Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Lent, March 20, 2022. Gospel of St. Luke 13:1-9. Theme: About Tragedies & Fig Trees
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus uses a couple of current events and a parable to teach about two terrible kinds of tragedies that can change the trajectory of our lives. The first is the tragedy of sin. And the second is the tragedy of those who ignore God’s invitation to receive the gift of eternal life through Christ. The first tragic event mentioned by Jesus involved some Jews in Galilee who were murdered on orders of Pontus Pilate in some unspecified but gruesome way. Obviously, they were in the midst of worship when soldiers pounced upon them, killing them so fiercely that their blood mingled with that of their animal sacrifice. Yes, this was the same infamous Pilate who would later condemn Jesus to death. The second tragedy was local news about a small crowd who were killed by a collapsing tower.
Now, according to the typical Jewish mindset of the time, sudden death due to violence or accidents was seen as a punishment from God. But Jesus corrects this warped way of thinking and uses these horrible events as a wake-up call. He turns the people’s way of thinking about sin around by saying that it wasn’t sin that brought about tragedy, rather, it is that every sin is itself the real tragedy in life. How so? Because, while our physical lives are indeed precious and to be cherished, they are by definition temporary and our time on this planet is short in comparison to the whole picture of our existence. But the life of our souls, the spiritual part of who each one of us really are and where our personalities reside, is immortal. Whether we admit it or not, whether we believe it or not, the truth is that every human being will exist forever and what our eternal destiny looks like and where we spend it, is very much up to us.
We cannot control every circumstance that affects our physical lives, but it’s very important to never forget that every single one of us does have total control over the circumstances of our souls, of our spiritual lives. Not one of us, no matter what age or medical condition we are in, can guarantee that when we wake up in the morning, we are going to find ourselves back in bed that night. Every time we get behind the wheel, go for a walk, board a plane or do many things in life, we make ourselves vulnerable and lose various degrees of control over the circumstances. But the death of the body isn’t the end of our life-story. Our souls, who we each really are, the persons that we have fashioned ourselves to be, carry on beyond earthly existence and shall exist forever.
We are each in charge of and responsible for the decisions we make for the trajectory of our spiritual lives. And this where the tragedy of sin that Jesus points out to us in today’s Gospel comes into the picture. Jesus asked the crowd to view the tragedies they heard about as providential invitations to examine their own lives and relationship with God. He is telling us that we never know when a similar tragedy could claim our own lives, and when this happens there is no longer the opportunity to change, no longer the time to repent and make one's life right with God.
To round out the lesson and give us a picture story of this teaching, Jesus tells what has come to be known as “the parable of the barren fig tree”. To recap the parable, the owner of an orchard complains to his gardener that a fig tree has failed to produce fruit for 3 years and so he tells the gardener to cut it down. The gardener urges the owner to leave it for just a little longer so he can fertilize it in the hope that it will begin producing fruit and be saved. Symbolically, the fig tree is each one of us, the owner of the orchard is God and the gardener is Jesus. The 3 years of being patient with the barren fig tree is a reference to the 3 years of Jesus’ public ministry of calling people to repent and believe in the Gospel.
The bottom line of this parable is that it is up to each one of us to decide if the tree of our lives will grow and flourish or if it will wither, be cut down and thrown out. Our response to this parable is left up to each one of us. Even if we discover that we are not where we know we should be in our relationship with God, we must always remember that as long as we have breath we can always change. But we also need to keep in mind that life is short and we do not know when our time on planet Earth is due to end. The Good News is that no matter what stage of growth the tree of our life is at, the fertilizer of repentance and the water of grace can enable it to grow and bear fruit, becoming something beautiful for God and for the world.
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