A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 15C and Proper 16C.
After several troubling passages and challenging preaching opportunities, Proper 16C will give us something positive to preach on. That is, as always, if we’re avoiding our context. Or dwelling on what it means for Jesus to be flouting Sabbath law.
But there is such provocative material in-between this week, let us dare not miss it.
We were left with the challenge from Jesus to interpret the present age as easily as we do the weather. Which is just about the most awesome thing to hear right now. For those of us who constantly feel like we are struggling to be honest with each other.
And Jesus even twists the knife in the last verses of chapter 12 (57-59) asking the most direct question ever:
“And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?”
As in, why don’t you guys just talk?
Of course, we know why we don’t talk to each other. We fight. So we go to some neutral arbitrator.
But there’s something really telling in Jesus’s response to this. He says to try and deal directly, or else you may be locked away and they’ll throw away the key.
It seems that a certain way of reading this shows a lot of deference to the whole system. We go to court, and sometimes we lose. That’s how it goes. You’re on the hook for what you owe.
Another way to look at it is from a place of distrust. Judges can be bought off and the poor are stuck in debtor’s prisons, being paid pennies for labor, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll someday get out.
Avoiding the Refs
I just finished listening to Michael Lewis’s podcast, Against the Rules. Lewis investigates the massive push against referees in our world right now. Even as, in the case of the NBA, they are better at their jobs than ever.
And it strikes me that the warning Jesus gives about the need to appeal to the ref in civil disputes isn’t actually the primary point of his teaching. It’s the appeal to the ref rather than our neighbor that he cares about. And notice why that matters to him: this act seems to carry far greater potential harm.
Please understand that there are exceptions to this, of course. Abuse, power, exploitation get in the way. Sometimes forced arbitration puts unequal parties at a negotiation table with the pretense that all is equal. These are certainly exceptions.
Besides, Jesus doesn’t give us a one-size-fits-all always rule here. It is an appeal to talk things out because you may be the one who is on the receiving end of injustice.
At the beginning of this chapter, Jesus warned his followers not to trust the religious leaders. So it shouldn’t surprise us that he would warn about going to them about a dispute. Their religious leaders are hypocrites; they steal; they lie; Jesus’s accusations are serious.
All the more reason we shouldn’t read Jesus’s words as primarily a universal statement. In its context, it is a warning. Not just what is potentially a challenge to them personally. But that the people you need to trust may not have your interest at heart.
In other words, Rome has already bought off the refs.
Repentance
Chapter 13 begins with an interesting reflection (vv. 1-5).
Jesus is told of a rumor about Pilate desecrating the blood of Galileans. It’s the kind of moment I think is recognizable to anyone who has ever been in authority. Someone is bringing news that you might appreciate knowing. So, in a way, they are being helpful to you.
But they also have another motive for bringing it. They don’t necessarily understand it. Or more precisely, they have some innate ideas about it and they want you, as the authority, to weigh in.
I get this a lot. And 9 times out of 10, the person has good motives. It’s a way of seeking theological advice. Not because they have any control over the situation. But they want to know how to think about it theologically. They already know what they think about it morally.
It is to this latter idea which Jesus responds. And he jumps right in saying essentially You don’t think God did this as a punishment, right?
There’s a way this episodic moment draws us out, just like the above interaction. Rather than keep us mindful of the context, these moments feel like Jesus is giving us universal teachings, so listen up!
But given the context, this feels even more like counter-programming. Like Jesus needing to teach people who have to relearn the basics of our faith. Precisely because their teachers have given them something they must now unlearn.
Jesus isn’t anti-authority
Here, I’m just going to step in for one moment and make it clear that Jesus doesn’t condemn authority. Nearly every generic figure that receives Jesus’s condemnation are people who abuse authority.
There’s a way in this modern world in which we mistake the potential of any authority to abuse with the demonstrable acts of abuse of particular authorities.
In this way, Jesus is constantly condemning empire, not just for its potential to abuse, but for its routine evidence of abuse.
So we can compare this to both the anarchist and the libertarian who often condemn all systems of governmental hierarchy as abusive. But Jesus doesn’t condemn Rome because he is anti-government. He is anti-empire. And the empire of Rome exploited his people.
Jesus also condemns the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem for collaborating with Rome. People called by God to protect the people join in the exploitation of the people.
This makes Jesus a radical. But not one who is anti-Jewish or anti-government. Many modern Christians are deeply confused by what that means.
A Fig Tree Parable
I also don’t think it’s any coincidence that Jesus just told them to get better at interpreting the present age and be wary of appealing to authority and someone shows up to tell Jesus something that’s going on in Jerusalem.
This is very much on-point. And I suspect the parable is too (vv. 6-9).
Jesus tells of a man who has a gardener plant a tree. When he comes looking for fruit, he’s outraged. He wants it pulled up—it’s wasting space. The gardener asks for more time. He wants to nurse it and give it a chance.
It is a provocative parable, particularly given how incomplete it feels.
I don’t know who to side with. I don’t know what it says about God and the world. Really, I don’t know who in it I’m supposed to trust.
If we handed this passage to a neutral arbitrator and asked them to figure it out, they would just scratch their heads. Precisely because so little in the parable is evident.
It doesn’t say when the tree was planted. The landowner merely claims he’s been checking on the tree for three years. But, given the opening, the reader is under the impression it was just planted.
Fig trees can take up to six years from planting to bear fruit, so even giving it one more year may not be enough time. The landowner is being completely unreasonable. The gardener would know this, of course. But why doesn’t he say anything?
However, compared to the landowner, the gardener seems quite reasonable. This certainly doesn’t seem like a Jesus-to-God or person-to-Jesus allegory.
The parable is open-ended. We don’t know what actually transpires.
There isn’t enough here.
This parable can’t speak for itself because it’s like an incomplete math problem. We need at least one more factor to complete it with more confidence.
I’m drawn to make sense of it anyway. Perhaps we can pull in how Jesus speaks of fruit elsewhere, for instance.
In the cursing of the fig tree in Mark, Jesus condemns a fig tree for not producing figs out of season but when they are needed. He does this as an illustration about the Temple—which doesn’t seem able to help people when the need is actually there.
Jesus uses this metaphor of fruit as a kind of Godly manifestation that humans have ownership over cultivating. It seems to be his go-to for explaining the human relationship to God.
This is also directly related to Jesus’s economic philosophy. Because our gifts/blessings/fruit of the spirit all come from God they essentially remain God’s. In a very general way, the world is God’s on loan to humanity.
In this way, humans are stewards of God’s wealth. Our job isn’t to hoard it like dragons. Or invest it so interest will compound for the future. We’re entrusted to make sure people don’t go hungry.
So, going back to the parable, my gut really responds to the harshness of the landowner and the generosity of the gardener. I don’t read this as an act of good stewardship, but the rash decision of the powerful. Particularly one who isn’t familiar with the world he is entrusted to steward.
My hunch
Coming right after the teaching about repentance and providence, it seems this small parable of the fig tree serves as another teaching on authority. It recalibrates the hearer toward our part in the providence of God.
It also paints another bad picture of the authoritarian.
The common themes of the last few chapters keep growing. Particularly this juxtaposition between the hypocrisy of the religious leaders to the generous spirit Jesus is calling his followers to embody.
Given what happens next in the synagogue (vv. 10-17), it seems the crux of discipleship is this embodiment of grace. Even in light of tradition.