In the presence of the Vinedresser

Sermon by Jamie Howison on Psalm 63:1-8 and Luke 13:1-9

We have what seems a fascinating contrast between our two readings this evening. In the psalm, which is attributed to David “when he was in the Wilderness of Judah,” we have an expression of steadfast yet somewhat pleading hope, which culminates in the lines, “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” Meanwhile in the gospel text we have Jesus telling those who are following him that “unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did;” “they”, meaning those Galileans who had died at Pilate’s hand in the temple, or who had been killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed.

When I first read these passages early in the week, I thought “well, that’s interesting; I suppose I will need to choose one or the other as my focus.” But then I began to dig into the commentaries more, and as I did I realized that the two have more in common than I’d originally thought.

In the case of the gospel story, Jesus had already begun to let his disciples know that he was heading toward Jerusalem. There are some who have heard this in a way that is making them nervous, and so they raise this news of “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” There is inevitably an actual story behind that news, because there is a whole string of accounts from non-biblical sources that attest to Pilate’s ruthless violence. He was, in fact, recalled to Rome at one point to account for the harshness of his rule, and essentially told that he needed to tone things down. So, the fact that there is this story of these Galilean pilgrims being slaughtered in the temple at Pilate’s orders would not have surprised the people of that day. This is the man who’d taken money from the temple treasury to help fund an aqueduct, and who’d brutally unleashed his soldiers on those who had risen up in protest. That he might have caught wind of some politically unsavoury opinions being carried by Galilean pilgrims and responded by having them killed is really no surprise.

But why are these people bringing this up with Jesus at this point? Quite probably because they’ve heard him talk of going to Jerusalem, and want him to either change his plans or—probably more to the point—ready himself for the worst. “You know what happens to Galileans who go to Jerusalem with some sort of message… with your sort of teaching… that’s crisis time.”

But no, he’ll not be deterred, nor will he change his core message. Instead he says very clearly that those poor Galileans were not worse sinners than the rest of us, nor were the eighteen people who died when the tower of Siloam collapsed. His point seems to be that what matters is for the people to set their own lives in order—to repent or “turn around”. In the words of N.T. Wright, “Jesus is making it clear that those who refuse his summons to change direction, to abandon the crazy flight into national rebellion against Rome, will suffer the consequences. Those who take up the sword will perish with the sword.” (Wright, Luke for Everyone)

And then he’s on to his little parable of the landowner who has planted a fig tree, which after three years has borne no fruit. “Tear it down,” he says to the gardener, who replies, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

The question hangs there for Jerusalem and for any person who wanted to jump on a revolutionary bandwagon to try to mount a rebellion against Rome. Will it bear fruit? Or put another way, will the people who Jesus is teaching actually turn around—there’s that word “repent” again—and stop putting all their stake in the overthrow of Rome, opting instead to follow his way? It is a way that might actually look and feel like loss at first glance, and of course it is a loss because it will cost Jesus his life. It will cost him his life, but that is hardly the final word in the story we tell! The ongoing path toward a Jerusalem-based rebellion against Rome, on the other hand, will result in the destruction of the beloved temple, the crushing of the city, and the death of countless people who had come believe that rebellion was the only way.

But what does any of this have in common with our psalm for today? Well again, this is credited to David, from “when he was in the Wilderness of Judah.” Different commentators have varying opinions on what exactly is in view here, but for James Limburg it is most likely the time when David has had to flee from his former friend and ally King Saul, who has now set his mind on destroying the young man. David has fled into the wilderness, assembling around him a band of men who act sometimes like an army, but often as not as just survivors and occasionally something closer to guns-for-hire. In Limburg’s view, David’s cry is both literal and metaphorical:

O God, you are my God, I seek you,

my soul thirsts for you;

my flesh faints for you,

as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

That desert is a literally a dry and hungering place, but David is also in a place of deep spiritual and personal thirst. His words right through the portion of the psalm that we read are balanced between an expression of that hunger and thirst, and a trust that those will be quenched. We ended with the words, “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me,” but the psalm does continue for another three verses, which are rather tougher edged toward those who would hunt down and destroy the psalmist, culminating in the words, “for the mouths of liars will be stopped.” This is both a psalm affirming the steadfastness of God, but also one crying out for resolution… specifically resolution of conflict against enemies.

Now, back to that gospel reading. Jesus is in fact teaching something of the steadfastness of God, which he sees as the only possible future for the people of Galilee and Judea at this point. God is steadfast, and the Roman Empire is—in the terms of its political world—powerful and ruthless. To try to fight that Empire rather than turning around toward God’s way was, for Jesus, an absolute blind alley. Like the psalmist, he is calling out for resolution of this conflict against the enemy, but it isn’t like anything what the people eager to start rattling their swords were even vaguely familiar with.

What he held before them was the prospect of light in the darkness; of the power of what Frederick Buechner once called “the magnificent defeat” of his death on the cross. This will not overturn the Empire… or at least it won’t for several hundred years, when first the Emperor Constantine becomes a Christian, and then the Empire adopts Christianity, and then, finally, the Empire itself crumbles but the Christian way flourishes all the more with the presence of people like St Benedict.

In the meantime, we should hear his teaching and parable not as condemnation, but rather as a teaching on the way the harsh political world can exact its toll, and on the truth that so long as we remain faithful to that Gardener—even in this sometimes complex world—our roots will be tended.

And here I’d turn to Robert Farrar Capon, for a bit of his typically audacious riffing on the power of this parable for people in our time.

[Jesus] comes only to forgive. For free. For nothing. On no basis, because like the fig tree we are far too gone to have a basis… it is all, absolutely and without qualification, one huge, hilarious gift.

And all this because there is indeed a Vinedresser. I can love Jesus… He does everything, I do nothing; I just trust him. It is a nifty arrangement, and for a deadbeat like me, it is the only one that can possibly work. As long as I am in him, I bear fruit. As long as his death feeds my roots, I will never be cut down. (Capon, The Parables of Grace)

So be open to the work of the Vinedresser. It is how any of us bears fruit.