Graveyard or Vineyard?
by Diana Butler Bass

The Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent has too often been used by Christians as a story about Jews who fail to accept Jesus — and has lend to all sorts anti-Semitic uses. An alternative reading (one quite popular with American fundamentalists) is that the story is of “turn or burn” Christianity. Today’s lectionary text made me want to run with a different option! Nevertheless, here we go . . . 

Luke 13:1-9

At that very time 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 others 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 gardener, '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.'"

Whenever I hear this odd story from Luke, I think about the years I lived in Santa Barbara, California where fig trees are both huge and plentiful. One of my favorite old fig trees was at the Mission. In the middle of their graveyard, the twisted trunk of an ancient fig had grown wide and tall, a fruited canopy for the dead. Tomb and tree — a study in spiritual contrasts. 

That’s what today’s story is — a study in spiritual contrasts. And it is the third in a series of Lenten foils regarding power: first, control versus dependence; second, revenge versus vulnerability; and this week, violence versus forbearance. 

The most obvious thing about the texts from the first three weeks of Lent? They are political. There’s no avoiding it. Basically, this reading is Jesus responding to the front page of the Jerusalem Times. 

The first Lent text clearly described Caesar’s empire of bread, power, and protection — complete with Satan tempting Jesus with a vision of the earthly kingdoms. The second began with Herod plotting to assassinate Jesus, and Jesus’s dismissive response to the threat. And, today, the text features Pilate — dreaded, hated Pilate — the governor so brutal that the Emperor Tiberius removed him from office and recalled him to Rome to be put on trail for a genocidal attack on a Samaritan village. 

Caesar. Herod. Pilate. The Unholy Trinity of Roman imperialism.

Luke begins this selection with two news stories that everybody was talking about — the murder of Galileans at the Temple and the collapse of a tower on eighteen people. In the first instance, Pilate had Galilean pilgrims killed in the Temple courtyard, and their blood mixed (either figuratively or actually) with ritual sacrificial blood there, a shocking defilement of both these particular Jews and the Temple itself. 

The second episode, the tower collapse, may have been related to Pilate’s great project at the time — the construction of a new aqueduct. Pilate had pillaged Jerusalem’s treasury to build it and had (mostly likely) used slave labor to make it happen. The people in Jerusalem rioted against him. And some historians have suggested that the tower collapse may have been an act of sabotage either by Pilate (to keep the workers in line) or angry Jews in an attempt to stop the entire thing (in which case, it would have involved political suicide).

As humans are prone to do, people wanted to place blame. The Galileans, the eighteen — they’d come up against Rome and lost. Did the dead deserve their fate? Rebellion resulted in death. Roman justice after all. Maybe Pilate got his point across. Maybe the citizens of Jerusalem were terrified into submission.

That is, after all, what empire does — theft, enslavement, murder, defilement. These two events reveal the very nature of imperial violence. 

Maybe that’s why Jesus wants his hearers to repent. Jesus doesn’t think that their personal sin caused this — no one is more or less of an offender than any of those who died. No one, in this sense, deserved to die. People just die, especially people held in thrall by violent kingdoms of this world. Because that’s what every Rome in human history always does — kills in order to survive. And Jesus surely doesn’t desire revenge. 

Instead, we need to “repent” of collaborating with Roman violence, repent of giving in to kingdoms built on injustice, repent of blaming victims for their suffering, and repent of believing that the murderous power of empire is the only power. But how? How do we do that without becoming like Rome? Can we resist empire without giving violence for violence? 

Answering these implied questions, Jesus tells a story. He contrasts the murderous reign of Pilate to the garden with an unfruitful fig tree. The owner of the vineyard orders the gardener to cut down the barren tree. Perhaps the gardener secretly welcomed the idea of destroying the landowner’s tree. But instead of taking an ax to the tree, the gardener begs, “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.” 

Did you know that trees have legal rights in Judaism? That’s right — it is called orlah and it forbids eating the fruit of newly planted trees during their first three years of life. Orlah is drawn from Leviticus 19:23-25: 

When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall regard their fruit as forbidden; for three years it shall be forbidden to you; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all their fruit shall be set apart for rejoicing in the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that their yield may be increased for you: I am the Lord your God.

Christians tend to read the impatient landowner as God — and Jesus assuaging God’s wrath against Israel with a plea for divine patience. 

But that’s ridiculous. No Jew hearing Jesus’ parable could have thought that the landowner was God. Because God won’t break God’s own law about trees and fruit.

The landowner isn’t an angry God. The landowner is Caesar. The landowner is Herod. The landowner is Pilate. The landowner is all these murderers — those who destroy people and trees — the breakers of the Law, profiteers at the expense of God’s creation, effectivity the rapists of the land of milk and honey. 

Jesus contrasts their rage with another vision — the land isn’t “wasted.” The land is holy. The land needs tending, patience, and care. Trees take time to grow and fruit. The goodness of the Law knows this. The Law not only governs human relations but the very life of creation, the contours of God’s kingdom. 

It is almost as if Jesus was saying, “The Kingdom of God is like a vineyard of young trees. A wicked ruler seized the land and tried to cut down all the trees because they were not profitable. They added no treasure to his stores; he was eager for the wealth the land would produce. But the faithful gardeners refused to wield the ax. Instead, they protected the trees as their wisdom taught, they enriched the land, and they trusted the trees would fruit. The Kingdom of God is like that — a vineyard worked with patience and manure.”

Therein is the moral of the story: Caesar’s empire is impatient for power — built on theft, enslavement, death, and defilement; God’s kingdom is that of patience for healing — established in the giftedness and generosity of creation, tended with faithful service, growing new life, and fruitful. The first clears the land and ends in death; the second tends and trusts divine fecundity. 

I know you are angry and want to destroy Pilate, Jesus affirmed the horror felt by his followers. Resist Caesar; resist every empire. But don’t meet Caesar’s violence with more violence. Instead, remember the Law. Remember the slow work of God’s kingdom. 

The third Sunday in Lent once again says that there is a choice to be made. Are we citizens of Caesar’s empire or God’s? 

Tomb or trees?