Luke 13:1-9
As I’ve said before, I’ve never really understood the difference between known unknowns and unknown knowns, or whatever silliness it is that drove us into the petro-war in Iraq, but I do know a thing or two about the unknowable. In fact, you might say that is my job which is more about guessing than anything.
Among the many mysteries on that list is what actually happened during the life and ministry of Jesus, and I’m not even talking about metaphysical questions like the nature of Trinitarian personhood and incarnation. I’m talking about basic facts on the ground, the “this happened, then this happened” sort of thing. For as I recently shared from this pulpit, our sources for his ministry and teaching were written decades after the events, none by a first-hand witness, often using other written sources, primary source material that is long lost, and always written through the lens of later events and later beliefs. Anything written after the Jewish War of 70 C.E. is distorted by the gravity of that cataclysm just as things written in the next twenty years will always be warped by the trauma of the plague and the resurgence of ethno-nationalism.
Still, we can discern some broad patterns in the gospels, a sort of shared story, we just have to temper our certainty with substantial humility.
Ever so often, however, a moment will slip through that looks like it might be historic memory, primarily because it hasn’t been smoothed over. Today’s text contains this sort of material, as well as text that may have gone through some later theological polishing.
We begin with two tragedies. Luke has Jesus reference Galileans killed by Pilate and Judeans lost in a building collapse. The first is important as evidence that, despite later attempts to portray Pilate as mostly innocent of Jesus’ execution, practically passive in the face of the mob, history tells us that he was in fact a cruel man, a racist who despised the Hebrews he thought beneath him. Letting Rome off the hook and blaming Jews has produced millennia of sin.
The latter incident, the collapsed tower, is sometimes thought to have been the result of a natural disaster, though it is just as likely to have been the result of shoddy construction. We simply don’t know.
Jesus refers to these incidents in a problematic passage in which he tells those listening that they will die “just as those did” if they do not change their hearts and minds. Is this rhetoric related to his kingdom teaching, the idea that those who opt-in will be part of God’s eternal kingdom and so never really die? Or is it a moral judgment on both Pilate’s victims in Galilee and the unfortunate Judeans?
As a call to conversion, the passage works. We are called to change our hearts and minds, to align ourselves with God’s restorative justice and overflowing grace. Try to make sense of the theodicy, the justice of falling towers and violent prefects and whether God wills for some people to die tragically, and you end up in dark and dangerous theological back alleys where nothing good is going to happen.
In Luke, Jesus follows the enigmatic words about the twin disasters with a parable about a fig tree. This is the part that has probably been through some theological polishing.
The original fig tree is found in Mark, the oldest of the synoptic gospels, and picked up by the authors of Matthew. In that story, Jesus wants a fig, and when he finds the tree bare, curses it. What follows is supposed to be a lesson about the power of a belief that can move mountains, so murdering an innocent fig tree is no biggie. I’m inclined to view this as historic memory, because quite frankly, Jesus comes off as a jerk.
Luke provides us with something a little more palatable, not an actual encounter with an actual fig tree, but instead a parable about a wealthy landowner with a vineyard and staff. The landowner finds a tree that is not producing. And there are a few sermons here… including one about bearing fruit, producing actual results, which is central to the gospel, another about God’s patience, because we need grace, and another about the gardener’s plan to add some fertilizer, because… you know, fertilizer happens.
Put that on a bumper sticker, ’cause that will preach.
We all get a little fertilizer dumped in our life, sometimes a lot of fertilizer dumped in our lives, and we can only hope that our response is to become more fruitful, to turn that pile of fertilizer into growth.
As I thought about the parable plan to cut down the barren fig tree “next year,” I was also thinking about my own home garden, not quite a rich man’s vineyard, the invasive vines where I want to plant peas, and a vine pervasive in my native region, kudzu.
Notice I said “a vine pervasive in my native region” and not a native vine in my native region. Kudzu, also known as Japanese arrowroot, was introduced to North America in the mid-19th century. Today, it is an invasive species that you can see as a wall of green along southern highways. In theory, the starchy roots can be eaten, and the leaves can serve as forage for livestock. Bertie shared with me a 1966 encyclopedia article that still portrayed is as essentially benign.
No one in the South would portray kudzu as benign today, for not only does it spread like wildfire, it also kills everything in its path. The trees and shrubs covered in kudzu can no longer receive light, and so they die.
There is no such thing as an acceptable amount of kudzu.
You cannot ignore kudzu and hope it will go away. You cannot peacefully co-exist with kudzu. Where there is kudzu, there is death. Period.
As progressive Christians, we are all about humility. Maybe too much so. We’d never actually cut the fig tree down, even if it wasn’t bearing any fruit, because it has always been there. Never mind that we might use that land to plant something that would be beneficial. That fruitless fig tree has been there for years. And we certainly wouldn’t cut down the kudzu. Oh, we might fret about it, put it on the agenda for the next meeting, but someone would be sure to point out that kudzu has a right to live too, that they think it is pretty, and so we’d do nothing until the landscape is covered, everything dead and buried under a smothering blanket.
There is no such thing as an acceptable amount of kudzu.
So yes, I’m humble. I don’t know God’s thoughts. I like to peacefully co-exist in ecumenical and interfaith relations. And there is surely something good and worthy to be learned from every tradition.
But I will never, ever, concede that women are in any way less than men, that women are any less capable, that they do not belong in the pulpit or at the Lord’s Table, on the Supreme Court or in the White House. Never.
I may be humble enough to know that I don’t have all of the answers, but I certainly know evil when I see it. I don’t care one iota how ancient your theology is, could care less how many adherents you have, if you refuse to ordain women and expect them to obey their husbands, you are wrong, and I do not want you to have any political power.
There is no such thing as an acceptable amount of kudzu.
You cannot peacefully co-exist with kudzu or ignore it and hope it will go away.
It must be eradicated. Completely.
I do not care how afraid you are, I am never going to accept that just because some of someone’s ancestors adapted to high sunlight conditions and developed darker skin, that they are less. And while we are at it, nor are they less because they did not deploy murderous technology to exploit, exterminate, and enslave others. I am not going to accept the hateful judgment of those who have benefited from a racist patriarchy against those who have been repeatedly crushed. I do not care how much you think you somehow personally are entitled to your privilege, that you somehow earned it. Just because you believe it to be true does not make it true, it is still evil. I have exactly zero room for racism, whether overt or disguised as ethno-nationalism, or the preening of white male chauvinists in a hearing room of the U.S. Capitol. Because what I saw this week was evil, make me want to puke or throw something through the television. It is evil. It is not a different opinion. It is bullying and misogyny and racism and it is evil.
There is no such thing as an acceptable amount of kudzu.
I do not care that you do not understand why someone loves who they love or expresses their gender in a way different than that constructed in patriarchal societies. If your religion says that God hates LGBTQ+ people, then your religion is wrong, a God made by men in their own image, probably with a healthy dose of self-loathing, and you can please just keep that fable out of our classrooms. Because that hatred is killing people. During the time we are in worship today, 60 young people between the ages of 13 and 24 will attempt suicide, and some will succeed. So no, I do not have to respect your dangerous bigotry, not one minute, not one second. Because the kid who dies might be someone I love. It might be someone you love. And there is one thing for damned sure, that dead kid is someone God loved, someone filled with holy mystery.
There is no such thing as an acceptable amount of kudzu.
At least the fig tree is just standing there on its own. It may be taking space and sucking up water, but it is not directly assaulting the other trees.
And I say to you this Lent, this season when we are called to self-examination, when we are invited once again to be part of God’s project of grace and restoration, I say to you this morning, that there is kudzu in your life. You didn’t have to plant it. But you’ve learned to live with it.
You turn your eyes away.
You’ll deal with it tomorrow.
There is just too much of it.
Shovel great heaping stinking piles of fertilizer around that fig tree and give it another year. That’s grace. But the kudzu? The things that kills?
There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. An. Acceptable. Amount. Of. Kudzu.
Amen.