The Compassion of Lament - Luke 13:1-9, 31-35

Seminary can be a delightfully nerdy place. It probably stems from students spending inordinate amounts of time studying ancient texts, and not getting out much beyond that. Seminary housing is known in particular for nerdy pet names. In my class, there was a Chihuahua named Goliath and a cat named Lucipurr. Biblical names are common for pets, of course, and sometimes they get pretty esoteric. When a student heard a lecture on the pseudepigrapha, which is a set of non-canonical Jewish writings from the same time as the Apocrypha, he lobbied the administration to let him adopt two pot-bellied pigs, whom he named Pseudo and Pigrapha. I’ve also heard that the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin has had regular visits by a local fox recently, whom the students have named Herod, based on the Gospel of Luke. And while I don’t have any statistics on this, we can imagine that there are plenty of brooding hens named after our Lord and Savior as well.

Mostly I wanted to tell you about Pseudo and Pigrapha with that sermon opener, but the animal imagery in today’s Gospel is striking. Herod has threatened to kill Jesus, which Jesus dismisses, calling him a fox, or no threat at all. Jesus then launches into a much larger lament. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” It’s a lament for the ages, powerful and relevant, then and now. The city which houses the great Temple, God’s own dwelling place on earth, has become allied with empire and everything that stands in opposition to the kingdom of heaven. It’s hard to know Jesus’ tone here. He could be angry, exasperated, wistful, or sorrowful. One way or another, he is full of emotion, as lament always is. And in one of the most tender images for the divine that we have in scripture, Jesus says, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.”

 If we were in seminary this morning, the students would be quick to point out that our lectionary has short changed us. The narrative lectionary, which is slightly different from the one we use, includes a longer reading before the lament over Jerusalem. The chapter opens with people asking Jesus about a recent atrocity. They say that some Galileans were murdered by Pilate in the Temple. Jesus is quick to ask them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners?” Did they deserve that fate for their sin? No. And he tells them of another tragedy, when eighteen people were killed when a tower fell on them. After this weekend’s storms, we know this dreadful image all too well. Jesus asks, were they worse offenders than everybody else? No. In other words, Jesus says, you cannot find the answer to why they suffered such a fate by thinking they were more sinful or deserving than anyone else.

 Jesus then tells a parable about a fig tree, deceptively short and simple on the surface, but incredibly healing in light of such questions. A vineyard owner has a fig tree that hasn’t produced figs for three years, so he asks the gardener to cut it down and stop wasting soil. One might ask why there is a fig tree in a vineyard in the first place, perhaps a sign that something is amiss in the vineyard. The gardener says to the owner, “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.” “Let it be,” he says, which can also be translated as forgive, allow, or pardon. This is what makes the gardener the clearest Christ figure in all the parables, for these are the same words Jesus speaks from the cross. Let them be. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And the fig tree is saved by the gardener, as we are saved by Christ on the cross.

 There is an interesting twist at the end of the story. The gardener wants a year to tend to the tree with manure, a symbol, by the way, of our human need for humility and repentance, and if after that it is fruitless, he says the owner can cut it down. Not me, says Jesus, you. The vineyard owner, a kind of Old Testament, great I AM figure, will be the judge with a mind we cannot know or understand. Jesus will forgo the role of judge and advocate on our behalf. In the words of Robert Capon, in Christ we live under the condition of forgiveness. We tend to think otherwise, that we live by our own merits under the threat of judgment. But really we live under the condition of forgiveness. Like that single fig tree in the vineyard that hasn’t been able to grow figs, we don’t have to earn our worth or our forgiveness. Nor can anyone be beyond the reach of forgiveness, no matter the sin or brokenness, or even death we experience. We are saved by grace, not by anything we ever did or deserved. Let them be, says Jesus. The divine system has been rigged all along in our favor.

 In the 13th chapter of Luke, Jesus doesn’t tell us why awful and tragic things happen to people. He doesn’t tell us why Jerusalem or the powers that be stone the prophets of God. But he laments over the state of the world, as we do. And he tells stories to teach us that no matter how much things go awry, he will be there to tend to us as a persistent and faithful gardener. He will nurture the soil around us and guide us in his ways. He will forgive us, with an inexhaustible amount of forgiveness. And he will long to gather us under his wings, with an inexhaustible amount of compassion.

These days, there is much to lament in our city and our world, our own Jerusalem. Jesus’ first century words could easily be twenty-first century words. We are like chicks that collectively keep wandering off in a world of foxes. But our Lord is faithful, calling us back to the way of God with unending forgiveness and compassion.  If ever you need to be reminded of that grace, the biblical animal images are wonderful. The Lord wants to gather us together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. When the world is not as it should be, that’s a helpful place to start.