My Little Corner of The Vineyard

 Luke 13:1-9

Vårnatt i hagen, by Nikolai Astrup 1909 (PD)

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Ukrainians whose blood Putin had mingled with the ruins of their capital city. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Ukrainians suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all the other Ukrainians?”“Or those ten who were killed while waiting in line for bread, by indiscriminate artillery fire – do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in this world?”

I rarely prime the pump for a sermon this way, but after this past week, I wasn’t sure how I couldn’t. It’s too close to home, or maybe it just isn’t close enough? If the mothers of those whose blood had been shed this past week were our neighbors – rather than distant figures only seen from our living rooms thousands of miles away – what would we tell them? When they ask us why this has befallen them, their nation, and their children?

Because sisters and brothers; This WAS NOT according to God’s plan! This did not happen for a reason! This is not God’s will, And it isn’t an “ACT of God!” There is no good “why” for this travesty that has befallen the people of Ukraine. 

This is the very question that the people are asking Jesus in the Gospel today. They are asking for sound reason as to why tragedy, and horror befall some people. They don’t want to just know why it befalls others, but they want assurance that their righteousness will protect them. Because they want to know that God will repay their righteousness with God’s protection.  Almost as if God is some sort of mafia Don, that deals in the currency of righteousness. 

Its ironic, and it is why the response evoked is so uncomfortable, 

For the crowd in the story, 

For Luke’s audience, 

And for us as well. ~

Luke’s audience was made up of Gentiles, Many of whom were accustomed to making sacrifices in exchange for certain favors. Many had converted from cultic traditions, which had a rolodex of deities. If you needed a healthy harvest, you made sacrifices to a god that took care of crops. If you needed victory in battle, you made a sacrifice to Mars, And if you needed a good batch of wine from this years crop of grapes, you made a sacrifice to Bacchus. For love, Venus. A sea voyage, Neptune, And so on, and so forth. 

So, for Luke’s audience any relationship with a deity is dependent on its transactional value. It’s actually quite a pagan tradition, one that has very sadly bled into our own faith quite often. We aren’t much different from Jesus’ audience, When we do good, we want to know what’s in it for us. We want to be certain, that we will not only be rewarded, but protected. So when we see travesty befall another, we justify the reasoning for such calamity. It isn’t for the comfort of those who suffer, but the one observing such suffering. It is us, seeking the comfort that travesty will not befall us. 

Jesus offers no such certainty, only assuring us of one certainty; life is certainly full of uncertainty. ~

Jesus’ response is a testament to how far we have fallen from how he saw that word; “repentance.” He responds to their inquiry about these tragedies with a word of warning; “No, they were not worse sinners than any other, but I tell you; unless you repent, you will all perish, just as they did.”

Now, if you think my sermon started pretty abruptly, you should ask yourself how Jesus would’ve kicked things off with a reply like that?! It sounds harsh, but it is because we do not fully understand the intention of repentance anymore than Jesus’ audience did then, just as we don’t understand sin. Repentance and sin are pretty loaded words for us Lutherans. Those words conjure up images in our heads of floppy bibles being waved from pulpits by slick haired preachers pointing fingers, But these are not terms meant to evoke fear of condemnation, but a coaxing away from the true plight of sin, turning towards something greater. 

Sin is simply that which separates us, from God, from God’s creation, and from one another. Anything that distracts us from being part of the those relationships which God created us to be part of to begin with. Repentance, or Metanoia, is literally a turning. Turning not only away from sin, but towards something, 

Something greater than us. But that is what makes it so hard, because that turning requires us to turn away from ourselves, putting God, and others before ourselves. ~

Jesus ties it all together today with the parable of the fig tree, an analogy that has been lost over time. He uses the fig tree to illustrate that turning away he is calling for us to model. Because a fig tree is a terrible tree if left to its own devices. Fig trees have a terribly invasive root system, and if left unchecked, the root systems will invade the roots of other trees, killing them by attacking neighboring trees roots below the surface. Those fig trees with the deepest roots have the worst fruit, and destructive root systems – damaging sidewalks, buildings, and barriers. 

It is a lot like sin; self serving, destructive, detrimental to our own growth, and adverse to the production of the good that can be produced. But the farmer in this parable offers a solution; He proposes a technique used to this day, not only digging around the roots, but in Jesus day they would wall in the root system with brick or stone so the roots would only grow downward, not outward. And in order to feed that limited root system, those walls would be filled with rich manure forcing the good nutrients upward and outward, Producing healthy fruit by turning the tree away from it’s own interest, in harmony with the other figs and plants in the vineyard. Because it is with the aid of the gardener we can turn away from ourselves, and exist in harmony with the other that resides in the vineyard. ~

I wish I could refrain from making the connection, but I am convicted by it, Because this past week I have wept as I watched the roots of one invade and strangle another. I’ve watched from across the vineyard, perhaps many of us have. I’ve watched as I have wondered aloud if their roots cannot travel this far. And as I have watched its roots strangle the life out of another, sitting a safe distance away; A whole globe away, I realized how deeply connected I am to that tree struggling to survive the attack of its neighbor.

I watched on Wednesday when President Zelinsky showed a video of the attacks on his country. It was a graphic video, raw and violent. And I have seen the horrors of war, as a Marine, and as a Chaplain, But when I saw the lifeless body of a little girl lifted onto a gurney, and the hysterical weeping of a little boy searching for arms to protect him; I saw my own children. 

Sisters and brothers, that is what God saw, that is what God sees, and that is what God will see, until we finally realize that the vineyard is not as big as we have come to believe. God came to the vineyard once, because we called out to God to deliver this vineyard. So help me God, I believe Christ is still working on that vineyard, But that work came at a price, because that gardener was nailed to one of those trees. The life of the whole vineyard comes at a price, but first we must recognize the value that God holds for the entire vineyard, not just our little corner that feeds our own roots. 

Amen

~

The hymn of the day today is the hymn This Is My Song.

The tune for the hymn is Finlandia, by Jean Sibelius. The music was written in 1899 in response to the Russian policy of Russification, which was intended to abolish cultural identities and administrative autonomy of any non-Russian minorities within the Russian empire.

This policy of forced cultural assimilation was systematically enforced on Finland, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Moldova, and the largest country in Europe today; Ukraine. Sibelius' musical piece was a response to that forced assimilation back at the turn of the 20th century, by a Finnish composer as a covert form of resistance. Finland was a country made up of 98 % Lutherans in that day, with 70 % still claiming to follow the Lutheran tradition there to this day.

Russification is the policy that is still a central motivating factor in Russian foreign policy today.

*This is my personal blog. Thoughts and opinions are my own and are not necessarily those of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, Navy Chaplain Corps, or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.