Lk 13,1-9 (3 lent)

Lk 13,1-9 (3 lent)

1. General Remarks

This passage belongs to Luke's special material. Perhaps the two accidents related to Jesus (vv.1-5) were already joined to the parable in Luke’s source.

The parable itself fits well into the context, for the teaching of this whole section (reaching back to 12,35) is quite coherent: it emphasizes the importance of the present as a time for watchfulness, faithful service, commitment, repentance - now is the time to bear fruit.

The teaching is directed to a small group, but the meaning is for all Israel. The parable says the same as the threat contained in vv.3 and 5 and insists on the urgent necessity for timely conversion.

We may conjecture that these words were uttered possibly in the early part of Jesus’ ministry, because the call for repentance seems to mark an archaic stage of his preaching, which later on concentrated more on the formation of his disciples and finally on the revelation of his person. In confirmation of this, we notice that the vinedresser is proposing to take a special care of the fig-tree, and this would make little sense if the parable were said towards the end of Jesus' ministry.

2. Analysis

Vv.1-5 - There is no historical record of tthe two incidents reported here, representing two types of calamities, one political and one natural. About the first incident, the term “Galileans” may imply that the victims were patriots involved in some nationalistic demonstration, which ended in a ruthless massacre during a festival, probably in the courts of the temple; the incident is likely, for we have proof outside of the New Testament (in the writings of Josephus) of Pilate's brutality. As for the second incident, perhaps the collapse of the tower was caused by the building operations carried out by Pilate to improve the water supply of Jerusalem (cf. Josephus).

Jesus' treatment of the implications of these calamities is "modem" and runs counter to the traditional concept of retribution, which taught that whatever happened to a person, .in good or bad, was according to his personal deserts.

"You will all perish likewise" does not mean "in the same way” or "by the same means," but "as certainly, as inevitably."

We can only admire here the courage of Jesus. This call for repentance is made to a group of oppressed people struggling for justice! But, for Jesus, even those whose cause is just need conversion: the justice of their cause does not automatically make them just nor the means they use. However, Jesus does not tell his listeners to submit to Pilate either or to accept Roman oppression; he merely tells them that in their hearts forces are at work, which may one day destroy them - and history proved him right with the destruction of Jerusalem a generation later in 70 A.D.

V.6 - In the Old Testament the vine became the symbol of Israel, and because the fig-tree was closely associated to the vine in order to suggest prosperity, it was also occasionally used as a symbol of Israel (Jr 8,13; Mi 7,1; Hos 9,10).

If the fig-tree is a central metaphor and stands for Israel, then this central metaphor produces, by spontaneous "spilling over" of meaning, a few other secondary ones. Because of this, the fruits stand for the faithfulness to God's will, the delay for bearing fruit stands for the delay for repentance and conversion, the destruction of the tree represents the destruction of the nation, the owner of the tree becomes God, and the mediating vinedresser is Jesus. But the rest of the details are not to be taken metaphorically: the fact that the fig-tree is planted in a vineyard, the three years of sterility, the digging, the spreading of manure, the year of delay.

V.7 - The decision of the owner to have the tree cut down is natural, and we see here implied the principle "how much when we consider the sterility of Israel. With this verse the note of crisis unmistakably emerges. Judgment is inevitable; though postponed, it is delayed only for a definite season and still threatens.

V.8 - Manuring a vineyard is not mentioned in the Old Testament, hence the vinedresser is proposing something unusual, the last possible measure.

A strong feature of the parable is that the vinedresser himself admits the justice of drastic action if these final measures fail. This is the last attempt; even he agrees that a limit must be set. The abrupt conclusion on a note of doom issued by him rather than the owner makes a powerful climax.

3. Lesson

Just as a fig-tree, which has been barren until now, is given a last delay to produce fruits under the intensified care of the vinedresser, otherwise it will be cut down, so also Israel, who has been during most of its history, is given a final opportunity to repent and produce fruits of conversion on the occasion of Jesus' ministry, otherwise it will be destroyed.

4. Difficulties

These bear on two minor points.

Authors disagree slightly on the extent of allegorizing they are ready to accept. All admit that the fig-tree stands for Israel and that the owner represents God. But a few deny that the vinedresser is a metaphor of Jesus. To these it might be pointed out that, if God is the owner of the fig-tree, the internal coherence of the whole situation requires that Jesus, who represents God before Israel and is sent by him to tend "the lost sheep of Israel," could hardly be anything else than the vinedresser.

A few authors (K. Bailey, H. Martin) insist that the main emphasis of the parable is mercy rather than stern warning. But it is difficult to reconcile this interpretation with the twice repeated words “cut it down.” In fact the whole parable ends abruptly on these words, and this on the lips of the compassionate vinedresser himself!

REFLECTIONS

The verses, which immediately precede this parable and which serve as an introduction to it are quite revealing as to the courage of Jesus and the most peculiar way he presents his message of salvation. But to understand this, we must place ourselves in the historical circumstances that were his.

Here is a crowd of people informing him about a recent news item. Pilate has just massacred a group of Galileans who had come to the temple to make sacrificial offerings. Secular historians do not report the incident, but from what we know of Pilate's brutality in other instances, the occurrence is quite likely factual. The crowd is outraged and expects that Jesus, a Galilean like the victims, will harshly condemn Pilate's action, or even take on the leadership of a resistance movement. Is it not high time that the Roman invader be kicked out and the people freed from the yoke oppressing them?

The courage of Jesus consists here in holding his ground against this exasperated mob and in refusing to follow it in its quest for vengeance and violence. Instead, to this group of oppressed he addresses an appeal to repentance! An odd way of taking up the defense of the weak against the strong…

And yet, Jesus is right. He does not deny that Pilate is blame worthy. But for the moment, as Pilate is not present, he knows well that a condemnation of his barbarity would only heighten the pitch of excitement and distract his listeners from the main issue. Now the main issue is that they too are in need of conversion, as much as Pilate is. Undoubtedly their cause is a just one. But the justice of their cause does not automatically make them just, nor does it make their means of action just ones. Following his usual manner, Jesus lifts the debate on a higher plane, that of the heart, of conscience. He does not advocate submission to Pilate or the acceptance of the Roman yoke… He tells them that, in their hearts, obscure forces of hate are at work, which could very well bring about their ruin one day. And this is what was to happen, a generation later, when these forces of hate unleashed a general upheaval of the nation and provoked the Romans into destroying Jerusalem.

But, with an implacable lucidity, Jesus dispels a subtle illusion, which could reassure his listeners too easily. The latter, adopting the current idea of the time, no doubt believe that the mishap suffered by those Galileans or by the victims of the accident of Siloam is actually deserved by them. From their point of view a violent death of this type is always the result of a just retribution. And, as long as they themselves escape from such calamities, they may think that they are innocent in the eyes of God. But Jesus contradicts them: those people were not any guiltier than you are, he bluntly declares to them. "If you do not repent, you will all perish likewise."

The conclusion is inescapable. In the presence of Jesus we are always referred to our conscience. Whatever the merits of our options, we have always to resist the tenacious illusion that the purity of our ideals makes us automatically pure and above reproach. Similarly, whatever may be the lot of sufferings and reversals suffered by those surrounding us, we can never think that perhaps they have only what they deserve and correlatively, that we are doubtless better than they are, since we do not suffer as much. All these attitudes are subtly pharisaic, Jesus warns us. The only security, which can give us reassurance before God is the humble distrust of ourselves. “When I am weak (in my own eyes), it is then that I am strong" (2 Cor 12,10).

The direct meaning of this parable is clear. Jesus gives his people an ultimate warning: if Israel rejects the last opportunity given to it on the occasion of the coming and of the ministry of Jesus, if it refuses to repent and finally produce spiritual fruits, then it will be destroyed as a barren fig-tree is destroyed. This warning is the last one, for God can do nothing more beyond sending his own Son! If the elect people refuses to listen to his Son, to whom then will it listen?

In order to understand the reason for this harsh warning, we must bear in mind the whole past of Israel. Here is a people on whom God has lavished his care and who has responded most of the time by infidelity. In this people, unfaithfulness has become as it were a second nature. Jeremiah could bitterly observe this phenomenon in his time: Israel is so accustomed to do evil that it cannot do good anymore – like an Ethiopian who cannot change the color of his skin or a leopard, which cannot lose its spots (Jr 13,23). God constantly sent judges, prophets and sages to his people so as to remind it of the demands of the covenant. But, apart from short-lived reforms like that of Josiah in 622 B.C., Israel continued to indulge in idolatry and to practice social injustice. Finally, "after having in many and various ways spoken of old to the fathers by the prophets. God spoke to his people in the last days by a Son" (Heb 1,1-2). The coming of this Son is the last chance. This is what the parable teaches. When the owner of the fig-tree decides to have it cut down, the vinedresser (who personifies Jesus) obtains a delay: maybe if he lavishes exceptional care on the fig-tree, it will finally bear fruits.

Even this last chance granted by God to Israel was prolonged one more generation after the ministry of Jesus. For God continued to seek his people's conversion long after the latter had killed his son, the vinedresser of the parable. Indeed, until the year 70 A.D. the apostles persisted in proposing the Gospel to their Jewish brothers, St. Paul included, the apostle of the pagans, who always initiated his work of evangelization in the Jewish synagogues.

This admirable patience of God towards his people is always the same towards each one of us. Despite our repeated refusals to bear fruits, he comes back, day after day and year after year, with the same stubborn hope that he will finally see us fructify. For, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful" (2 Tim 2,13). To us too, through the intervention of Jesus, "who is always alive to make intercession for us” (Heb 7,25), a last chance is granted. Shall we decide to seize it?

When we speak in this context of a last chance, we must understand clearly what the matter is all about. Things do not happen as if, having temporized a long time. God would finally run out of patience. In this respect, the parable with its disabused owner offers only an imperfect image of God. Since this owner is a human being, his patience is limited. But God is not a human being, and his patience is without limits. In reality, the limits are entirely on our side. And it is in this case that we may speak of a "last chance." It is finally our accumulated choices, which make that, among all the chances given to us, one of them one day becomes the last one.

The natural order offers many examples of this phenomenon. It is a law of nature that the non-use of a faculty progressively brings about its atrophy and its loss. From living so long under the earth or in caverns some animals, such as the weasel and the bat, become blind. In like manner, when a muscle ceases to be used, it stiffens and paralyzes. Similarly, from feeding itself continuously on superficial books or third-rate movies, the mind becomes incapable of rising to the level of great ideas or of appreciating real beauty. In the spiritual order likewise, our choices end up by molding us. He who endeavors to follow the motions of the Spirit in his life becomes more and more flexible and docile in the hands of God. But he who refuses most of the time the calls of Christ becomes less and less capable of obeying them or even of hearing them. For the latter, there comes a time when the die is cast, when last opportunity has passed by - it being the "last." one because he can no longer seize those other opportunities which God's infinite tenderness would not cease offering him until his very last breath. Of course there are surprising conversions, some of those unexplainable reversals, which nothing seemed to announce (because actually human freedom is definitely settled only in death, and it can always renege on its previous choices in a supreme decision), but those are mysterious exceptions, which our human psychology hardly succeeds in explaining: after all, man is a mystery. However, the fact remains that, most of the time, the sum total of our choices ends up by determining our spiritual character. We become more and more what we want to become. And God himself could not alter this, since he has a sovereign respect of our freedom.

There can, therefore, really be a, last chance in the life of a man. "Every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light" (Jn 3,20). No one knows if he will not come, one day, to hate the light. No one can vouch that he will be quite capable of conversion, when the time comes for it. No one is certain that he will still want to take the next chance offered to him, and that the one offered today is not in fact the last one within his reach. The best day to be converted is today. "Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Ps 95,7-8; Heb 3,7-8).

In this parable the fig-tree is threatened of being cut down, not for the reason that it would be producing poisoned fruits, that it would be harming the growth of the other plants around it or that it would be offending the eyes because of some deformity. The only reason invoked is that it is barren: "it uses the ground for nothing" (v.7). Its only “sin” so to speak is a sin of omission.

Many Christians figure that they sin only when they commit a positively wrong action. For them the fact that they refrain from wrongdoing is enough to make them good Christians. They will readily say: "What could God possibly hold against me: I have never killed, stolen, committed adultery nor done anything wrong?” Other Christians will not go so far as to claim that they are the good Christians if do nothing wrong; but they will think that, by abstaining from wrong doing, they are at any rate not reprehensible; they stand between the righteous men and the evil ones, in a kind of “neutral” moral category. They will agree that this is not a very brilliant situation, and they certainly mean to leave it one day, if only to make the scales of judgment weigh slightly in their favor at the hour of death. But for the moment, there is no rush: they have their living to earn, their leisure time to occupy, their future to ensure - they just do have the time for zeal by multiplying good deeds on top of it all.

Such reasoning can be done in good faith, and of course we are not to judge those who make them. But the fact nevertheless remains that these ways of seeing things run objectively counter to the thought of Jesus. For him there can be no "neutral" moral zone: “He who is not with me is against me" (Mt 12,30). Neither, in order to be able to call oneself his disciple is it enough to abstain from wrongdoing. Because, apart from the sin of committing evil, there is also the sin of omitting good deeds. The whole discourse on the last judgment is an illustration of this. There the unrighteous are condemned, not because they have committed evil, but because they have omitted the good actions they should have done: "I was hungry and you give me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me" (Mt 25,42-43).

As can be seen, a person is not a Christian simply because he harms no one. The dead in the cemeteries do the same. A Christian who is content with harming no one is like the barren fig-tree of the parable: it did not harm any one either. But this fig-tree, by not producing figs, "was using up the ground for nothing." This means that it not only took the place of another fig-tree, which itself could have borne fruits, but it also drew from the earth the moisture and the nutritious elements ensuring its growth without producing anything in counter part. In this respect, it too was not "neutral" in the vineyard, since it exhausted the soil without giving back anything in return. By not being “for” the vineyard, it too became "against" it. Likewise, the Christian who is satisfied with not harming any one is neutral only in appearance: by omitting to accomplish good actions, he adds his weight of inertia to the pressure of evil in the world. Furthermore, by presenting himself as a Christian without really being one, he becomes a counter witness in the eyes of those who might perhaps be tempted to believe the Good News and who, because of him, will never do so. And so, although he claims he harms no one, he actually harms all those whom his barrenness turns away from the Gospel.

A disciple of Jesus cannot define himself in terms of abstention, omission, and negation. If it was possible to define the life of Jesus by these words: "he went about doing good" (Acts 10,38), the life of his disciples can be defined only in the same all-positive way. A Christian is essentially a productive fig-tree.

"Sir, leave it alone again this year…” Although the fig-tree of the parable has proven sterile for three consecutive years, the vinedresser takes up its defense before the owner. Not only does the vinedresser plead its cause, but also he even offers to adopt altogether exceptional measures in order to render the fig-tree productive. "I will dig around it and spread some manure on it."

In the mind of Jesus, the author of the parable, the vinedresser who takes the side of the barren fig-tree is he himself in his relationship with Israel and with each one of us. Even when, after years of living in the vineyard of the Church, we remain barren of fruits in terms of Gospel lifestyle, he does not lose faith in us. He knows that we are weak and sinful, "he knows of what stuff we are made" (Ps 103,14). He is therefore neither surprised nor scandalized at our tendency towards spiritual sterility. But he does not for so much give up the hope of seeing us bear fruits one day. He is ready to invest the time and care required for that, through the mediation of his Spirit, of his church, of his sacraments, and by the mediation of the brothers he sends us.

Jesus is a patient vinedresser. During his Palestinian ministry was surrounded with disciples who were little educated, slow of under standing, rough, sometimes quarrelsome and ambitious. Yet, he never reduced by one iota the height or the purity of his demands. It is to such men that he preached the Beatitudes, the love of enemies, the limitless forgiveness of offenses, service and selflessness, the giving up of everything for the Kingdom, the necessity of taking up one's cross day after day, the love of brothers up to laying down one's life for them. He trusted them, even when the results of his efforts seems laughable. Even the fact that they betrayed him and abandoned him at the time of his arrest did not shake his trust in them. And this trust was finally vindicated in full. These men ended up being transformed, to the point of becoming tireless apostles, to the point of shedding their blood for him. From barren fig-tree that they were for a long while, they became magnificently productive.

Of us too, Jesus, our patient vinedresser, can make productive fig-trees. If our past has been barren for the most part, this does not mean that our spiritual growth is forever stunted. Our vinedresser will never give up the hope of seeing us bear fruits. He will always continue to lavish his care on us, to surround us with his solicitude. Let us not lose heart of our sins. "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5,20). Where barrenness has prevailed up to now, a marvelous fecundity can still emerge. It is a good thing for us to despair of ourselves provided we place all our hope in him. "I have placed all my hope in you, and I shall never be put to shame!" (Mi 7,7).