Abstract
People die unexpectedly. We open the morning papers or look at the news websites and stories of deaths, some expected and others unexpected, abound. The crowds in this Sunday’s gospel talk to Jesus about two recent fatal events in Jerusalem. That these events are otherwise unattested should not worry us. Why should our scanty and ill-organized records from that era preserve such a mention?
Pilate, known for his somewhat brutal administration, had some Galileans killed. The Galileans were in Jerusalem ostensibly for prayer, but the suspicion must have been that they were intent on armed rebellion. Did they deserve death any more than anyone else in Jerusalem who did not approve of Pilate’s rule? The eighteen people killed by the falling tower of Siloam, perhaps the victims of property speculation or shoddy builders, did they deserve to die?
Sometimes, and often partly semi-consciously, we think that some people deserve to die more than others. The deceased were sinners, they deserved to die. We, on the other hand, deserve to live another day. Our sins are not that bad really. Jesus will have none of this. The Galileans may, in an official Roman understanding, have deserved to die when they engaged in sedition. The passers-by under the collapsing tower were just going about their own business. Whatever way, the message of Jesus is; don’t dwell on their sins, real or imputed. Instead dwell on our sins. And repent! Repent now!
So Jesus tells us about the fig-tree in the vineyard. It is mature enough to produce fruit but it hasn’t. Cut it down, get rid of it, kill it. Some other tree, more useful, more fruitful, can occupy that space in the vineyard. However the owner is persuaded by the gardener, leave it another year. He will manure it. He will tend it. Delay judgment until next year. Perhaps it will bear fruit, even if somewhat delayed.
I can’t help thinking about the physical setting for the parable. Is this vineyard, also a place of pleasure, a garden in some sense? A place where the owner and family may relax, rather than yet another area of a prosperous slave-run agribusiness. The vineyard then should be a place of delight and fruitfulness. So the barren fig tree is out of place, useless, abhorrent to view. Either be fruitful or be replaced with something else that is fruitful, so that the vineyard may flourish and be a delight.
Lent is a time for repentance. A time for examining our lives and asking if we have failed. Failed to love God? Failed to love our neighbour? In Lent we start usually by hearing about the temptations of Jesus, Jesus at his most clearly human. We also hear of the transfiguration, Jesus revealed as fully divine. This is the same Jesus, who invited the crowds in Galilee to repent, who invited us to repent. We are not to wallow in our sinfulness but, with God’s grace, repent, turn to the light, and walk on, radiant in God’s love. We are not to dwell on the apparent sinfulness of others, rather repent of our own sins and be a fruitful part of this vineyard of delight, this vineyard of the Lord.
The unnamed follower of Isaiah (or whoever) in the first reading today, invited people, invited us, to eat and drink without charge. Strange words for a people in exile where everything, even clean water, must be paid for. The Word of the Lord is food that will satisfy us, rich food that will delight us. This is part of the prophet’s promise along with a glorious future. Our response is to seek the Lord, and for us, the wicked to forsake evil ways and evil thoughts. The wicked are not the others, they are us. We are not to remain unchallenged, sure of our own integrity. We must identify ourselves as needing to repent. The prophet continues that the Lord’s ways are higher, better, than our ways and His thoughts better than ours.
Yet we read such a passage as Christian people, a people who believe that God became incarnate for us and for our salvation. So by repenting, by choosing good and rejecting evil, we grow in faithfulness to God in whose image and likeness we are created. So our ways, through a life of increasing virtue, become more the ways of God. Our thoughts in parallel become more the merciful thoughts of God.
St Paul in I Corinthians challenged the believers at Corinth. They seem to have become overconfident about their integrity, their exercise of Christian freedom, and generally to have become smug in their lives and faith. Paul reminds them of the story of Exodus, of how their ancestors (in faith) had been baptised into Moses in the cloud, had eaten the spiritual food, had drunk of the rock of Christ, and yet most of them had sinned and had died in the wilderness. Their failure in the past was to be a warning to the Corinthians now. Watch and be careful now. Don’t be too confident of your own virtue. These Corinthians had fallen into same trap as the people listening to Jesus in Galilee a generation earlier. Repentance was for others, not for them. Being challenged about our life, our virtue is too uncomfortable. Much easier to assume others were sinful than to acknowledge our own failings.
However Paul also encourages the Corinthians that they will not be tested beyond their strength, and that they will always have a way out so that they can endure. I have sometimes heard this sentiment expressed by believers trying to console those in pain or suffering. Sometimes it can sound glib, insincere, and almost an attempt to belittle the suffering in front of them. Truly though, it is a powerful hope for God’s faithful, when combined with a life of faith and virtue, and its accompanying true knowledge of self accompanied by repentance.
The invitation of the prophet to eat and drink remains. We eat and drink at the Eucharist, Sunday by Sunday, food and drink for our journey. Paul carries on a couple of verses later in his letter to the Corinthians reminding them that to partake of the Eucharist is to share in the body and blood of Christ. We share in the Body broken for us. We drink the Blood shed for us. We in our suffering, in our being tested, share that brokenness. That brokenness is transformed by the Resurrection. One great theme of the Eucharist is that it is a promise of delight, a promise of a great future hope. Our sufferings, our death, are united with his suffering and death upon the cross, and so we share also his Resurection. Jesus invites us to that garden of delight where we will be true to our own nature and fruitful. The garden of the Resurrection, the garden of Eden, paradise, heaven.