TGBC figs and bread
The Good Book Club
Wednesday, March 7: Luke 13:1-21
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’
Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?”
He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’
When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’ But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’ When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
He said therefore, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’
And again he said, ‘To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’
THOUGHTS FOR WEDNESDAY. Pontius Pilate apparently had a reputation for cruelty and creating dissension, which may be why Caesar eventually recalled him; but there’s no historical record of the atrocity that Luke alone reports here. Some scholars say the account is Luke’s literary device for introducing us to Pilate before he comes into the story to judge Jesus. IDK.
Jesus tells a fig tree parable, a pleasant story and I’ve preached sermons from it; but here it’s just off the wall, out of the blue, Luke doesn’t set it in a context or give us any idea why Jesus told it. I think Luke put it here simply because it seems to fit in with two other nature sayings about growing plants. I also have loved figs and fig trees, and I also have given one I thought was dead another chance and seen it come slowly back to life with a bit of love from me, though I may have gotten just leaves from it and no figs. As my fig tree homily, I’m going with the idea that even the worst of us may get at least one more last chance with God before judgment day. Color the fig tree forgiven and hopeful.
Jesus casts out a crippling spirit from a woman in the synagogue, and is criticized for breaking sabbath to do an act of kindness that they considered to be work. Compassionate by nature, himself the grace of God personified, Jesus angrily lights into his critics that they value their disproportionate religious obsessions above human wellbeing, which Jesus is finding to be a common problem with people; the lovingkindness he brought as example of what we are to be as images of Creator God is, in my mind rather than anything of a redemptive nature, which I think was the perception of Paul and the early church, the reason Jesus was set among religious people. In human history, religion makes people crazy and our greatest sin is certainty, the certainty that what we believe is THE absolute Truth rather than realizing that all other peoples also believe that about their own faith convictions. It never occurs to us that we could be wrong, only that they are wrong.
The two kingdom sayings: Jesus likes to surprise us by turning our certainties upside down and tumping them out like a raccoon turning over a garbage can. The insignificant little mustard seed can do wondrous things (so might we?). Leaven, a symbol of undercover evil, hidden corruption, hot air puffery, can be good after all, can be enormously productive. Don’t be so sure of human wisdom, God sees things differently and things in God’s kingdom are the opposite of what you thought.