Lots of things can be medicine
March 3, 2024 - Luke 13: 1-9 (NRSV)
It can be pretty satisfying to condemn other people or to condemn big impersonal systems for getting things wrong and causing great harm.
It’s not only satisfying, it’s also necessary to offer needed critique when getting in the way of injustices and violence.
In the verses directly before the ones we read aloud today. That’s what the people seem to want Jesus to do. They want him to condemn the acts of violence carried out by Pilate and the Roman empire.
But he doesn’t give the people that satisfaction. Instead, Jesus doles out medicine the people aren’t in the market for.
He starts talking about repentance and bearing fruits lest they perish. It’s stunning and disturbing in that way Jesus is so good at being. I figure there was more than one person who heard him that day and wondered what was wrong with him. Why wouldn’t he just denounce the evil over there that those other people were carrying out?
I’m guessing not all of you here are avid fans of Nickelodeon’s animated Avatar: The Last Airbender series like my family. But if you are, you likely know that Netflix has just produced a first season of a live action re-make.
The series is set in a world at war in which different nations harbor folks with different supernatural elemental powers and from which one person rises in each generation who can control all four elements. That person is the Avatar.
Like the animated original, the live action remake explores big themes related to war, peace, nationalism, and social justice that only continue to feel timely. It also brings back most of the same characters as vehicles to do so.
One such character is an Earth kingdom mercenary named Jett. This young man is bent on revenge against the Fire Nation and all its citizens to the point where he is willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of that revenge. It’s not hard to understand how that kind of hate can grow in a story in which his kingdom has been at war with the Fire Nation for 100 years and in which Fire Nation soldiers murdered his family. Unlike the main characters of the story, however, who have also lost loved ones to the war-mongering empire, Jett is unconcerned with inflicting the same harm on others that has been inflicted upon him. In both versions of the story, his group sets explosives that are intended to harm those they see as wrongdoers without regard to the collateral damage of innocent civilians who will also lose their lives along the way.
Main character Katara tells him, “You’ve become so focused on what you’re fighting against, you’ve forgotten what you’re fighting for.”
How do we keep from becoming that which we hate? In the gospels, Jesus so often offers the foul tasting counter-intuitive medicine that the way to stop that to which we object is to stop it first in ourselves. If we want to end greed, hatred, abuse, and violence, it may be tempting to find the biggest loudest examples around us and call them out. Maybe that’s part of the work. But for followers of Jesus, it seems part of the work is also examining ourselves for those shortcomings and working on our own transformation, too. We’re the people we are most likely to have the most success changing anyway.
Then there’s this weird story about the fig tree. It’s another metaphor. The fig tree could be a stand in for the people of Jesus’ own country and culture as a whole. It could also be a stand in for individuals. It could also be a stand in for us. Are we bearing any fruit?
The story gets pretty dramatic if you put yourself in the place of the fig tree. The vineyard owner wants to cut the tree down. It hasn’t produced in three years after all. But the gardener wants to give it more time. He wants to nurture it. Leave it alone and fertilize it. If it isn’t producing next year then cut it down.
I’m no fig tree farmer but a quick search on the internet tells me fig trees take 3-5 years to bear fruit. I hope this one got a little more time.
But I understand the impatience. Heaven forbid I get sick or hurt or heartbroken. The healing takes so much longer than I would like. I hate when grief and suffering and human imperfection slow me down from doing all I’d like to do or feel I need to do.
I can understand an interpretation of this scripture that concludes that we ought to repent our wrongdoing and produce worthy fruit or else.
But what if the wrongdoing we need to stop and turn around from is the idolization of productivity to begin with?
In their book, Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection, Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie explain how the treadmill was an 18th century invention by the civil engineer William Cubitt who sought to ensure that prisoners were kept busy and isolated from each other by these solitary devices often meant to require meaningless activity.
The women like the metaphor for describing too many of our lives today. “When we say we want to ‘get off the treadmill, we are saying we want lives that are meaningful.” But we so often get distracted from that which will actually bring meaning, chasing productivity and perfectionism instead. “We might feel we are climbing an ‘endless staircase’ of achievement, for high grades or success. Like an MC Escher drawing, we might feel caught in an endless staircase of caregiving, work, or social pressure.”
“Most of us,” they write, “are turning the wheel of obligation in our lives. People depend on us. Nothing ever stops. Regardless, we need a sober look at reality to stop pretending that there is unlimited energy or endless time to do what is meaningful. To attend to the values we cherish most. And stop the mindless pressures that we have placed on ourselves (pgs 98-100).”
I have the feeling that is the kind of counterintuitive medicine Jesus would have many of us hear in this passage. I have that feeling because I don’t like it. I don’t like stopping. If something is wrong, I’d prefer to keep running at it headlong until it is fixed.
But did you hear the gardener’s plan in the story? He doesn’t plan to stand and scream at the tree to be more productive, brandishing his ax at it. No, he prescribes leaving the tree alone, giving it time and fertilizer until it starts bearing fruit.
The story reminds me of a friend in seminary who took Parker and I to our first protest for worker’s rights. We didn’t achieve everything we set out to accomplish that day. But that same week he invited us over to his house for a party because as he said a world without parties is not a world worth working for.
I love that some of the medicine in this story is actual manure. That’s what the fig tree is going to get. Manure gets a bad rap. It doesn’t smell great. That doesn’t help. It’s a waste product for another thing. But plants love it because it's chock full of good nutrients for them.
Going about the world as if we’re tending a garden, it’s sometimes tempting to want to climb across the fence and cut down a neighbor’s offending weed before tending to our own overgrowth.
It’s also tempting to think the only thing the gardens of our souls or the gardens of our communities need is just hard work and high standards.
I’m not against those. But sometimes we also need time, less pressure, and frivolous but fun and nutrient packed medicinal manure.
We’ll all have our own version. I joined a table-top role-playing group which serves absolutely no purpose but to amuse me. Maybe you go for walks in the middle of the day. Maybe you watch TV. Maybe you go out to lunch with a friend. Reformation church father Martin Luther reportedly liked to go fishing with Philip Melancthon. That’s more than allowed. And it’s more than good enough distraction for a more than good enough life. Maybe it’s even the counterintuitive medicine you need to be able to fuel the work of holy transformation you feel called to be about in the world.
I want to leave you with this blessing from Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie.
It’s a Blessing for Slowing Down (pg 101):
May it be so. Amen.
