READINGS

• Luke 13:1-9 - Repent or Perish, The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
• Jeremiah 12
• Isaiah 30

HOMILY

*1 At that time, some people came and reported to him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. **

We are in a passage of Luke where he is somewhere between Galilee and Jerusalem and He's engaging in conversations with crowds.

Something seems to have happened recently which has caused people to want to ask questions they've been gossiping or murmuring about something that has happened and what has happened some of those.

This time, there was some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

This probably means sometime close to the Passover, because that was the time when the great sacrifice of sheep and lambs would take place in Jerusalem and laypeople would be involved.

People would take their sacrifices for the priests to slaughter, so this massacre of Galileans which happened in the temple precincts at Passover time.

The question was a fulfilment of Jeremiah 12: but you, oh Lord, know me; you see me and test me; my heart is with you; pull them out like sheep for the slaughter and set them apart for the day of slaughter.

This is one of the prophecies of the arrival of the day of vengeance.

So probably these people were asking Jesus: gosh does this mean that the day of vengeance has started?

They're treating Jesus as a prophet and doesn't mean that their vengeance has started?

2 And he responded to them, “Do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all the other Galileans, because they suffered these things?

We know nothing about the Galileans in question.

One suggestion has been that these particular Galileans were proto-zealots.

[!tip] Zealots

The actual concrete movement called zealots was later, it was post Jesus's time, but these were protozoa, in other words, political activists from the boonies who'd probably done something like ambushed some Roman soldiers and then managed to hide right away.

The roman spies, however, had found out who they were and they'd come up to Galilee to offer their sacrifices and the romans then themselves ambushed them in Jerusalem.

Well, remember that all this takes place in an invaded and occupied country with a good deal of tension between the colonized and the imperial forces.

There are always people who wants to be more hothead than maybe as prudent.

This is the worrying thing: there were also always so-called religious authorities in the temple crowd who played a very double game with all this.

They would preach all the texts suggesting to people that they should rise up and do these dangerous activistic things, but would, whenever anything dangerous appear, say oh gosh no no that's nothing to do with us, we're the security guards, we're the people who are here to maintain a good order.

So they would sell themselves to the romans as a sort of necessary bulwark against this kind of thing.

This is no surprise to anyone who watches modern politics or ancient politics such has always been the kind of game people: wanting to encourage violence on the one hand and yet present themselves as a good guys on the other.

What that means is that all involved in this game share the same balance.

They're all involved in the same thing whether it's the slightly more activist ones who actually do something wicked or everyone else who's complicit in the game, but they're all involved with the same thing.

Of course this is something which will eventually lead as it did indeed, and Jesus is prophesying it here, to the destruction of Jerusalem.

All these things eventually led to the whole place being destroyed.

3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.

Apparently the Aramaic form is a very very strong no.

You're all part of the same thing. We can't judge them for being slaughtered.

It doesn't necessarily mean anything about the day of a vengeance except that the day of vengeance is going to cover everybody. When it comes, it will be terrible.

This mingling of the blood is quite an important thing.

If the galileans were sacrificing sheep, the notion is that the sheep stand for the galileans.

If the galileans bloods were sacrificed with the sheep's blood, then the notion is that this would in fact be standing in for the romans.

The romans were sacrificing them, and these people were standing in for them so they were sacrificed on behalf of the romans.

Why is this important?

At the sacrifice of the atonement, before the high priest killed the lamb, he killed the bullock.

The bullock's blood represented the human.

The lamb's blood represented the divine.

Always a few drops of the bullock's blood would be mingled with a lamb's blood.

So that this was the human and divine offering.

That's the background that everybody will know about the mingling of the blood had a very strong sense for people at the time.

4 Or those eighteen that the tower in Siloam fell on and killed — do you think they were more sinful than all the other people who live in Jerusalem?

5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.

Jesus then asks them another question about a contemporary event, which we know little or nothing: those 18 who were killed when the tower of siloam fell on them.

Siloam is at the bottom of the hill on which the temple is built.

It's a place with a pool water, came down the east side of Jerusalem an it used to be a sort of a fairly gentle climb up to the temple mount from there.

When Herod had decided to redo the temple, he built this massive esplanade which is what you still see when you go there to Jerusalem now.

Very high up above Siloam, so that's now a very considerable distance and it's more or less direct drop.

Probably at the time some people in Siloam, not too pleased with having their perfectly nice neighborhood squashed by this monstrous building from on high or this monstrous esplanade from on high, decided to build a tower so that it would be of comparable height.

They didn't want to be completely put in the shade by the new building work.

The area is fairly regularly earthquake. So such a thing is a perfectly probable thing to have happened.

Once again, this looks forward to what happened when in the siege of Jerusalem in between 66 and 70.

The eastern wall of the Temple fell down and it fell down on Siloam, so a good deal of destruction happened at that time as well.

Their pride, their haughtiness, in wanting to build something to be on the same level as the Temple.

Jesus is saying everyone is in exactly the same level where the same pride is present.

Here Jesus is cunningly weaving together a reference from Isaiah 30.

On every lofty mountain at every high hill there will be brooks running with water on a day of the great slaughter when the towers fall.

So here you have the great slaughter of the galileans and the towers falling.

jesus is clearly putting those together in the context of the day of vengeance.

So people beginning to question whether these were the signs, and jesus beginning to interpret them with the signs, but saying: no, I tell you these people weren't worse, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.

The whole point of the day of vengeance is that it's not supposed to be vengeance; it's supposed to be a day of forgiveness, in which hearts are changed and people become able to live without these terrible events.

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

6 And he told this parable: A man had a fig tree that was planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none.

It's in the light of that, the postponing, the putting off of the day of vengeance, the refusal of the day of vengeance that Jesus tells them this parable.

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came looking for fruit on it and found none: now this was quite common.

Vineyards quite commonly would have a fig in it, which would plant in the northeast corner where it would get the most sun and that was absolutely key thing.

The fig tree famously needed a lot of sun in order to produce good sweet fruit.

So it would occupy a pretty prized place in the chunk of land.

Famously one of the things about fig trees were that, if they produced fruit and they had very very thick fronds of leaves they covered quite a lot of ground under which nothing could grow.

So they they took up space which stopped other things being planted and growing.

The land under them was not able to be used for other things.

So if someone has a fig tree in the garden, they know that it's taking up the best in their vineyard.

If it's not producing any fruit, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to say: well okay this is not doing any good; this fig tree seems to be a bit of a dud; let's get rid of it and plant something else, lettuce whatever.

7 He told the vineyard worker: Listen, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it even waste the soil?’

8 But he replied to him: Sir, leave it this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it.

9 Perhaps it will produce fruit next year, but if not, you can cut it down.

So he said to the gardener: see here for three years i've come looking for fruit on this fig tree and still i find none well.

Since about three years is a bit of an oddity because there are at least two possible things going on here:

1. the first is that according toDdeuteronomy and the rules concerning planting, you shouldn't expect any fruit in the first three years.

It's only in the fourth year that you should start getting the first fruit which would then be paid to the temple and in the fifth year you should start getting fruits for yourself.

That's the Deuteronomic rules regarding harvesting.

Here's the interesting thing: according to Luke's timetable, three years now into the second year of Jesus's ministry, which would be three years in the jewish calculation because they counted any part of a year as the whole year.

So supposing that you had started in the 11th month of one year done the whole of another year and then was in the first month of the third year it would count as three years.

So Jesus is in fact been going for two years, but it's being counted as three rather like the third day (killed on Friday, rested on Saturday, rose on Sunday).

Jesus has been exercising his ministry for three years and what does the gardener says: Sir, let it alone for one more year until I dig around it and put manure on it.

Jesus is talking here both about the gardener actually correcting the rather angry and wanting to speed things up landowner.

The voice of God here wanting mercy is the one, which is not the owner but the worker.

He's also saying: listen, in the next year, I'm going to be digging around it and putting some manure in it, which is a way to refer to his own forthcoming death and resurrection.

If it bears through next year after all, that's done well and got good; but, if not, cut it down.

He's saying the day of vengeance is not going to be a day vengeance, it's postponed, it's going to be a day of potential mercy.

Only after the potential mercy has started to come, to burst forth, let's see whether it is still standing or not.

If it isn't, cut it down.

So jesus is clearly both talking about what's going to happen immediately to him and he's prophesying the response of his own people, the people of Israel, to the arrival of the day vengeance, the day of mercy.

Will it be that of learning what has happened and bearing fruit or would it be a closing ranks in the old system and thus getting to be destroyed?

I hope you can see that this is quite strong stuff in the midst of a genuinely violent world.

He's answering on the spot for people who have quite a strong religious judgmental mentality.

These things are not unknown to us.

It's interesting for us to see how mercy breaks forth in the midst of our violence and our refusal to bear the fruit of the kingdom.