Thawing Truth, Muddy Grace
Third Sunday in Lent
There were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. 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? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.”
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. 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?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”
Luke 13:1-9
This Lent, we’ve been talking about living in truth. While the gospel is Christ's ultimate invitation to live in his ultimate truth, the phrase “living in truth” is tricky. It might sound like an invitation to harshness, like the “cold, hard truth.” I remember a comedian once saying that he hated the phrase “brutally honest” because honesty and trying to tell the truth shouldn’t be seen as brutal things, but rather, people who lie should be known as “brutal liars.” But sometimes, the truth is cold and hard as ice (as those who Jesus challenged would find out).
But in the next few weeks while we are now in the heart of Lent, we are transitioning between Lent’s modes and truth’s seasons. On the one hand, Jesus will tell us that it really is important that we repent and fully live in his truth, turning from our ways to his ways as the Lord told Isaiah.1 But Jesus will also show us how the fullness of truth is also God’s mercy, a love that keeps offering us lifelines. If the truth can be cold and hard as ice, it can also be like the past week around here that thaws into living water.
Is everything easy when the ice melts? No, Vermonters know better than anyone that it means mud. (For those unaware, mud season is the New England time in spring when all the snowpack in our fields and ice underneath the roads melt, making all our backroads and hiking trails a mess to move in.)
And in this short “parable of the fig tree” today, Jesus brings us into the grace of his mud season.
As Luke tells us, some people were hanging out with Jesus talking about the horrible news of the day, almost like they were doomscrolling through their Facebook feed. They bring up some Galileans who they heard had their bodies humiliated and blood desecrated by being mixed in with Roman sacrifices. We can gather their view of cosmic justice by the question Jesus asks them: do you think this happened because they were exceptionally bad, like they got what they deserved? Were they worse sinners than you?
No.
Or what about those eighteen people who had a tower fall on them in the middle of Jerusalem, another awful story and brutal way to die? Did they just have it coming more than you?
Also no.
No, in fact, Jesus says that we are just as bad of sinners in need of grace as they or anyone. Just because we follow him doesn’t mean we no longer need to repent—in fact, because we follow him we need to repent. As pastor Rich Villodas said this week, “The Church might be the only community of people that establishes its credibility in the world by routinely and fearlessly confessing and repenting of sin. And we lose our credibility by refusing to name our sins.” This is also what Paul tells the Corinthians,2 pointing out that their ancestors, God’s chosen people, share in the same rock of Christ as they did, yet they sinned and suffered for their hubris. Jesus is warning us the same. As the former NBA coach Jeff Van Gundy once said, “If you know better, but don’t do better, you’re no better.”
So is Jesus just trying to make us feel bad? Also no. He’s trying to help us understand grace. As Anglican priest Aaron Burt said about this parable of the fig tree, he’s giving “a parable of judgment that challenges our judgmentalism.” (By the way, any time you see Jesus talking about a fig tree, he is talking about Israel. For us Christians, we can understand that he is not just talking about his people back then, he is talking about the Church.)
In this short parable, we have a man who comes to look at the fig tree planted in his yard and he doesn’t find any fruit. And he’s upset about this. And he has a point! What good is a fig tree without figs? If Fig Newtons didn’t have figs, we’d just be eating Newtons.
So this man comes and judges the tree. Not only does he think it’s bad, but he demands, “Cut it down!” But the gardener working the vineyard has a different response. This man is living with the fruitless tree, tending to it, understanding its life cycles, knowing and loving what it could look like, and wishing more than anything it would give fruit. (Do we always love and tend our enemies the same way?) So this gardener says, “Please, give me a little more time to keep working. Let me tend to it another year, let me add some holy manure, let me love it a little more, and let’s see what happens.”
This gardener is Christ. And so Jesus delivers us the truth of his mercy through this parable that suddenly, in a flash, judges our judgmentalism. Welcome to the mud.
To make matters muddier, we’re still implicated. We still need more time with Jesus to let him thaw us. Is it enough to simply claim him? Paul thinks not, as again he warns his friends, “Do not become idolaters as some of them did…nor engage in sexual immorality, as some of them did…We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did…do not complain, as some of them did…if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.”3 Welcome to the mud.
The mud of grace is often neither as judgmental as we’d like it to be on our enemies, nor as easy as we’d like it to be on ourselves when Jesus calls us to repent. And if you try to drive over that grace with your pride and your ego, you’ll reach that moment like you do on the muddy roads here and realize, oh, I’m not really in control, am I?
Just like mud season, this parable comes in a transition period of Lent and Jesus’ ministry. We have seen him fighting temptations and performing miracle healings and prophetic witnessing, and he would still keep doing all these things, but now we see he is also with us in the mud. He is our gardener tending to we his Father’s tree, showing more and more that he is not just a prophet, he is the one who would die for us. And he would not just die for us, he would die for the people we hated most, maybe even the people who persecuted us. Are we ever fully ready to hear that?
I don’t know. But I know we can get it for an instant. We might only be able to really believe in grace for a moment, a flash when it all comes together. I believe one of the reasons why Jesus teaches in parables is that he’s trying to tell stories and use images that then all come together at once in the end, bringing us to that flashpoint of grace. A good joke gives you a single “click” where it all comes together in your mind, and the laughter comes from suddenly getting it. He wants us to have that click with his grace.
When we get those flashes of muddy grace, Jesus’ words become a thawing truth, melting down our hearts as God told Ezekiel he would, replacing our hardened hearts with hearts of flesh.4 And it is okay if you aren’t fully thawed, if you are still muddy, or if you’re sliding all over it out of control. If you have breath, God is giving you more time to thaw. After Paul’s colder truth, he reminds his friends, “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing, he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”5
This week, I was talking to some farmer’s kids who are now all grown up. They were telling me that when it’s really bad mud season up here, you can’t do anything at all in the field. So if they’re not out boiling maple syrup, mud season is when the farmers go inside and do their planning. Mud season is a time for discerning.
If you’re in your muddy grace season, take the time God has given you. Pause. Discern. Listen. Know that Jesus is in the mud with you, tending to your roots. Give thanks to the one who is still nurturing you. And if you must go out on the road, keep your heart open to where sliding on his mud might take you.
Isaiah 55
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
1 Corinthians 10:8-12
Ezekiel 11:19, 36:26
1 Cor 10:13