THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT March 23, 2025 

Prayer of the Day 

Eternal God, your kingdom has broken into our troubled world through the life, death, and resurrection of your Son. Help us to hear your word and obey it, and bring your saving love to fruition in our lives, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Gospel: Luke 13:1-9 

1At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.2 [Jesus] asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?3 No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. 4 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 other people living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.” 6 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. 7 So he said to the man working the vineyard, ‘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?’ 8 He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”

SERMON-

Where is God when a tower collapses or an empire slaughters people and desecrates their bodies? Do we somehow bring suffering upon ourselves?

Jesus pushes back hard against the popular notion that suffering is always a punishment for sin (blame the victim). He calls us all to a radical shift in perspective—This is no debate to be won or lost. How we imagine God and how we believe God operates informs the way we treat what God has created and whom God has created. Sometimes we need to totally re-think what we believe about God and God’s ways of operating. People of faith are called to a lifetime of repenting and repentance. Deeply changed hearts and minds bring changed behaviour.

If you will allow a word nerd his moment…the Bible’s word for “repent” in Greek is meta-noia. Literally a change—meta— as in meta-morphosis plus no-ous meaning mind as in diagnosis.

Once upon a time a young couple’s first born suffered a rare condition of premature aging which led to a short life of suffering. Young Aaron’s dad was Rabbi Harold Kushner ‘s whose book When Bad Things Happen to Good People published nearly 45 years ago has true staying power. Kushner would write that God’s fundamental goodness dictates that God would be a companion with those who suffer.

Maybe Jesus’ parable of the patient gardener reveals something about God and something about us. We might be tempted to abandon the fig tree or maybe the entire enterprise of fig raising when we don’t see any fruit. Might God be the one pleading the fig tree’s case; give it another year.

Fun fig fact…one we learned Wednesday over prayer and coffee and tea…is that fig trees typically bear fruit three to five years after first being planted. Expecting fig trees to bear fruit in years one and two is just plain unrealistic…even year three is pushing it. Neither the gardener nor God are simply kicking the can farther down the road. Maybe the gardener and God know something of the long game here.

Further, figs and fig trees feature in the imagination of each religion with roots in Abraham and Sarah’s life. The prophet Jeremiah has a dream in which fresh sweet fruit represents people living in exile and a basket of mouldering figs represents the usurpers of the Jewish homeland and those who collude with them. Figs might remind the exiles that God remembers and that a sweet day of homecoming will happen one day

This week our group listened as one described what it’s like to eat a fig freshly picked from the tree—Maybe that’s a foretaste of God’s restoration to come—but a fig tree can’t be manipulated or forced to bear fruit. Jesus parable invites us to root for the fig tree—how about rooting for God’s realm coming to be in which all things are reconciled and restored? What radical shift in our beliefs about God and the world would lead to behaviours needed in the world right now? May God instill hope in us and empower us to do a bit of weeding and a bit of fertilizing while we anticipate God bringing a Divine and loving plan to fruition one day. Amen.