Tag: repentance

The fig tree and the landlord

David Herbert1 Comment

A reflection for the 3rd Sunday in Lent (Year C) focusing on the parable of the fig tree. The readings for the day are Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9

The gospel writers give us two parables of Jesus featuring fig trees. He may have used more. The two we’ve got teach different lessons. In one, the fig tree is cursed. In the other the fig tree is spared. The fig tree (featured in Mark 11:12-14, 20-25 and Matthew 21:18-22) is cursed by Jesus for not bearing fruit. In the other, from Luke’s gospel, the parable which is our good news for today, the fruitless fig tree is given a time of grace. 

Our other reading from Isaiah (55:1-9) culminates with these words of the Lord: “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways”.

How are we going to bring these two passages of scripture together and bring them to life today?

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” A good question for us to be asking is “How?” How do my ways differ from the Lord’s ways? How does our thinking differ? These are good questions for self-examination, particularly during Lent which is a season given us for repentance, for changing our minds, attitudes and behaviour.

There is a distinction drawn. “My ways are not your ways …..”

The distinction is graphically illustrated by Jesus in today’s parable. It’s our Lord telling a story about another lord, a landlord – and we can read between those few lines of the parable the thought of the Lord: “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Let’s look at the difference between one lord and the other and try to unpack a parable which takes up so little page room that it is easy to skate over it. But small is beautiful and less is more – such is the rule of God’s kingdom.

The difference is in their respective responses to fruitlessness, and their different relationships to the fig tree.

The owner of the vineyard, the landlord, had a fig tree growing in the vineyard.
He keeps coming back to the vineyard to see if there were any figs on the tree.
Time and time again he did this.
For three years he kept checking up, and then he ran out of patience.
Cut it down, he said.

Here is a man with authority who can say to his servant, do this, do that.
He gives the orders. He doesn’t dirty his own hands.
His servant is the one who took care of the vineyard.
He is the one who does the work.
If there’s cutting down to be done, he’s the one who will do it – the owner isn’t going to get involved in that dirty work.

So, here the picture is building up of this landowner-boss, who comes from time to time to check up on his investments, to check up on his interests.
His interest is what matters to him.
It’s all about him.
It’s his vineyard, but he’s away from it most of the time.
His is a remote control. He’s distant and disconnected.
It’s his fig tree, and it’ll be his profit if the fig tree were to give a fig.

We won’t blame the landowner.
We won’t call him wicked.
His behaviour is normal.
This is what happens in the real world.
His order makes perfect sense to our thinking.

Of course, we are not surprised that the landlord wants to cut the plant down.
We know that is the way of the world governed by money, profit and vested interests.
We are seeing that in our current economic crisis with cuts to welfare.
The way of the world is to cut down the fruitless and profitable, so that the fruitless and unprofitable make way for something that will be productive.
The ways of the world measure us in productivity and fruitfulness.
The less productive and fruitful we are the more vulnerable we become to cuts.

But is this the only way? Must fruitlessness always be met with destruction and condemnation?

There’s the landlord. 

Now let’s explore how different the one who actually took care of the vineyard.
We need to make a judgement between them otherwise Jesus has told the parable in vain.

In the words from our Isaiah passage we can play the question whether the thoughts of the caretaker are the same as the thoughts of the landlord.
Do they think the same?
Are the ways of the caretaker higher than the landlord?
Is his thinking higher than the thinking fo the landlord – “as the heavens are higher than the earth”?

The one who took care of the vineyard is the caretaker.
He is the one who is always there, working the vineyard day to day, spending his time and energy, rooted in the earth and tied up with the vines, the figs and all the challenges they face.
He’s the one who takes care of the vineyard for the landlord who takes care of his pocket.

(If you want to play with words again, our word care, originates from the Old English caru and cearu (meaning “sorrow, anxiety, grief”), ultimately stemming from the Proto-Germani karo (meaning lament, sorrow) and potentially tracing back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to cry out, shout”. Just ask Google!

The word cure came to us through French after the Norman Conquest, and ultimately derives from the Latin word cura, meaning care.

The caretaker, the one who takes care of the vineyard, is the curator.
I’m labouring this point because you are in your vacancy of praying for a new priest – someone the Book of Common Prayer calls curate who will have the cure of souls in these parishes, a curate who will spend her/his time and energy in the day to day care for the vineyard round here,
someone who will join you in caring for those around you,
someone who will sorrow and grieve with you for how things are for those who are hurt and suffer the cuts of those who don’t care so much,
someone who will join you in lament, crying out and shouting about pain, injustice and suffering,
someone like the caretaker in Jesus’ parable who speaks up for the doomed fig tree,

someone who knows better ways for the world, someone who will think differently to the world …

Through the caretaker’s pleas we see the heart of our Lord Jesus.
Where the world rushes to judgement, Jesus intercedes for grace.
Here’s the difference between the landlord and our Lord.
The reason Jesus was sent into the world was to save us, not condemn us.
God is slow to condemn – with God there is always the period of grace, another season for the caretaker to do his work.

So, which lord will we follow?
Will we stand with the landlord in judgement, or with the caretaker in mercy?

Jesus wants us to follow him.
He wants us to join him to save the world
He wants our ways of thinking and our patterns of behaviour to be passionate in our care during this hard won season of grace.

If we follow Christ we will see the fruits of his patience.
We will see lives restored and hope rekindled,
and after the season is done, the caretaker, our Lord will say to the landlords:
“See this, the fruit of your planting, the harvest of this season of grace.
See the compassion, see the harvest.”

What should we do? Everybody’s asking according to Luke

David HerbertLeave a comment

This sermon is for the 3rd Sunday in Advent (C) prompted by a question everyone seems to be asking in Luke. The question being what should we do? It’s prepared for two small churches I’m helping out in a vacancy. The gospel reading is Luke 3:7-18 (the text is at the end of the post).
December 15th 2024

What should we do? That question keeps cropping up.

Three times we hear that question in today’s reading. Luke pictures three audiences of John the Baptist. There’s the “the crowds”, there’s the “tax collectors” and there’s “the soldiers”. Each of those audiences ask the same question. “What should we do?”

Before being specific John had already told them to bear fruits worthy of repentance while also saying they couldn’t take their place in God’s kingdom for granted just because they had Abraham as their ancestor. They needed to repent.

“What should we do?” It’s a question which keeps cropping up in Luke/Acts. As well as the crowd, the tax collectors and the soldiers featured in today’s gospel, it’s a question asked by:

  • A lawyer asking “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25)
  • A rich man worrying about his abundant crops, “what should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” (Luke 12:17)
  • An unscrupulous agent  getting sacked: “what will I do, now that my master is taking the position from me?” (Luke 16:3)
  • A rich ruler asking Jesus “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18)
  • The owner of the vineyard asks “what shall I do?” (Luke 20:13)
  • The Jews in Jerusalem for Pentecost asking the disciples “what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37)
  • A jailer asking Paul and Silas (what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30)
  • Saul (aka Paul) asking Jesus “What am I to do Lord” (Acts 22:10)

I list these examples to highlight how important this question is to the people of God. The same question asked time and again through Luke/Acts: “What should I do?” And every time the answer comes back that they have to do things differently, and radically so. 

Significantly the question crops up at the beginning of both volumes of Luke’s work. It’s there in today’s gospel, and it’s there at the beginning of Acts. John the Baptist answers the question in the gospel. Peter answers the question in Acts.

John’s answer is that they should bear fruits worthy of repentance. Peter’s answer is that they should be baptised, and that day, 3,000 were, and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. Luke comments: “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” In other words, here were people bearing fruits worthy of repentance.

I’m sure that Luke wanted this question to hang over all his readers. Why else would he keep repeating it? What should we do?

What should we do to count in the kingdom of God where the rule is to love God wholeheartedly, to love our neighbour as ourselves (whether we are like them or not) and to realise that those who come last in the ways of the world, and those who are counted least come first, and those usually first, come last?

Repentance means that we make a turn in our lives, that we turn ourselves round from self-ishness, self-satisfaction, self-absorption and self indulgence so that we see God and our neighbours face to face. Repentance means turning back, re-turning to where we started – loved by God from the beginning. Repentance means we change our ways and our minds with the result that we will do things very differently and see one another very differently.

I was saying last week that we might have focused so much on our forgiveness that we don’t see anything wrong with us. We might feel that we have done little wrong. But there are those we’ve wronged, those we’ve hurt, those we’ve taken advantage of, those we’ve demeaned and those we’ve neglected – and those who are frightened of us. Yes, the question is for us too. What are we to do?

I’ve looked at the three groups of people featured in today’s gospel. They have something in common. They are all potentially menacing, dangerous and harmful. The soldiers were obviously in a position where they could extort money by threats, could take backhanders and could blackmail people – and many probably did. Woe betide their vulnerable victims. John tells them to be satisfied with their wages and not to extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation.

The tax-collectors were obviously in a position where they could collect more in tax and make money for themselves at the expense of people who were reduced to poverty by the excessive triple tax demands of empire, state and temple. Woe betide you if you were on the wrong side of the tax-collector. Remember Zacchaeus. He admitted to Jesus that he’d wronged people – and in penitence offered to repay what he’d wrongly taken four times over. John tells the tax-collectors to collect no more than is their due.

Then there’s the crowd. How menacing is the crowd. How quickly can a crowd turn nasty by a single word, or a rumour? How toxic can groupthink be – how fearful it can be – and how demeaning and controlling the supposed crowd can be. You know when you’re told “everyone is saying”, “everyone thinks”, “everyone knows” that the virtual crowd has your back against the wall. Even when Christians say “Christians believe in x, y or z” when they know not all Christians do – that is crowd behaviour designed to intimidate and control others into conformity.

The crowd is the place to hide in. The crowd is what we follow so often. The crowd is what condemned Jesus – one day praising him and the next cursing him. The way John tells them to change is to be kind and generous: “whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise”.

So, what should we do? What does repentance mean for us? It means we have to keep changing, changing our minds, our attitudes and our behaviours. And there is no place better to start than with our gospel reading.

We’ve noted how dangerous and harmful those three groups are – and why. The crowd, the tax-collectors, the soldiers were all people that those who come first in the kingdom of God – the last and the least – the most vulnerable are the most likely to be a major cause of their suffering. In other words, they were their enemies.

But watch what Luke does with them in the telling of his gospel. He shows that they’re not written off. He shows that they are capable of repentance. He shows them redeemed. They (at least some of them) come to be saved and become “true children of Abraham”. 

Here is one of the “enemy”.

Several soldiers feature in Luke’s writing. There was the centurion who asked Jesus for help whose faith, Jesus said, was like the faith he’d ever seen in Israel. It was one of the centurions at the crucifixion who stood out from the crowd  who praised God for Jesus believing “certainly this man was innocent.” (23:47) And right at the end of Luke’s work it was a soldier who stood up against his fellow soldiers to spare Paul’s life after their ship had run aground off the shores of Malta. (Acts 27:42, 43).

Here are some of the enemy.

Luke can even demonstrate the repentance of the crowd, those thousands who heard the word from Peter at Pentecost. They repented and produced fruits worthy of repentance. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. They were united and held everything in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and share the proceeds as any had need.

Here was a crowd to love. And Luke comments that they had “the goodwill of all the people”. The gospel of Luke is so inclusive. There is good news especially for our enemies. 

For that very reason we need to change the way we see our enemies.

What shall we do?

Here’s something we can do.
Those who can harm us,
those who can exploit us,
do not condemn them
with our fearful judgement
(dangerous though those enemies are).

Instead, leave a window open
for the word of God
which from the beginning
spreads the table
even with my enemies present
so making all things possible.

Yes, we’ve been drilled
to hate our enemies,
but don’t let that fool us
or crowd our minds
so we can’t see
the possibility of change.

The word made flesh
suffered all his enemies
could throw at him.
Every stone became a prayer
as the word of God

came near for us to hear
that word “Repent” and change.
It’s our turn to turn Jesus’ way.
That’s what we can do this day
love the enemies that come our way
till some turn the kingdom way, the only way
to save ourselves from ourselves.

Luke 3.7-18
7   John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
8  Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
9  Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’
10   And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’
11  In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’
12  Even tax-collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’
13  He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.’
14  Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.’
15   As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,
16  John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
17  His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’
18   So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.