NewCreation

Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent, Year C

The Third Sunday of Lent. Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the Third Sunday of Lent. And here we are in a passage of Luke where he's somewhere between Galilee and Jerusalem, and he's engaging in conversations with crowds, and something seems to have happened recently at that very time which has caused people to want to ask questions. They've been gossiping or murmuring about something that has happened. And what has happened? "At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." Now "at that very time" probably means something close to the Passover, because that was the time when the great sacrifice of sheep or lambs would take place in Jerusalem, when lay people would be involved. The priests would actually do the killing, but the people would take their sacrifices for the priests to slaughter. And so this massacre of Galileans, which happened in the Temple precincts at Passover time — the question was, was this a fulfillment of Jeremiah 12? Let me just read the relevant passage from 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? Are they treating Jesus as a prophet? And he doesn't mean that the day of vengeance has started. That's the general tenor of this. Now, it's conceivable — we don't know what this incident was; it's not one which is recorded. Jesus asked them: "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?" Of course, we know nothing about the Galileans in question. One suggestion has been that these particular Galileans were proto-zealots. The actual concrete movement called Zealots was later — it was post-Jesus' time. But these were proto-zealots; in other words, political activists from the boonies who'd probably done something like ambushed some Roman soldiers and then managed to hide and run away. But the Roman spies had found out who they were; they'd come up to Galilee to offer their sacrifices, and the Romans then themselves ambushed them in Jerusalem when they were about to offer their sacrifices. So the question is: do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all the other Galileans? Well, remember that all this takes place in an invaded, occupied country with a good deal of tension between the colonized and the imperial. forces, and there are always people who want to be more hotheaded than maybe is prudent. But – and this is the worrying thing – there were also always so-called religious authorities, the Temple crowd, who played a very double game with all this, in that they would preach all the texts suggesting to people that they should rise up and do these, let's say, dangerous, activistic things, but would then, whenever anything dangerous appeared, 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 good order," and 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 the good guys on the other. But what that means is that all involved in this game share the same violence. 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. They're all involved with the same thing. And of course this is something which will eventually lead – as it did indeed, and Jesus is prophesying it here – to the destruction of Jerusalem, where all these games eventually led to the whole place being destroyed. But he asks them: "So do you think that these Galileans suffered in this way? Were worse sinners than all the Galileans? No, I tell you." And apparently the Aramaic form is very, very strong. "No. I tell you, unless you repent, you will all perish as they did." In other words, you're all part of the same thing. We can't judge them. Them being slaughtered doesn't necessarily mean anything about the day of vengeance, except that the day of vengeance is going to cover everybody. When it comes, it will be terrible. A little aside about this business of the blood. This mingling of the blood is quite an important thing. The notion that human… because if the Galileans were sacrificing sheep, the notion is the sheep stand in for the Galileans. If the Galileans' blood was sacrificed with the sheep's blood, 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. And why is this important? Well, at the sacrifice of the atonement, the high priest, if you remember, killed a lamb. Before he killed the lamb, he killed a bullock. The bullock had the blood represented as the human, and the lamb's blood was standing in for the Most High. The lamb stood in for God. And always a few drops of the bull's blood would be mingled with the lamb's blood, so that this was the human and divine offering. So that's background that everybody will know about. The mingling of the blood had a very strong sense for people at the time. Jesus then asks them another question about a contemporary event — a contemporary event about which we know little or nothing. "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?" Well, 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 to it, and it used to be a sort of fairly gentle climb up to the Temple Mount from there. But 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 a direct drop. Probably at the time some people in Siloam were not too pleased with having their perfectly nice neighbourhood, as it was, squashed by this monstrous building from on high — this monstrous esplanade from on high. They 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. And the area is fairly regularly seismic — small tremors. But small tremors with a building that is too high for the terrain: it can fall down, it can kill people. And 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 between 66 and 70, the eastern wall of the Temple esplanade fell down, and it fell down on Siloam, so a good deal of destruction happened in Siloam at that time as well. "So those eighteen who were killed when the tower fell — do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?" So their pride, their haughtiness, if you like, in wanting to build something to be on the same level… as the temple. He's saying everyone is in exactly the same thing, the same pride is everywhere. And here Jesus is cunningly weaving together a reference from Isaiah, which I hope I will be able to find. Isaiah 30, and I'll read to you from verse 25: "On every lofty mountain and 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 you can begin to see how he taught, taking events, 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 a day of 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. And 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. It would be planted in the northeast corner, where it would get the most sun. And that was an 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. And famously, one of the things about fig trees was 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 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 spot in their vineyard, they know it's taking up the best space and 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." 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, this business of about three years is a bit of an oddity, because there are at least two possible things going on here. The first is that according to Deuteronomy 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. In the fifth year you should start getting fruits for yourself. That's the Deuteronomic rules regarding harvesting. So for three years I've come looking for fruit on this fig tree and still I find none. But here's the interesting thing. According to Luke's timetable, three years: this is where we're 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 this is it. Jesus has in fact been going for two years but it's been counted as three, rather like the third day: killed on Friday, rested on Saturday, rose on Sunday. Why is that three days? It's not three days in our mathematical understanding. It is three days in their mathematical understanding. So Jesus has been exercising his ministry for three years. And what does the gardener say? "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." So Jesus is talking here both about the gardener actually correcting the rather angry and wanting-to-speed-things-up landowner. If you like, the voice of God here wanting mercy is not the owner but the worker. But he's also saying: listen, in the next year I'm going to be digging around it and putting some manure in it. What a way to refer to his own forthcoming death and resurrection. "If it bears fruit next year" — in other words, after all that's done — "well and good. But if not, cut it down." In other words, he's saying the day of vengeance is not going to be a day of vengeance; it's postponed. It's going to be a day of potential mercy. Only after the potential mercy has started 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 of vengeance, the day of mercy. Will it be that of learning what has happened and bearing fruit, or will it be a closing of 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, and that he's answering on the spot for people who have, if you like, 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. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.