship with an act of terror designed to suppress the crowd. Only, it isn’t called terror when it is State sponsored.

I surmise the question to Jesus was why this was permitted to happen.

And Jesus responds with the implication that God could have stopped it and he reminds them that death and tragedy reminds us to focus on God and our own well being.

Tragedies like this serve as reminders to be drawn close to God. We shudder when we think of what happened to Juanita Maloon, and again in the shuddering our focus is brought back to God.

That is what is happening here in this story, and the Jesus’ response is not the promise that bad stuff will not happen, but that through it all, we are restored by God.

Then he uses another word that has sometimes been given a negative connotation. He tells them that they need to repent.

But don’t worry, it literally means to change direction, or more specifically, to allow your mind to be changed by the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Believers are open minded to the leading of the Spirit. They give up this system of retribution and revenge and embrace love and forgiveness.

Jesus is telling them to make the decision to follow in his way of living and loving others. He is telling us to follow after his teachings when they contradict the values given to us by the evil influences in the world around us.

So let me put this in the context of how I would have interpreted it had I heard it right then back in the first century of this common era. I would have interpreted it like this: Follow this new way of life, it flows from God’s Spirit and it will heal and restore you to the path of a life lived to the fullest of what God intended for you.

Now I appreciate how the designers of the Lectionary text included the metaphor about the fig tree in context with this passage that mentions judgment and restoration.

He speaks of a tree that is not doing well and the commitment of the gardener to make it thrive.

God’s commitment to us is to help us thrive through the leading of the Spirit in our lives.

And because it is Lent, we are going to let it stand that at the end, there is the possibility that after the extra care is done and the tree fails that it will be discarded as the parable implies.

But I can’t see God discarding any of God’s children. Jesus lets the tension stand here in this passage so that we can sort out the necessity of this concept that we make the decision to let the Spirit lead in our lives.

We choose whether or not to let the Spirit lead us.

And just as we pray and recommit our trust to God every week when we repeat the Lord’s prayer for God to give us what we need each day, Our Daily Bread, this choosing to follow is a daily exercise.

I suggest that we wake up in the morning and sometime during those wee hours of waking we recommit ourselves to walking in the grace and love and mercy of God that day.

It is a day by day process. Just as Alcoholics Anonymous does, we are refreshed and reminded by this text to choose for ourselves to let God lead us throughout the day.

God wants us to thrive and sends the Spirit to encourage and empower us.

Although the possibility of failure exists, we can succeed because God is faithful and committed to our success.

Trusting in God to help us, to nurture our own fig trees of life, is living by faith in the power of God. God leads us to that place where our minds decide to love like Christ did in our reaction to the evil that is around us.

So, this is about trials and it reminds us to keep our eyes focused on the love of God during these trials. God is committed to aiding us through the Spirit inside of us.