Luke 13:1-9

Ask a Better Question[1]

March 20, 2022

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image You Are Worthy

by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman

© a sanctified art | sanctifiedart.org

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/nz1RoFryPy8

For one semester in seminary, I worked as a student chaplain in a class called Clinical Pastoral Education. As part of the class, I had to write down a verbatim conversation with a patient and discuss it with my supervisor and others in the class. One time, there was a patient who was very bored. He just talked and talked. I probably spent an hour in his room. Afterwards, I wrote down everything that I could remember, but I couldn’t remember everything from this very long conversation. My supervisor pointed out the places in my verbatim where the conversation skipped from one topic to another with absolutely no logic. In at least one case, I remember, the verbatim made me look extremely clueless about one of the patient’s concerns.

I thought about that experience when I read our text from Luke at the beginning of this week. The parable that starts in verse 6 seems to have little connection to the preceding conversation. I began to wonder if Luke left out something important between verse 5 and verse 6 or if Jesus was clueless about the people’s concerns. By the end of the week, I had a different sense about it. I’m always grateful when that lightbulb glows, however dimly, before Sunday.

Jesus in on his way to Jerusalem. Luke is reporting on various encounters that he has along the way. The news of this day includes a story about Pilate, the Roman governor, who killed people while they were engaged in worship. The conversation is about current events, but on another level, it is about why bad things happen to good people. That is a big question that most of us still struggle with.

One popular answer blames the victims. If those people died in church, then God must have been angry with them. They must not have been good people after all, and they got what they deserved. That is not my answer, but you hear it all the time. A natural disaster wipes out an area and some preacher will blame it on the sinfulness of that city. Someone is killed by the police and the swift judgment is that if they had just complied, nothing bad would have happened. The fact that they died becomes evidence that they somehow deserved it.

Jesus anticipates that answer. He brings up another current event – the collapsing of a tower wall that killed 18 people. He says that the Galileans who were killed by Pilate were no worse than anyone else and neither were those who died in the tower accident. One was a case of human violence, the other probably human construction error. Jesus seems to be saying, “stuff happens. It’s random.”

But the people want to know why. Of all the people who offer sacrifices, why did Pilate kill those particular ones? Why did the tower fall when it did, when those 18 people were caught under it?

They seem to assume a connection between God and violence or between God and suffering. Jesus rejects that premise. Those who died were not worse sinners than anyone else. There is no correlation between God and violence. God was not punishing the ones who died. That is not how God works.

Jesus seems to ignore their very pressing “why” questions and tells a story about a fig tree

Pádraig Ó Tuama is an Irish theologian and poet. One of his books is entitled In the Shelter: Finding Welcome in the Here and Now. In that book, he talks about inappropriate questions and the Japanese word “mu” which can mean “un-ask.” If someone asks a question that is too small, too simplistic, too flat, Ó Tuama points to this word, which is also used in Buddhist practice, to say ‘un-ask’ that question because there’s a better one, a wiser one, a deeper one. [2]

We might imagine the crowd pressing Jesus with their why’s. Why did the Galileans die? Why is there so much pain in the world? Why does God allow suffering? It is as if to all of those whys, Jesus says “mu -- ask a better question.”

He invites them to find a deeper question by telling the parable. It’s a short story. There’s a fig tree that has not borne fruit for three years. The owner is tired of waiting for it to produce. He tells the gardener to cut it down. The gardener says “Give it more time. Let me give it some extra care and attention. See what happens next year. If it still doesn’t bear figs, then you can cut it down.” Notice that the gardener doesn’t say that he will cut it down, but that the owner can.

This strange little story is Jesus’ response to the question about God and violence, about why there is so much suffering. Before he tells it, he says one other curious thing. He has said that the people who died were just normal people, no better or worse than anyone else, but then he says, “Unless you repent, you will die just as they did.”

“Unless you repent, you will die just like they did.” What on earth could that mean? Everyone is going to die, and Jesus just said that those people didn’t die because of something bad they did. But we should repent?

This is confusing because of how we understand that word which gets translated as repent. We hear repent and we think “be sorry.” We hear repent and we think “confess your sins.”

Metanoia is the Greek word that gets translated “repent” in English. Metanoia can be broken down into two parts. Meta is a preposition that can mean with or after or beyond. Noia is related to the verb to think and to the noun for mind. When you put them together, the word metanoia refers to a changed mind, a new way of seeing things, being persuaded to adopt a different perspective.[3] Marcus Borg says that “to repent is to go beyond the mind that you have.”[4] This is the kind of change of mind that results in a change of behavior.

So, when Jesus calls for repentance, he is not asking people to be sorry. He is asking them to let their minds be transformed, to go beyond their conventional understanding of what life with God is like.

A conventional understanding of God – in Jesus’ day and now – is that God is out to punish people, that God inflicts suffering, that people get what they deserve. If we hear the fig tree story with a conventional understanding, we might think that God is like the vineyard owner who wants to chop down the unproductive tree.

But Jesus says “ask a better question. Change your mind.”

What if God is not like the vineyard owner, looking to maximize production, striking down unfruitful trees? What if God is like the gardener? What if God is the one who is willing to wait with care and patience for the tree to bear fruit in its own time?

There is not a straight line between the people’s concerns and Jesus’ story, but I think that Jesus is trying to help them break free of simplistic answers, of quick judgments that burden us and each other.

Productivity is one of those burdens. Like the fig tree, we are often measured by how much we do. Sometimes it is the only standard by which we evaluate ourselves. Some people, at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown could not stand to be idle. So, they cleaned house from top to bottom, they painted rooms and fixed things that they had been too busy to do for years. When all the usual outlets for productivity had been taken from them, they created new ones. Because if they don’t produce, their inherent value, their self-understanding, is called into question.

Other people did not undertake those projects, but now, two years later, they regret it. “I should have done more” they say. Never mind that they were coping with a traumatic event felt all over the world – they think should have something to show for it.

I have a friend who seems to be functioning just fine in terms of outward appearances. His boss is satisfied with his work. His relationships with friends and family have endured. But he has been forcing himself to work, to produce, to keep caring for others, for a long time now. What he needs is rest, what he needs is grace, but he tells himself that he is lazy, that other people are doing more than he is. He is like the vineyard owner warning himself that if he doesn’t bear fruit, he deserves to be cut down.

He needs metanoia. He needs the transformation of mind that says he is worthy of tender care just as he is.

“Let your mind be transformed,” Jesus says. “There is not a correlation between God and suffering. You insist on dividing the world up into good and bad people. You separate yourself from those who are suffering by thinking that you are not like them, and maybe even subconsciously you think that they must deserve it. And then when you suffer, as everyone does, you think that you must deserve it. So, you try harder and feel worse. And that way of thinking is diminishing your life. It is killing you.”

So, ask a different question. Ask what kind of tending you need to come back to life. Ask what you need, how much digging around your roots and piling on of manure you are willing to receive so that you can flourish.

God does not send suffering to punish us. The Galileans who died were no worse sinners than anyone else. But sometimes, we do learn from our suffering. God does not cause our suffering in order to teach us, but sometimes we learn from it. Experience changes our minds more powerfully than anything. It can make us more tender and caring, more open to each other. It can bring us into solidarity with each other.

The Rev. Larissa Kwong Abazia is a Presbyterian pastor in New Jersey. She notes that the fig tree is in the midst of a vineyard. The main focus here is cultivating grapes, not figs. She says “Many of us [who are people of color] experience the world as a fig tree in the midst of grape vines. We are placed in fields not meant for us and yet expected to thrive. People discount and doubt us, threatening to cut us down if we don’t produce in the ways that have been defined on our behalf. We are afterthoughts demanded to bear fruit or be destroyed.”[5]

The metanoia Jesus invites us to releases us from judgment. It removes the burden of productivity from our shoulders. And it also changes our perspective on other people. When we are more gracious with ourselves, we can be more gracious with others. We can stop rushing to judgment and consider the complexity of individual circumstances. It goes back to something else Jesus said, “love your neighbor as you love yourself” Or learn to love yourself so that you can learn to love your neighbor in the same way.

Allow your mind to be changed, so that everyone has an opportunity to thrive. Ask a wiser question, a deeper question, a truer question. Learn the art of patient, hope-filled tending. Live life to the brim.

[1] This title and organizational framework of this sermon come from a wonderfully provocative essay by Debi Thomas. https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2130-ask-a-better-question

[2]Pádraig Ó Tuama In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2015) , p. 110

[3] Matt Skinner, Commentary on Luke 13:1-9, Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2789

[4] Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), pp. 219-220.