March 7 Lent III
There’s a gift that comes with being easily confused and taking Fridays off. And the gift usually arrives at about 8 o’clock in the evening. Since I spent most of my life associating yard work, oil changes, and other chores with Saturdays, a little worry wells up each Friday night as I forget for a moment that it’s Friday.
I begin to worry that the sermon still needs some polishing (if not a complete overhaul), and the class I might be leading probably needs more study. And just about the time a good firm knot in my stomach has formed, I remember: “Oh yeah. It’s only Friday.”
This is the kind of experience that’s worth changing careers for. The space of a whole day opens up in an instant. It’s the old trick of setting your alarm clock ahead 15 minutes times 96.
The gift of a day is a wonderful thing.
The interesting thing about this experience is that nothing in the world has changed at all except me. In just a few seconds, I’ve gone from experiencing time as running out, to experiencing time as opening up in front of me. And you’ve had that experience too, one way or another. One way of being in the world leads to ulcers. The other leads to life.
Now, as fascinating as this little glimpse has been into one of my Friday nights, it probably doesn’t seem to have much to do with ethics or the Christian moral life. But let’s hold out the possibility for a few minutes that it does.
The thirteenth chapter of Luke begins with an age old moral question: Does God make heavy things fall on people who do bad stuff? You’ve wondered this yourself, haven’t you?
The question is about the moral universe and whether or how God is involved in it. We don’t get that question explicitly in the passage, but Jesus’ response suggests that people were wondering whether the Galileans whose blood ended up in Pilate’s sacrifice brought this misfortune on themselves.
Jesus says, “No.” And he goes further. He asks the people whether they thought that those folks in Siloam whom a tower tipped over on were being punished by God. “Absolutely not,” he says.
“But… If you don’t repent, you’ve got the same thing coming.”
Now this is a little confusing. Jesus seems to be saying that God wasn’t at work punishing people in tragic events. Then he says to his innocent questioners, “but you’re about to get squashed.”
Before we decide what Jesus’ moral world view really was, let’s pause to notice his first move. He turned the conversation away from those bad folks out there, to the people in the conversation. Ouch.
How many conversations have you had about the moral problems of this world that were concerned with people like you and me? When was the last time you heard somebody say, “You know the problem with this world is people like us.” Our moral reasoning just doesn’t work that way, does it?
And if we did hear someone say such a thing, we’d recommend Prozac. Because it’s perfectly fine to think the world’s problems can be assigned to skateboarders or stamp collectors, as long as the stamp collectors think it’s all the skateboarders fault and the skateboarders think it’s all the stamp collectors’ fault. Being a well adjusted person seems to mean making moral sense of the world by looking at other people’s messed up lives and priorities.
Jesus doesn’t know any better, and seems to say, “Quit worrying about what those Galileans must have done to bring on their misfortunes, and pay some attention to the direction your own life is headed. Repent. Turn around. You’re the ones who are headed for disaster.”
So Jesus seems to be saying that God doesn’t tip tall towers over on people who misbehave—which, as an aside, puts Jesus’ moral theology in direct opposition to Pat Robertson’s, if you’re still wondering whether God sent Haiti an earthquake to set things straight.
And Jesus also says that we can make choices, we can send our lives in a direction that leads to destruction or a direction that leads to life. We just won’t find that direction as long as we’re spending all our energy figuring out where other people should be headed with their lives.
Then Jesus tells a parable. And as you know, it’s in parables where Jesus shows us the heart of things.
Now if we read Jesus’ parable out of context, if we don’t read the scene leading up to it about the people from Galilee and Siloam, we will probably get the parable badly wrong.
You remember the story. A certain man planted a fig tree in his vineyard. And the fig tree didn’t bear fruit for three years, so he told his vinedresser to cut it down. But the vinedresser said, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”
Usually it’s a cinch that if someone in a parable is called “Master”, that person must be God. I’m not ready to say that can’t be the case here, but remember, Jesus has just rejected the notion that God was sending destruction on bad people. And the vinedresser is the one who really steals the parable. The vinedresser gives the fig tree a year to bear fruit. The vinedresser is the bearer of grace.
It’s striking how the first Christians would come to understand Jesus as the one who makes intercession for us. We see this clearly in the book of Hebrews especially. Which suggests that the focus of this parable is not on the impending judgment or the angry judge, but on the vinedresser. On Jesus. On the one who makes space for us to bear fruit.
And what a radically different view of the moral life is presented in this story. Jesus moved the conversation away from questions about what vices are bad enough for God to push a tower over on you, to an image of Christ the vinedresser, giving us time, even fertilizer and care, so that the fruit we were meant to bear can come forth.
Suddenly the moral life isn’t so much about avoiding vices, as it is about practicing virtue. It’s about bearing fruit. And it’s about realizing that judgment has been put off, we’ve been given another year to grow and thrive.
In fact, the moral life might first be about waking up to the present moment we’ve been given by God. And maybe if we can stop obsessing about what’s wrong with other people’s lives we can finally see what’s right with ours. We can see that we were meant to bear something into this world, but until we turn from our jealous and judging ways we’re just wasting the soil we stand upon just like that tree that wouldn’t produce figs.
Jesus taught that God isn’t waiting to wreak havoc on people who go astray, but there is an urgency to our lives, and we may have to change course to find the abundant life God intends. God is involved in the moral universe. But God is involve by opening up a little time for us. God has given us a little time to bear fruit. And if we waste that time fretting over other people’s vices, wondering and wishing about whether they’ll get what’s coming to them, we may miss the good fruit we’re meant to bear.
Those little Friday night gifts of time, they’re reminders that we don’t have forever, but God has opened up a bit of the future in front of each of us. A day. A year. A few decades. Who knows? But God has opened that future and blessed it. The question Jesus raised twenty centuries ago remains. What will we make of it? Will we spend the gift of our time in judgment, wasting the very ground we’ve been planted in? Or will we spend the gift of our time bearing our fruit?
According to Jesus our decision makes all the difference in the world. And there’s still time, God given time, to turn around. Amen.