Luke 13:1-9
Year C
Third Sunday in Lent
As an online college instructor, I would hear from students daily, sometimes hourly, with requests for in-person consultations and immediate feedback. In response, I came up with an idea to meet students’ needs in a way that didn’t completely take over my schedule. I would hold “online office hours” and offer immediate e-mail feedback during a specific time.
When the time came, I poured my afternoon coffee and sat at my desk imagining students diligently crafting their final essays. I smiled, imagining their gratitude as their attentive instructor immediately responded to any questions they had. I could almost hear the deluge of alerts: *Ding* New message from a student! *Ding* Response from the instructor! I wondered if I would need to extend these hours to accommodate the demand.
I drank coffee and I waited. 30 minutes passed: no messages. I checked my internet connection. An hour passed: no messages. I turned up my computer volume to make sure I would hear the first *Ding*. I finished my coffee. More time passed. I was playing a game on my phone when online office hours ended with a grand total of zero e-mails.
You could say that the fig tree of my “online office hours” bore no fruit.
Rather than cut the fig tree down, I was determined! I dug around and fertilized it and would come back to it! I sent a course-wide email explaining the benefits of utilizing this opportunity and offered online office hours again before the final exam. Again, no one showed, and there was not a single *Ding*.
I decided that the next semester, I would not offer this opportunity. I cut down the fig tree and sought better use for the soil.
Many of us have had our own fruitless fig trees — good ideas that we imagined would do great good but, for one reason or another, failed to yield fruit. Someone may have even suggested that our fig tree was wasting the soil. Nevertheless, we were driven by hope to “let it alone for one more year,” to dig and fertilize, and give the tree one last chance. Eventually, though, we had to use the land, the time, and the energy for something else.
Jesus’ parable of the barren fig tree in Luke 13 comes after a much more serious discussion of repentance and perishing. Some people came to Jesus concerned about a current event – possibly a violent act in a place of worship. Pilate had mingled some Galileans blood with their sacrifices. Jesus responds, “Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you.” Jesus then reminds them of 18 people who died in a tragic accident when a tower fell on them, asking, “Do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.”
But in response to these tragedies, Jesus tells those who are listening twice that “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did”: unexpectedly with all kinds of issues unresolved. He is pointing out a different type of tree that is not bearing fruit — the tree of judging those who perished. Rather than try to determine whether these tragedies were some kind of divine punishment, Jesus tells the people to look inward and look around, seemingly asking them whether they might be sinners or they may have committed offences. If they have, Jesus tells them to repent.
Repentance means turning away from those things that do not lead us towards abundant life in Christ, things that do not lead us to bear fruit. So this section of Luke tells us:
Turn from sin and towards new, abundant life in Christ.
Be empowered by the Spirit to bear fruit.
Do what you can to create the conditions for growth.
Don’t be afraid to change course if your good work is not bearing fruit.
Questions for reflection on Luke 13:1-9:
- Have you ever been disappointed when a good idea didn’t bear fruit? How did you react? Did you give it another shot? Another year? Were you able to move on to another pursuit?
- When tragedies happen, they do sometimes cause us to engage in self-reflection, to honestly assess our lives and what we might want – or need – to change. What are other ways to respond to tragedies that may be beyond our control?
View the corresponding Order of Worship for the Third Sunday in Lent
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