Commentary on Luke 13:1-9, 31-35

In Luke 13:1–5, Jesus addresses the crowd—presumably the same one we saw in chapter 12. Someone in the group asks a question that captures everyone’s attention. They describe a recent scandal, apparently well-known: Pilate had mixed the blood of murdered Galileans in with their sacrifices.

Did God, they seem to ask, cause this horrific thing to happen? Or were they, the victims, “sinners” of a particularly loathsome kind?¹ Maybe their reasoning went like this: If we can draw a distinction between the calamity that befell our neighbor (who happened to be defective in some way) and our own lives (which are hopefully good enough), perhaps we will be spared a similar end.

There’s also a sense that this tragedy (and the tower collapse) is primarily an issue, a kind of abstraction rather than a reality in a shared world.

In answer, Jesus gives a double “no” (verses 3, 5). Jesus debunks a theology that portrays God as the “one in control”—a popular but misguided way of thinking then, as well as now. This kind of thinking distracts us from our real calling. Which is? In a word, repentance, repeated in verses 3 and 5. What does repentance look like? Maybe fewer divisions and deeper unity; maybe less like escape and more like attention.

Jesus’ listeners were looking for a “way out”—a well-lit exit path in case of emergency—and there were sirens, audible at that moment, warning of imminent disaster. Jesus asks his listeners to “stay” in the seeming emergency—especially, he says, in the crisis of the fig tree. A fig tree? Yes.

The parable of a barren fig tree feels like a trivial crisis, not worthy of our alarms or even theirs. It isn’t a hurricane, or the rise of a totalitarian regime, or a massive die-off. It feels quiet, this dying. But … if it’s your fig tree, maybe you notice; maybe it feels like a crisis. Maybe the fig tree represents everything we hope will be fruitful: our work, marriages, children, economic activities, communities.

If we don’t see its fruit, do we imagine that the fig tree is defective? Do we “cut it down”—whatever it is—in a frenzied desire to get to “growth”?

One of the characters in this parable, the “owner” of the fig tree, wants the fruit but does not understand the tree. The owner feels the tree is a waste of soil, not worth the dirt it is planted in (verse 7)—almost as if it were rejected in some profound and radical way. Without understanding, the owner would destroy what might still be saved.

Who understands the tree? The gardener. The gardener promises to change conditions of prevailing neglect with persistent care: turning earth, amending the soil, ministering to it day by day for a year (verses 8–9).

Readers should not take the seeming lightness of the fig-tree crisis as in some way minimizing the emergency warnings that come at the end of this reading (verses 31–35): “The danger,” according to R. Alan Culpepper, “to the community of God’s people is real and present.”² At the same time, the parables suggest that acting now, even in seemingly small ways, can begin a change that brings life and blessings to all. This “all” recalls one of Luke’s favorite expressions and refers to the radical inclusiveness of Jesus’ ministry—Jesus is for all, the whole creation.

Reflection

At the time of my writing, we watched as hurricanes Helene and Milton, with just two weeks between them, spun into monsters of climate catastrophe. This will probably be replaced by another climate event (or events) by the time this commentary is published. Not surprisingly, a phenomenon known as “climate anxiety” has appeared—but also climate polarization, if that’s possible. Read the comments section on the latest climate event and you find more than a few posts declaring, “Not a penny more! These Red States get what they vote for,” or “Mother Nature is not pleased,” and “The human species doesn’t deserve to exist,” or just two words: “I despair.”

Climate anxiety is real, and those who experience it need our empathy. But Luke’s text is at least partly about turning or changing our way of looking at things, including climate. Living in the universal “all” of Luke’s gospel challenges the privileged who have only just noticed the alarm and are now, belatedly, concerned—many have been living in precarity of rapacious and racist capitalism for a long time. According to Eve Andrews’ “Is Climate Anxiety a Pressing Problem, or a Luxury?” the language of well-being is related to White privilege:

Can we say that a mother in suburban Illinois stuck in a cycle of consuming news about climate catastrophe is having the same emotional response to climate change as a Yup’ik resident of the Alaskan village of Newtok, which is slowly relocating as chunks of its land are sucked into the Bering Sea? Probably not—the difference is an anticipatory fear of what could be lost versus mourning what already has been lost. That distinction, of course, is defined by privilege.³

Like the crowd to whom Jesus speaks, those distinctions seem precious when confronted by perilous conditions.

How then to deconstruct the implicit theology of privilege that funds the anxious concern of the well-being of the wealthy while creating a “spectacle” or “abstraction” out of those whose livelihoods, cultures, and homes are impacted? Maybe we return to the fig-tree crisis. What does it mean to care for the soil as well as the tree? Or, in an Indigenous key, care for the salmon as well as the river that is home to the salmon? Elder Wilson Justin, Athabascan Native, speaks of salmon and river almost like a gardener might speak of the soil and tree:

We’re all familiar with how, in English, things get broken into specific aspects of activities and defined by activities. You go to play a hockey game, and you know what it’s all about. Hockey game has rules. You don’t play hockey in a basketball game. Doesn’t work like that in Athabascan. It’s all one game. It’s all one resource. It’s all one creation, and it’s all one set of responsibility. So you have to learn not only how to accommodate salmon and river streams, you have to consider yourself a part of the salmon world.⁴

Maybe that is a word for us—Jesus pro nobis, for us and for the salmon. Jesus became as we are in real incarnation, for one creation and one set of responsibility.

Notes

1. R. Alan Culpepper helpfully notes that “the contexts in which most of the references to sinners occur in Luke serve to define ‘sinners’ primarily as those who were shunned by the Pharisees and scribes. They are the tax collectors, harlots, and others with whom Jesus ate and drank, thereby violating the social codes and prescriptions of the Pharisees.” See Culpepper, “Luke,” in The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 8 (Abingdon Press, 2015), 18.
2. Culpepper, 234.
3. Eve Andrews, “Is Climate Anxiety a Pressing Problem, or a Luxury?” Grist, October 3, 2024, https://grist.org/culture/climate-change-anxiety-mental-health-backlash/.
4. Quoted by Gwendoline Nenana Hoch, “Living Lines: An Alternative to Sustained Yield,” in The Anchorage Daily News, July 11, 2024, https://www.adn.com/opinions/2024/07/11/opinion-living-lines-an-alternative-to-sustained-yield/.

PRAYER OF THE DAY

Holy One of mighty power,
Your word is powerfully dangerous. Your word casts out demons. Your word heals incurable diseases. Your word devours empires. Your word transforms the fabric of the universe. Help us to stand in awe and fear of what your word is capable of doing. Give us courage to speak your word and wisdom to hear it, for the sake of the one whose very whisper can demolish sin, Jesus Christ. Amen.

HYMNS

As rain from the clouds ELW 508
Thy holy wings ELW 613, UMH 502
When twilight comes ELW 566

CHORAL

There is a balm, William Dawson