Luke 13:1-9 Isaiah 55:1-11
Two
weeks ago, I watched the movie, “Arbitrage,” which is one of the first
critically acclaimed post-financial meltdown films to explore the world of high
finance. As you might guess, the story
has a lot to do with risky and questionable business practices by men who make
million-dollar deals every day. But it
gets much of its power to captivate from a plot twist that comes when a
detective shows up to investigate the accidental death of the main character’s
mistress (he did do it, by the way).
In
the course of the investigation, the detective has a bit of an argument with
the District Attorney and a judge about how to proceed. His two superiors recommend a cautious
course, and the detective vents his frustration in response, saying something
like, “So we just sit back and let him get away? … Why?!
Why should these scum get away with things like this. They bury it in money, and we just look the
other way. This is a chance to get one
of them… to bring him to justice. Just
once I’d like to bring one of them to justice.”
I
liked that line. It appeals to the part
of me that really likes balance. A
person collects immense wealth by preying on those lower on the economic ladder
… they deserve to be preyed upon themselves.
A person does something wrong … they deserve punishment. When there seems to be no sense of remorse …
even when there is remorse, but especially when there’s not … I want justice to
be served. So, I completely understood
that detective’s frustration and anger.
Then
I remembered the words of Sister Helen PreJean in our Sunday School class a
couple of months ago, sharing her distinctive perspective on the in-justice of
the death penalty in particular and much of our punitive system of justice in general,
and the voice of my younger self and my friends in heated conversation came
back to me, and I began to wonder, again, about the balance between “good” and
“evil” … between justice and mercy, and about the difficulty of understanding
and accepting God’s justice while welcoming and trusting God’s compassion.
Recently, I read something interesting about justice and compassion in the
Bible. It seems that the concept of
compassion was somewhat different in the culture of the time. We understand it to mean “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is
stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the
suffering.”[1] We act on our compassion by trying to help
people directly. We give them money or
food or sit with them in their grief and despair hoping that our company will
ease their suffering.
It was not that way in the
past. I don’t mean to say that people
did not take care of one another in exactly the same ways. I’m certain they did. It’s in our nature as loving beings to reach
out and offer support and comfort to one another, and there is ample Biblical
evidence of people doing exactly that.
Yet, compassion in that time was not so personal or individual a
thing. While people undoubtedly felt
“deep sympathy and sorrow” for each other, their compassionate response was
directed toward achieving justice for victims, and that often meant seeing those
who caused suffering punished or the unfair situation “fixed.”
That sounds like a good process. I’d love it if our system worked that way, but
there was a bit of a twist there as well.
If there was no obvious cause for suffering or if there was no
justification or simply no way to “fix” things, then it was often assumed that
Divine justice was a work in the situation.
The person or people who were suffering, were suffering because of
something they had done in the past … some hidden and evil action that God was
seeking to punish in order to bring about justice. At least that was the general consensus, and
it was that perspective on justice that Jesus was addressing with his parable.
Some in the crowd rose to the occasion, challenging
Jesus himself to interpret the meaning of a case of unjust suffering. The case was a recent headliner. Some Galileans had been murdered by Pontius
Pilate in a ghastly event. There was no explicit
question asked, but there was certainly one implied. Did those Galileans deserve it? Was Pilate the instrument of divine judgment
against them and consequent punishment?
Was God’s justice served by their deaths?
According to the wisdom of the day, the answer
would have been “yes” to all those questions.
As hard as it would have been to stomach, the only option people had to
explain why such a horrible thing would happen to people would have been to
assume that it was God’s will. And since
God would never do such a horrible thing to innocent people, they must have
deserved it.
If that was their understanding, you can’t
really blame them for posing this question … and, in fact, Jesus doesn’t chastise them. He lets them know he understands their
dilemma with the question he asks in return, “Do you think that … these
Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” “No,” he says, but he doesn’t let them off
the hook. This may have been a case of
incredible injustice on the part of the Roman Empire, but that doesn’t mean
that God is happy about the greedy, unjust lives of the people. They still need to repent or risk the hand of
divine justice when it comes right down to it.
And
yet, Jesus doesn’t leave them hanging there, dreading the hand of God. Instead he tells them a parable – the story
of a barren fig tree. A landowner had planted the fig tree in his vineyard three years
earlier, and he figured that it was about time to gather figs from it. But when he went to take a look, he found that
the tree had no fruit. As a good steward of his land and crops, the he concluded
that there were two problems at hand: the tree is worthless, and it was taking
up space that could otherwise have been productive in the vineyard. It was time
to cut it down.
Enter the caretaker – the gardener who had been
hired to care for the vineyard. He pleads
for patience. “Give it another year,” he
says. In the meantime I will loosen the
soil around it and add fertilizer. It
might still produce fruit in another year, and that would be good. There would be no need to replace the tree with
another. Besides, if the tree were
replaced by another, the new tree would need several years to produce fruit. There is good reason to give this tree another
chance. On the other hand, if it does
not produce fruit in another year, then it can and should be cut down.
That’s a new way of thinking about
it for me, I’ll admit. I have more often
named God judge rather than advocate, and I like having a divine Arbiter of
Justice to go along with the equally divine Bringer of Mercy. Yet, Isaiah reminds us that God’s thoughts
are not like our thoughts and God’s ways are not like our ways. And I think that might just mean that God isn’t
beneath loosening the soil around us and even spreading manure in the hope that
we may bear fruit. … Why? … Because God loves us and wants the best for us.[2]
That’s what this parable is
about. It takes us out of ourselves in
order to give a more complete perspective on the balance between judgment and
grace. And it says in no uncertain terms
that scales tip in favor of grace every time. How could it be otherwise when we follow a God
who has come to us again and again – even sent his son – to try and help us
understand the truth of God’s love? [3]
God’s love is beyond our
understanding. So excessive that it
embraces all of this world – the good and the bad alike. So complete that it cares about even the
smallest child. So abundant that it
never ceases to gush forth in an endless spray that caresses every moment of
our lives.
That doesn’t mean that we get to
just sit back and let the good times roll.
God’s grace … God’s love is not casual or indifferent. It begs for action, and as God’s children, we
are called to respond. We are called to
bear the fruit of the Kingdom, and to do that we need to change.
Are we, ourselves, not still
guilty of a thousand sins little and big.
Don’t we still choose to act on the impulses of greed and pride? How often do we put aside mercy and compassion
when they are inconvenient or deprive us of the satisfaction of seeing a
neighbor get his or her comeuppance? Are
we any better – any less sinful – any less in need of repentance than the
Galileans in the crowd?
We need to turn off of the paths
of barrenness and return to God’s way of abundance. AND the good news is that God is waiting for
us … and not just waiting. God is
digging the compost of our lives in around our roots, encouraging us to change
… to bear fruit.
[1] definition taken from dictionary.com
[2] draws on material posted by David Lose at
http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=671on February 27, 2013.
[3] draws on material posted by Arland J. Holtgren at
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?tab=4&alt=1 as commentary for
March 3, 2013.
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