Homily 2.28.2016
Isaiah 55:1-9, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9
Joseph Wiesenfarth
There could be more appropriate and less confusing readings than the passages from Isaiah and Paul that we just heard read. Isaiah, for example, starts off with what language scholars call paraprosdokians. A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a phrase or sentence is unexpected, as we see in this sentence: “War does not determine who is right, only who is left.” Or: “The last thing I want to do is hurt you . . . but it’s still on my list.” Or, one I particularly like: “If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.” Isaiah’s contribution is: “You have no money, come buy and eat!” And: “Buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
Since the gospel gives us Jesus using the parable of the fig tree, wouldn’t it be better to begin with something straightforward like Jeremiah 8:13: “When I wanted to gather them, says the Lord, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the tree; even the leaves are withered and what I gave them has passed away from them.” Or Jeremiah 24:3: “And the Lord said to me, ‘What do you see, Jeremiah? I said, “Figs, the good figs are very good, and the bad figs are very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.” But the Church may be more subtle than I am because it eventually gives us Isaiah saying, “Incline your ear, and come to me: listen so that you may live.” That’s a sentence that does tell us exactly what Jesus is implying in the gospel.
And given what we read about the Galileans in Jerusalem whom the historian Josephus tells us died protesting Pontius Pilate’s building an aqueduct–presumably these are those whom Jesus is referring to–I would have thought that a passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans might be more appropriate than that of his to the Corinthians. But, then again, Paul does tell the Corinthians that “the ends of things have come, so if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” That can be applied to what Jesus says in the gospel when he talks about the tower of Siloam falling: an accident of a kind that quite unexpectedly could happen at any time to anyone. After all, as Paul says, it is “the end of the ages.”
The Romans, however, were not thinking the same way that Paul was. History tells us that Pilate built aqueducts to bring water a great distance to Jerusalem. Pilate used money taken from the Jews’ sacred treasury for this task. Some Galileans, if reluctantly, inevitably worked on this project. The Jews of Jerusalem saw these Galileans as sinful for doing so. Consequently, they deserved to die. But Jesus sees these Galileans as no more sinful than those who did not work or protest against the aqueduct. Although some thought that the aqueducts contributed to the fall of the tower of Siloam, that has been proven untrue. Indeed, archeologists find that these particular aqueducts did not empty into the basin adjourning the tower of Siloam. Moreover, Jesus asserts that the eighteen people who lost their lives in that event were victims of an accident, whatever its cause may be. Jesus wants his listeners to understand that death can come to anyone at anytime regardless of that person’s righteousness or not. That is why everyone, whether righteous or not, must be prepared to die, not just those whom these Jews, listening to Jesus speaking, are trying to convince him were guilty of sin.
Jesus confutes their judgment by asking 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 as they did.”
Jesus uses the word perish twice in this short passage about the Galileans and the tower of Siloam. We know that in the New Testament the word perish refers especially to the last judgment and its peril for unrepentant sinners after death. They perish. Salvation requires repentance for anyone who wants that last judgment to be benign. Thus do we read in the gospel of John: “For God so loved the world that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (3:16).
The parable of the fig tree that follows Jesus’ analysis of the two historical events concerning the Galileans and Siloam is meant to teach his listeners that there is a chance for the spiritually unhealthy to regain their health and, therefore, not perish.
The gospel of Matthew (21:18-22) suggests just how powerful the symbol of the fig tree as employed in today’s readings can be. For in Matthew, we read that Jesus “seeing a fig tree by the wayside . . . went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only. And he said to it, ’May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.” In a word, it perished. Don Schwager, commenting on this passage writes, “Jesus’ cursing of a fig tree is a prophetic action against the faithlesseness of those who rejected his message. For faith to be fruitful and productive, it must be nourished with the word of God (2 Tim. 3:16; Col. 3:16) and be rooted in love (Galatians 5:6).”[1] Knowing this, we know that the parable in today’s readings is a powerful message indeed.
Those to whom Jesus is speaking, therefore, are like the fig tree that is dying, and he is like the gardener who is attending to the tree to attempt to bring it back to fruition. If the gardener fails, the tree will be uprooted. It will perish. If Jesus’ efforts fail to reinvigorate his contemporaries, they will perish. Since at that time all believed, as Paul indicates, that the end times were near, those who heard Jesus’ words had a limited time to come back to life—to avoid perishing. Moreover, he is giving all who hear him, wherever they may be, a chance to thrive and to nourish themselves and others by loving God and by loving one another. This is essentially Paul’s message in his letter to the Philippians (4:8-9):
“Finally, Brothers [and Sisters], whatever things are true, whatever honorable, whatever making for the right, whatever loveable, whatever admirable—if there is any virtue, anything of high esteem—think of these. All you have learned, have taken from tradition, have listened to, have observed in me, act on these, and the God who brings peace will be yours.”[2]
[1] Don Schwager, “Parable of the barren fig tree” on Google.
[2] Translation of Garry Wills, What Paul Meant (New York: Viking, 2006), pp. 175-76.