In the scripture before today’s reading Jesus is talking to crowds of people. He warned his disciples about the Pharisees, but they are not the real problem. There is someone else that can mislead you. It is God that you want to be happy with you, not man.
He teaches that just because things are going good here on earth does not mean all is really going well. He is telling his listeners that if they don’t have a relationship with God they will have a problem. He warns that this world has all kinds of things to attract you which are just distractions. Making you less than ready.
Most of Chapter 12 is about being ready for when the master returns. That there is a reward or punishment based on your actions.
He talks about the coming time of division even within families. Then he talks about how people see signs in the weather, but not the signs of the coming judgment from God.
Today’s scripture starts with people telling Jesus about an incident in the temple. A time when a group of Galileans were killed and how their blood was mingled with their sacrifices.
Seems like a rather obscure reference and historically we don’t know if the event was actually recorded. Her is a chance the Jewish Historian Josephus has recorded the event in his writings. He records Five occurrences when Pilot had his solders enter the temple and people were killed. There is one reference to an event where the followers of Judas Gaulonitis or Judas of Galilee instructed his followers not to pay the tribute to Caesar during Passover, that tax was collected at the temple. They describe Pilot being enraged and ordering the people killed on the spot.
It is likely that this is the event that the people were mentioning. Some believe it was similar in time.
Now let’s consider the tower of Silom, We can guess it was near and even by the pool of Silom. The people that had physical infirmities lay by the pool waiting to be healed by an angel that stirred the waters. It was not far from the temple. It was a place where people cleansed themselves before going to the temple.
So for today’s lesson people bring up a horrible event in the temple where some number of people were murdered by Pilot for not paying taxes. It happened in the temple court evidentially at the time when the sacrifice was being made.
Jesus response is a question: Were these people bigger sinners that all Galileans?
To get to today’s news, were the people on the commuter trains in Madrid bigger sinners that other Spaniards? Home fires, or car accidents or business failures they can be a sign of judgment, God’s action …Right?????
Jesus had been teaching that there is a judgment coming. He clearly states that the circumstances, no matter how horrible, were not an indication of the righteousness of the people that suffered and died.
People of the day and ( it is probably not too different today) believed that bad things happen to bad people. God knows how we act and when something bad happens and someone is affected … well they just must not have been right. God punished them.
No…. No No, Bad things happen to perfectly good and righteous people all the time. Jesus confirms that in today’s scripture. In fact it seems that this is probably as clear a statement that God does not use punishment and tragedy to directly get our attention and any you can find in scripture. He will use those opportunities to raise our awareness and dependence on him.
He tells us twice - I tell you, no! and we have two examples, a horrible act of terror at a time of worship, and an accident. He does not justify the human actions that were involved, but more importantly he does not judge the victims in the two events that all.
All he does is reinforce his discussion that you have to be ready because you don’t know what is going to happen, some attack or accident. You too might parish!
I guess all of us have received those tracts, little slips of paper that have a picture of a hearse that say are you ready? Or “Do you KNOW where you will be if you wake up tomorrow dead?”
I don’t know how effective those things are. But I guess Jesus was saying something similar. It was not because they were unrighteous that they died but if they were ready? If they had the relationship with God then it was not a total loss.
He was telling his hearers that God does not act like they think he does.
God does not shower good times on the ones with a relationship and bad times on the ones without. The life here is temporary and belongs to someone else. He does touch people in this world but only in ways that he sees meet the goal of leading people to a relationship.
The scripture continues with a parable to explain God’s actions.
He tells of a vineyard owner that has a fig tree gowning that bears no fruit.
Vineyards are for grapes, Not fig trees. So for the tree to have been there in the first place it was probably planted there.
I don’t have personal experience but I can get to a lot of research on the computer so let me get you up to speed. In the culture of the day, you raised fig trees for food. The first three years they were grown in a protected place, and then transplanted. The next three years any fruit which might come, was given as an offering to God. It was not until the 7th year that you would expect to start personally enjoying fruit from the tree.
Folks I am not that patient. But in Jesus story, this would have been the 7th year that the tree has been cared for by someone. It has received water and perhaps a little fertilizer. It must have looked healthy, just not producing the expected fruit.
Being in a vineyard was not too uncommon, because they did grow strong and you could use the branches and the trunk to let the Grape vines grow.
The owner wants to cut his losses. Enough was already wasted on this unproductive tree.
There are days when it is really a good thing that I am not God.
Because there are days when I’m sick and tired of the stupid, horrible things we human beings do to one another, days when I completely identify with the harsh punishment line of thinking. Punish for bad actions. There are definitely days when I can understand the great flood, the story of God deciding to save only one human family and the animals of the earth in an ark, while destroying the whole sinful lot of the rest of them with a forty-day flood.
Pull it up, chop it down, and start over with something else.
I see the news on TV of this sinful world and wonder how can we be allowed to act like we do? Patience, discernment and wisdom are regularly a part of my prayers.
In Noah’s day, it was not long before sinful actions came back. The world, this world is the domain of Satan. It is his influence and our actions that make he world what it is.
Now that is an oversimplification. Jesus was talking to Jews, The chosen people of God. He might have been reflecting on the Jewish nation or he may be speaking to the individuals.
Who do you see as the players in the parable? God as the vineyard owner. Jesus as the Gardner, mankind or each of us as the fig tree.
A fig tree does not produce grapes. It produces figs, if it is healthy, if it has the right nutrients. But it will never provide apples, or grapes only figs.
What is the fruit we are to bare? If we are in a relationship with the vineyard owner we are expected to do as we are designed. Or taken out and a way made for something productive.
Maybe we thought we came to the vineyard because of family, or friends. Maybe we think we just took root on our own.
I am going to tell you that I don’t think so. You are in God’s vineyard because he wants you to be. And because he wants you to be healthy and grow and bare fruit he is always willing to offer a grace period. A time when you focus on your roots and get nutrients. Perhaps My spreading of fertilizer and my breaking of the soil will let you get what you need.
I thought about me being an assistant to the Gardner this week. All to often I feel like am making the fertilizer and spreading it around here. I did not like where that was leading my thoughts this week. In lots of places in this world a family will work very hard to get a cow. You would think it was for the milk but that is a secondary purpose. The first reason is fertilizer that is used in their gardens. They fed the cow things they don’t and can’t eat and use the processed material in the garden and the get some milk too. What a deal!
In our lesson this week, Jesus is telling people that they as a nation and as individuals are in the grace period when the Gardner will do everything in his power to help them bare fruit. But people are different than plants. They have to make choices. They have to decide that they want be tended.
For the people in accidents and in terrible situations and even those that reach a natural end. Their grace period has ended. Our scripture today is a reminder first of all that the life we have here good or bad is not a judgment of your choices. It is a result of some of them.
Second, That our God has offered a Gardner that tends his creations. We are only expected to do what we were created to do.
What is our fruit as a church? I wish I knew exactly, because I would tell you. I can tell you that I believe it has something to do with the number of Kids that we have in this neighborhood and that we must draw them to the vineyard. We are to be like the tempting apple tree or watermelon patch that gives them an excuse to hang around and seeds get planted in hearts, careful tending lets the put down roots in a protected place. After that I don’t know…
What is your fruit? What is God telling you?
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Do you know how to reach the kids or others? Has God placed in your heart and mind what we can offer maybe this summer that will start a whole batch of new fruit trees?
I wish I did not limit God with my since of understanding. I feel like he has been working my roots and adding miracle grow fertilizer and I am just not responding to his nurture. I can’t hear his voice clearly.
But that is what a church is about. We are all gifted to be fruitful and as a church to bear the sweetest, choicest most perfect fruit in our part of the vineyard.
My call for you today is to know we are in a grace period, that at any moment something could snatch us from the garden. Let’s use our time to do what God calls us to do naturally. Let’s respond to the Gardner!
All Glory be to God!
