Called to Bear Fruit
03/23/2025
This week’s Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Luke chapter 13 verses 1 - 9. I am going to divide this passage into two parts. The first part is a back and forth between Jesus and some people in the crowd who ask a question. Jesus gives them an answer but not the one they are looking for. The second half of the passage Jesus tells a parable. In it he is speaking of a fig tree, and using it to help everyone who is listening, that they are called to produce fruit for the kingdom of God. Through the parable he is reflecting back on the call to repentance in his answer and issuing a challenge to his hearers. God is patiently calling his people to review their lives and respond to his call so that they can honor Him, regardless of the circumstances they are in.
The passage opens with a group of listeners asking Jesus about a recent event in Jerusalem. The question is about the terrible death of some Galileans at the hands of Pilot as they were sacrificing at the temple. The implication is that their death was “judgment” from God because they must have been great sinners. Jesus’ response was certainly not what they expected. Jesus told them that this was not a wrathful judgement of God, but just a circumstance of living under Roman rule. He went on to mention a separate tragedy that had occurred in Jerusalem. He asks if they thought those killed in a tower collapse were worse sinners than all others in Jerusalem. He again answers his own question by saying they are not. Then Jesus turns the teaching back onto the questioners. He tells them that unless they repent they two will perish.
This was not what the questioners wanted to hear. They wanted to live in a world where God judged. They wanted to excuse their own deeds, whatever they may be, because God had not killed them as the Galileans had been killed by Pilot. Jesus makes it plain that we are all responsible for our own sins. He wants us to understand that sinners and saints are all subject to events in the world that we do not control, but that does not mean God is the cause.
Why does Jesus tell them to repent? What does it mean to repent and what are they, and we, to repent of? Repentance is always tied to sin. What is sin? The word translated in the New Testament as sin is the Greek word hamartia. Hamartia is a term often used in archer or other sports relying on accuracy, it means “to miss the mark.” What mark are we missing when we sin? To answer that, we need to understand the “mark” that we are trying to hit, which we will talk about in a bit. Going back to “repenting” from “sin” we are talking about turning from actions or behaviors that cause us to “miss the mark.” By telling us to repent, Jesus is telling us to review our lives. He wants us to be aware of our actions, and where we have made a choice that “missed the mark,” he wants us to acknowledge that we missed the mark and to change that action in the future. Each action we take and each word we speak has the potential to honor God or to disregard Him in some way. In other words our daily lives may be filled with sin, some of which we don’t even recognize.
Since we live here on earth, things can often be complicated. We can commit an act, perhaps at work, that dishonors God, but ends up providing us with a financial benefit. The world has been known to reward sinful acts when they suit the purposes of the group in power. On the contrary, we can act in a way that honors God and receive nothing but personal hardship in return. But this does not mean God rewards sin and punishes faithfulness. This means that God allows the world to carry on around us. We are subject to the ways of the world all the time. Not because God can’t “right the world,” but because he has chosen to use his people to do so.
The point is, our circumstances are outside of our control. We may face a murderous Roman guard or perhaps just an audit from the IRS, but in either case it is out of our control. What is in our control is what we have done up to that point, and what we do going forward.
So this is the reason Jesus calls his listeners to repent. It is not because the next tower may fall on them, or the next band of Roman soldiers may be at their door, it is because they have an opportunity to do better than they are, with what they have. That is what it means to “hit the mark.” We are all given a variety of talents and treasures and then placed into some corner of the world. What we do next is what matters to God. How we choose to use our talents and treasures is what is key. What matters most is how we interact with the world, based on our talent and treasure, not on the conditions under which we live.
Now Jesus takes his teaching in a different direction to make this point. The story is about a man who owns a vineyard. In that vineyard is a fig tree that despite being old enough to produce fruit remains bare. They man’s expectation is simple, he has invested in the tree and it should be giving figs by now. His decision is quick, and he tells the gardener to cut it down. But the gardener says to wait. He asks for one more year to tend the tree. He will aerate the tree and provide it with fertilizer. He wants to give the tree another chance to produce. He asks for patience, but he also recognizes that time is limited. He does not suggest that the tree just be left forever because he knows that resources have limits and space is valuable.
God is that gardener. He is waiting patiently to see his children produce the fruits they were meant for. Those fruits are the outcomes of our life when we are aligned with God’s Spirit. You will note that the man in the story was not angry because the fig tree failed to produce olives. Each tree has its own fruit to produce. Each tree has its own mark to hit. We are never judged by our ability to hit a mark that God has not set before us. Oftentimes the world will set expectations that we don’t meet and we will judge ourselves. That action is something that we can learn from and correct. Our responsibility is to hit our mark. How do we know what is our mark to hit?
I would like to make a simple example. If my brother and I are out for a fun day of shooting and we set up two targets, one at 20 yards and one at 500 yards, we have very different targets. If I pick up a bow and arrow and my brother picks up a rifle we will be assigned a target. I will be placed in front of the 20 yard target and asked to do my best. I will not be asked to hit the target at 500 yards with a bow. My circumstance, choice of tool, makes that an impossible target for me. However, my brother’s tool gives him a chance. Our tools are different and that makes the expectations different. God is not asking us to do the impossible, he is asking us to take the tools that we have and act in a way that brings fruit into the world. If I take the bow and put the arrow in at the top of the string and pull it back and shoot directly into the ground, then I have missed the mark. I had the right tool, but I used it the wrong way, and that is what sin is. Maybe I didn’t know how, or maybe I was just being lazy. That is what repentance does for us. It prompts us to evaluate what we have and what we have done and how we hit or missed the target that was set for us.
God, like the land owner, expects fruits from his children. He expects spiritual fruit to bloom out of our lives and feed the world around us. God is patiently waiting and cultivating us to be able to produce. But time is limited, not because God runs out of patience but because the world has limits. But the words of Jesus are the kind gardener. He offers us fertilizer and rain. He offers the Holy Spirit to live in us and guide us every day. He encourages us not to focus on the circumstances of the world, which we can not control. He tells us to look at our tools and look at our life, then listen to the spirit and understand what mark is set for us that day, that instant, and then to act. The next minute everything may change, and that’s ok. The Spirit is still with us and we can choose how next to act. Every moment is an opportunity to choose to act in a way that honors God and produces fruit for his kingdom or not. It is the daily changes of life and our connection with the Spirit that enables us to use what we have at this moment to do what God has called us to.
We are the fig tree. We are all planted in different soil, with different environments, but we can all bare figs. It is what we are called to do. The world may make it difficult, but we have the tools we need for the soil we are planted in. God will never ask a fig tree to produce olives. God will never plant a fig tree in the desert without providing the hidden stream it needs. God’s plan is for us to produce figs. He provides everything we need and our responsibility is to look at where we are and what we have, and take the actions that produce fruit for God’s kingdom.
Thanks for reading.
David
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You can find this week’s reading here.
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