‘Lest disaster speak the last word’

Andrew Collis
Lent 3, Year C
Isaiah 55:1-9; Psalm 63; Luke 13:1-9

Into a context of urgent and exasperated teaching on Jesus’ part (teaching about the need for love, the decision for love and life in the kindom) come two stories. These seem to be current affair stories. The first, a macabre story about the violence of Pilate – the murder of Galileans at worship. The second, a story of a catastrophic accident.

All-too familiar. There is, in Luke, as is generally the case, an implied theological curiosity: How will Jesus theologise in the face of such brute facts?

Perhaps then, as now, the popular/conventional notion is of God the “father who punishes badly behaved children” (Chris Budden)?

Jesus theologises – and offers an altogether different understanding from the popular religious one.

The references to Galilee and to Pilate and then to Jerusalem suggest the path of Jesus himself. The path that he is taking toward confrontation in Jerusalem. The path of liberating/loving – love in spite of violent opposition to love. Jesus’ life too will end in disaster.

Victims of violence and cruel circumstance are not to blame. The focus shifts from blame to mercy: the urgent invitation to love, and to accept love’s responsibilities. Forget blame. We’re all in this together.

His message is realistic: love will meet with opposition in this world. And repentance, change of lifestyle, change of habit, heart and mind, large-scale re-vision in the Spirit of love is required lest disaster speak the last word.

The parable he then tells offers an example of such re-vision. It’s tempting, of course, in English, to explore its fig-urative meanings.

We might consider the symbolism of fig tree, of vineyard, of the owner, of the vine dresser, the ground or earth. And posit historical, sociological, psychological, ecological, religious meanings.

Israel is frequently imaged as a vineyard, for example. There is a tree of life in Eden and in the new Jerusalem (Rev. 22), the leaves of which serve as medicine to heal the nations. The cross is referred to as a tree – a lifeless tree, a tree of life. Jesus is mistaken for a gardener (John 20) …

Indeed, it is the gardener, or vine dresser, who stars as the hero of the parable. He or she wants to see the fig tree do well – desires for it to bear fruit. The vine dresser acts with attentive patience – reluctant to curse or destroy. On the contrary, the vine dresser represents the desire for life.

The way that Jesus tells the parable leaves open the possibility that the vine dresser has advocated on behalf of this tree before, and the possibility that s/he will advocate again the following year.

It seems that s/he represents a divine impulse, an aspect or persona of God – divine patience, attentiveness.

When it comes to decisions for love and life; when it comes to changing our habits, hearts and minds, to re-vision in the Spirit of love, how far does God’s grace extend? How patient is God? How much time have we got? How many chances?

Says one commentator: “We are not invited to fine tune our response, but to act in the present grace of God. Now” (Budden).

Says another: “Without attempting to judge the sinfulness of others, people should see such events [tragedy/disaster] as a warning to take stock of their own lives …” (Brendan Byrne). And, we might add, to see their own lives entwined with the lives of others.

A fig tree is given one more year to be productive. “We are supported in our efforts [to repent, to love] by a loving Father[-Mother] who will leave us free.” Our “God will gently urge us” (Francis Moloney).

In her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day writes of the early 1930s in New York as a time of disaster … the Great Depression … the pain of a failed relationship … single parenthood … She feels disconnected …

Day gives an account of a difficult time in her life. Also a time of conversion. Deeper conversion (from “conventional American” to “dangerous radical”). Beginning with an awareness and acknowledgement of pain – a solidarity with other women in the Depression – “victims of the long loneliness”. A painful longing for community, a group, exchange with others. She is inspired by workers marching for “work, not wages” – marching on Washington (“hunger marchers”). And she feels inadequate.

She goes inside a church and prays, with tears, “that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor”.

An answer to prayer: Day gives an account of first meeting Peter Maurin (French “peasant of the pavements”; one of 23 children!) – “a short, stocky man in his mid-fifties as ragged and rugged as any of the marchers I had left”), and the inspiration of his life and teaching.

Some of what she says in terms of Maurin’s “lessons” is worth listing in order to understand the story of the 20th-century spiritual movement that is the Catholic Worker. It might also help us to focus on our own “essential tidying and preparation” this Lent – our own hoeing and fertilising …

1. Being with, working for the poor.
2. Speaking in terms of ideas, rather than personalities – “delicately scrupulous never to talk about others, never to make the derogatory remark”.
3. Espousing the theory of a “green revolution”.
4. Insisting on education re spiritual tradition, history of the church, prophets of Israel.
5. Showing concern for common ground – Thomistic doctrine of the common good, common humanity, our life here today – “building a new society within the shell of the old … a society in which it is easier for people to be good … when people are good, they are happy”.
6. Wanting to make a new synthesis (theology/philosophy).
7. Reaching out to one’s siblings as “the surest way to find God”.
8. Helping others to “fulfil themselves”, and to “develop capacities for love and worship, expressed in all the arts”.
9. Making a synthesis of “cult, culture and cultivation [homes, food, clothing]”.
10. Taking a long view in light of present difficulties – “it would become actual, given a people changed in heart and mind, so that they would observe the new commandment of love, or desired to”.
11. He “aroused in you a sense of your own capacities for work, for accomplishment. He made you feel that you and all [people] had great and generous hearts with which to love God. If you once recognised this fact in yourself you would expect and find it in others.”
12. Having “faith in the Christ in others”.
13. Being a troubadour of Christ, “singing solutions to the world’s ills, insinuating them into [people’s] ears with catchy phrases”.
14. Being a persistent soul, looking for apostles to share the work.
15. Being a person of enthusiasm who “always saw great talents in people”.
16. Encouraging “indoctrination” … a program of action … round-table discussions, houses of hospitality, agronomic universities.
17. “Publishing a paper for the [person] in the street.”
18. Setting up a school “to bring the workers and scholars together”.
19. Making time for worship: “motionless, quiet, absorbed, gazing altar-ward.”
20. Insisting “we must have a sense of personal responsibility to take care of our own, and our neighbour, at a personal sacrifice”.
21. Supporting conscientious objectors and absolutists.
22. Utilising weapons: works of mercy, journalism.

I invite you to underline anything you think might help us to celebrate Lent “that new life may spring up in our community and throughout the world”.

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community … It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on” (The Long Loneliness, HarperSanFancisco, 1952). Amen.