The Third Sunday in Lent
March (10 &) 11, 2007
Sermon on Luke 13:1-9 by The Rev Timothy
A Leitzke
Some of you
probably have heard hundreds of sermons
preached on the template of ‘Three points and a short poem. For example: “1Bad
things happen to everyone. 2God still loves you. 3Try to
love one another. ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, Jesus loves me and he loves
you, too.’” This scene in Luke 13 hinges on three points, geometrically
speaking. In English, three points in a row mark an ellipsis, an omission of
words needed to complete the sentence. An example is, “All those in favor…” I
never said what to do. We guessed my intensions. We supplied the missing words,
words indicated in the text by three points. There’s some ambiguity with
ellipses. How many of you, hearing, “All those in favor…”, would have said,
“Aye”? How many would have raised your hands? You don’t know which response I
wanted. My ellipsis makes things ambiguous.
The most notorious ellipsis in the
Bible is in Genesis 4:8 when God has favored Abel’s sacrifices over Cain’s.
“And Cain said to Abel his brother…” Our Bibles supply Cain’s line, “Let us go
out to the field.” There is no line in Hebrew. We’re left wondering what Cain
said to Abel right before he killed him. Luke 13:9 has its own haunting
ellipsis. The text I read to you said, “If it bears fruit next year, well &
good.” The ‘well & good’ are additions. The vinedresser says, “and if it
bears fruit in the coming year…” What? What will happen if the fig tree bears
fruit? The vinedresser never says. That tree’s life hangs on an ellipsis. Its
whole existence hinges on three points on a page.
We get to
that ellipsis because some people tell Jesus about some Galileans whom Pilate
had slaughtered. They tell him about this just as he’s finished warning them
that judgment is coming soon and they need to repent now. It’s almost like they’re saying, “Yeah, you’re right, Jesus.
In fact, here are some sinners who wouldn’t repent.” Jesus has just preached
the Law, God’s judgment, and the people love it because they see how it
applies…to other people. We humans have a penchant for pinning judgment on
others. We hear of others’ misfortunes and say, “Well, that’s what you get for
acting that way.” Jesus replies, “Do you really think these people who are
suffering are somehow worse than you?” The people talking to Jesus were so
eager to mete out divine justice that they didn’t notice that they were on
their own hit list.
The parable is a response to those
who think they are safe from judgment and are swift to judge others. From that
point of view, the people are represented in this parable by the owner of the unproductive
fig tree. We are the vineyard owners. We want to cut down the tree. Jesus plays
the vinedresser, urging us to wait and allow him to work his grace and
forgiveness. The parable asks us, “Are we eager to cut down what God would
redeem?” Luke offers no conclusion. We’re left, wondering, with an ellipsis.
Jesus’
parable suggests that cutting down this tree would be an act of evil concealed
as an act of good. When I lived in RI I had a lot of flies and mosquitoes in my
apartment until they mysteriously vanished. I soon learned why when I saw the
huge web of a brown recluse spider hanging between two bars on my balcony
railing. The web was loaded with unlucky bugs. That poisonous spider was the
most effective pest control I ever had. I could have killed her; she was
dangerous. If I had, the bug bonanza would have returned. There was evil
concealed in what looked good, and there was good concealed in what looked
evil. Friends of Christ, our actions—when not done in the Holy Spirit—are evil.
We try to do good, and we cause harm. We try to fix a problem and we just make
it worse. We pick what is attractive, what feels good, what glows with warmth,
what appears glorious. The problem is that God’s beauty and goodness and warmth
and glory all are hidden. God is revealed in something uglier, more painful,
colder, and disgraceful—God is revealed in a crucified Christ.
In the
parable, the vinedresser suggests that he be allowed to dig around the tree and
put manure on it. ‘Manure’ is a polite translation. Manure is waste. It’s
toxic. That’s the vinedresser’s magic solution for the unfruitful tree. At
least on the surface, that doesn’t make any sense. Yet we know that manure is
fertilizer. Something toxic and nasty is helpful to the tree. Spreading it
won’t be the most pleasant experience in the world, but it’s going to make
things better. God often is concealed in things that we think of as bad.
In all of this,
the tree is helpless. It’s a tree; it cannot speak in its defense. It just has
to sit there, while others determine its fate. I remember being in second grade
and sitting in a dark anteroom outside of the principal’s office. I’d been
assigned to write an advertisement for a certain pizza franchise. I loathed
their pizza. When we’d eaten it at home my whole family got food poisoning. I
refused to write an ad for them. I was an unfruitful student, so the teacher
sent me to the principal’s office, and I sat there while they determined my
fate.
I identify
with that fig tree, and I think all of us can. Its only hope was in the saving
work of the vinedresser. All of us have had times when our only hope was in
someone else’s saving work. With our eagerness to cut down what God would save,
with our propensity to call the good evil and the evil good, our only hope is
in the saving work of God in Christ. Our hope is in a God willing to be human,
willing to suffer as one of us. Our hope is in the crucifixion and resurrection
of Christ.
The
crucifixion and resurrection of Christ tear apart the Sin that separates us
from God. They open the wellspring of life. They redeem us. They fertilize us.
They save us. In our Baptismal bath we are plunged into the crucifixion of
Christ and we forever bear the sign of the cross, the sign of something so good
that it defies description, yet appears so evil that we don’t want to think
about it. Our hope is concealed. Our hope is in the ellipsis, in the omission.
Our hope is in the hidden end of the sentence, “and if it should bear fruit in
the coming year…” We live our lives clinging to our hope in a happy completion
of that ellipsis. Our lives hinge on three points. 1We are eager to
cut down what God would redeem, 2because what is evil looks good to
us and what is good looks evil to us. 3We are helpless, yet our hope
is that the God unseen will make good on the promises of the God we have seen,
Jesus the Christ, risen from the dead.
I’ve given
you the three points; I owe you a short poem, now. It’s a hymn written by
Herman Stuempfle, one of my professors of preaching at
Draw near, my people, hear a song of
sun and rain and soil, of vines deep rooted in the earth, whose branches climb
and coil. With joy I watched the greening leaves, the clusters on the vine, and
waited for the harvest time when grapes would promise wine. But though I pruned
each branch with care and nourished every root, the vines, for all my
husbandry, bore hard and bitter fruit. Upon a hill I’ll plant a vine, though
dark as death the sky, and from its branches pruned by pain, the wine of life
supply. My people, branches of my vine now spread through every land, go, bear
love’s fruit that all may share the harvest I have planned.
Note: On Tuesday, March 13, following a long battle with ALS, Herman
Steumpfle died in
-Pastor
Tim Leitzke, former student