Third Sunday in Lent, rcl yr c, 2025
ISAIAH 55:1-9; PSALM 63:1-8; 1 CORINTHIANS 10:1-13; LUKE 13:1-9
unless you repent, you will all perish as they did
The parable of the fig tree that closes the Gospel reading this morning is a weird one. I mean, most of the parables are a bit odd and sometimes even off-putting. But Jesus seems to be especially interested in making this parable particularly mysterious and puzzling.
Why is there a fig tree in a vineyard? Who expects figs to grow in a garden made for grapes? Who cares if a figs don’t grow among the grapevines? Who is the gardener?Who is the vineyard owner? Why does the gardener care so much about the fig tree?Why does the vineyard owner hate figless fig trees so much? Why are the gardener and the vineyard owner fighting about who’s job it is to cut down the tree?
And most enigmatic: what happened to the fig tree? Because we don’t actually hear the end of the story. All we know is that the tree is fertilized and left alone for a year. Did the fig tree grow figs or not? Did it get cut down or is it still standing? We just don’t know.
It does seem though that we can say this, because the parable follows Jesus preaching on repentance: the tree probably does represent the sinner in need of repentance, and that to avoid repentance is to put your soul in danger of being uprooted.
And also that for Jesus, results matter. It is fruitfulness that allows the tree to live. If it appears that our actions yield little more than a barren fruitlessness, it may not be repentance at all.
But let’s leave the vineyard for now, and take a trip much further away to a little German Church in Sydenham, in London England. To get to this little church from anywhere else you have to take the tube or a train, and then a bus, and then walk down a long street of post-war family homes rebuilt in the 50s after the Blitz’s destruction.
The church used to simply be known as “the German Church,” but more recently it’s been renamed after it’s most well-known former pastor—it is now called Dietrich Bonhoeffer Kirche, the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Church, named after the theologian, ecumenist, and Nazi resistor who was pastor there from 1933 to 1935, right after Hitler had suspended the German constitution, and during the Night of the Long Knives, a turning point in Germany when Hitler and his familiars had assassinated their political rivals in order to further consolidate their power.
The German congregation that Bonhoeffer faced, though, was a bit self-satisfied in its time, feeling themselves to be at a good distance from what was happening back home, saying to themselves, “that bad stuff is happening over there; we are here; we have nothing to do with that stuff. We are innocent.”
And so Bonhoeffer preached on this text, the one we just heard from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus says: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”
Bonhoeffer was having none of this attempt to claim innocence. And he told them as much. No, said Bonhoeffer, even though that is happening there, and we are here, God is still addressing us. “God is speaking to us,” preached Bonhoeffer.
This sermon of Bonhoeffer’s in many ways feels extraordinarily contemporary. We too have an increasingly belligerent neighbour to the south of us. Canadians are largely, though not entirely, trying to create some distance between us and the unwelcome development of a more brash, coercive, and brutal form of American imperialism. It is easy to have feelings of superiority, and that can come with a certain sort of self-satisfaction.
But what Bonhoeffer offers to us in this moment is a bit of a check on that feeling of superiority, reminding us that just because we can easily point to injustice elsewhere, this does not mean that we ourselves are innocent. There is, instead, a deeper sort of human solidarity at stake here, a solidarity that Bonhoeffer, following Jesus, is pointing out: and that’s a solidarity in sin.
The misfortune of others, the injustices suffered or perpetrated by others, the pointing out the guilt of others, is not what will absolve us from our own responsibilities. We too are guilty. We too have need of repentance.
We don’t have to look far to see this either. Canada still has a great deal of reparation to do following our own colonial history, a history that benefits settlers and marginalizes indigenous communities. As a region and a province we still don’t know how to keep people dying from toxic drugs or how to keep people adequately housed. The Anglican Church of Canada still doesn’t know how to handle sexual misconduct. I could go on.
And to this, if we were to attempt to create innocence, to distance ourselves from sin, if we were to say “that’s them, that’s not us,” what does Jesus tell us? “Unless you repent, you will perish.”
It is important to say that Bonhoeffer was not a nihilist. Bonhoeffer, in his own life and action, clearly didn’t communicate that just because all of humanity is mired in sin, down to a person, that nothing matters and there is nothing for us to do. Even as he tells his London congregation that, just like the perpetrators of violence in Munich and Berlin, that they too are in need of repentance, Bonhoeffer resists that violence, getting into fights with church officials and friends willing to defend, or look away, from what was developing in Germany.
This is in the spirit of Jesus’s own words, who is keen to tell the crowds that even though it might appear that repentance was needed in Galilee and Jerusalem, that the people before him also had need of repentance.
In this way it is a word for us, too: it is appropriate to speak and work against injustice, cruelty, and the violence perpetrated by others and against others. But this will be an empty gesture, and a fruitless one too, if it is little more than an opportunity for us to point out the faults of others.
Because we are not bystanders, onlookers, or judges of these events, as Bonhoeffer puts it. Even now, “we ourselves are being addressed …[and] God is speaking to us.”
The Revd Canon Preston Parsons, PhD
Rector, St. John’s, Kitchener
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.