As a gardener, I have some sympathy with the gardener who pleads that the unfruitful fig tree should be given one last chance to bear figs.  There are many who would do what the owner of the vineyard determined to do – uproot the tree and throw it onto the compost heap. There, at least, it might do some good!  But I would give it another chance. In the Rectory yard and in the garden beds you are likely to find plants that appear to be well beyond their sell-by date but it is my experience that, often, if you wait long enough, new life might just appear. The reward is worth the wait.

That seems to be a suggestion which would cheer the gardener in the story which Jesus told in today’s Gospel. He pleaded for a reprieve – albeit only a short-term one. If the fig tree hadn’t delivered its juicy figs a year later it was for the chop.  We might shrug our shoulders and say, so what? It’s only a tree and people like us, who live surrounded by a forest are probably not too bothered at the loss of a tree.  That’s OK then until we remember that the point of our Lord’s story is not about the fate of a tree but of human life. It is a story about whether we live or die, whether we are thrown on the compost heap or whether we are nurtured into bearing fruit.  Suddenly, this story takes on a new and quite frightening meaning.

The story was told immediately after Jesus had been talking about God’s judgement. He had spoken of the importance of being ready for God’s return, about being alert for the day when God would judge the earth.  Some of his hearers tried to deflect him by telling him, of some Galileans who had come to the festival at Jerusalem and had fallen foul of Pilate who ordered their death. Their blood was mingled with that of the animal sacrifices in the Temple. Like sensational tabloid newspapers they painted as gory a picture as possible.  Their purpose in telling him this was mainly self-righteous justification because it seems from our Lord’s reply that they were suggesting that the fate of the Galileans was a result of their sinfulness.

Jesus tops their story with one of his own about eighteen men who died when a tower fell on them near the pool of Siloam. The question he asks them about both incidents is the same.  Do you think what happened to them was because they were worse sinners than anyone else?  Jesus is touching on a widely held Old Testament belief that bad things happen only to bad people and that when we suffer misfortune it is because we have sinned.  Though this is an Old Testament idea, it continues to be held today even though Calvary and the death of an innocent on the Cross nailed sin and suffering onto the transforming heart of a sacrificial God and puts a very different interpretation on things.

Even so, it is not uncommon, when disaster falls somewhere in the world, to believe it is because people have sinned and they are getting their just reward.  For the religious person who believes he or she lives a righteous life it is an oddly attractive idea.

When I was much younger in the faith I would sometimes harbour the fanciful idea that God might strike the world with some disaster and people would flock to Church in order to be saved – though I also hoped to be the one who shut the church door on them with a loud ‘I told you so!” spoken from the depths of considerable self-righteousness.  Hopefully, I have moved on a little since then!   Yet the thought prevails.

In more unenlightened times the Jews were persecuted because it was firmly believed that they, and they alone, had caused the death of Jesus. There are even those who believe it was as a result of their racial sin that the Second World War holocaust happened and was therefore justified. Notwithstanding the repugnance of such a belief, the consequence of holding it would turn Hitler and the Nazis into saints who were simply doing God’s bidding.  I am sure than such a thought would be one that horrifies you but it wasn’t that long ago that people firmly believed that AIDS was the just punishment for homosexuals though how do you square that with the death from AIDS of innocent children in Africa or the experience of little Gita from Calcutta whose story is in this week’s newsletter extra?

Another extreme version of this belief of disaster being the result of our sin occurred when I was a student chaplain.  A girl, whose father had died of cancer, returned to University and her friends thought they might cheer her up by taking her to a religious meeting of, shall we say, an exuberant kind. There, amidst the joy of gospel singing she heard the preacher say quite firmly that cancer was a visitation from God to smite down the sinner. It took hours of patient and loving pastoral care to heal that poor girl’s shattered soul. 

Those who told Jesus of the murdered Galileans were guilty of the one sin which defeats us all if we are not careful and that is the sin of personal spiritual blindness.  The cartoonist, Hugh Burnett did a series of cartoons under the title of ‘Sacred and Confidential’ based on the life of monks. In one cartoon, a crotchety brother was engaged in writing down a list of sins and another brother stood looking over his shoulder,

No, no, my dear chap he says you’re supposed to list your OWN faults!

The best way to take the spotlight off ourselves is to turn it onto others and that’s just what those who were talking to Jesus about murdered Galileans were trying to do.  But Jesus was having none of it.  Never mind those people – it’s YOU who must repent.  Perhaps the point is that the call to repentance – the clarion call of both Lent and the entire Gospel – should not be misunderstood.

We do not repent of the wrong things in our lives because we fear punishment – we repent because we experience the love of God.  We don’t turn away from sin because to do otherwise would cost us dear but because it has already cost God everything.  The Cross is not our punishment – it is God’s way of saving us from punishment.  On the Cross he took our sins to himself and became the sacrifice which takes those sins away.  That’s the New Testament, Gospel, way of dealing with sin – a far cry from the Old testament belief that sin is dealt with by disaster falling upon us.

Now there is a fine line dividing these two views because, clearly, sin has to be dealt with if we are to truly live as we are meant to live and be the people we are meant to be. But fear does not destroy sin. Living in fear can bring its own kind of sin because it prevents us from enjoying the freedom of life God really wants for us.  That life is to be found not in fear but in love – as the writer of the first letter of John puts it so profoundly – perfect love casts out fear. It is only through experiencing love that we let go of fear and equally, of sin.

The Cross is God’s most complete statement of how sin is destroyed by Love. Out of Love Jesus died for us and in that dying gave us new life.  So those who tried to deflect Jesus had missed the point. They were not able to repent -  turn themselves around to God’s love. And that is what we must do if we are not to join them in a death of soul which will indeed result in our perishing.

In case I am in danger of using ‘fear’ language let me say two things.  The first is about the word ‘Repentance’  It’s the translation of a Greek word – Metanoia­ which means, literally, to change one’s mind. In Christian understanding this means – to have a complete conversion and change of perspective; to see things in a completely new way and to literally change one’s life.  Another way of putting it is to turn oneself completely around so that you are no longer looking at yourself in a selfish way but rather looking at God who draws you to himself with a selfless love.

One of the most moving moments in the Holy Week story is when, after Peter has denied Jesus, our Lord is taken through the courtyard and as Luke puts it, The Lord turned and looked at Peter and Peter wept bitterly.

What turns Peter’s heart is our Lord’s look – a look which is a mixture of sadness and of love and it is this which brings forth repentance, signified by the tears.  When we look at our Lord – towards God and see his sheer, unadulterated, self-giving love for us, then our hearts melt and open to him and we are forever changed.  Sorrow for what we have been and desire to both live  in God’s love and become that love – that is the heart of repentance  That’s what our Lord seeks from us. He can do the rest.

And the second thing is that it is never too late.  The story of the Fig Tree gives us hope. Jesus is the gardener who gives us the chance to bear fruit even when we seem incapable of it. You have time to change though it would be unwise to delay it too long.  Seek the Lord while he may be found says Isaiah in today’s Old Testament lesson, call upon him while he is near. 

Don’t put off renewing your heart so that it is ablaze with God’s love again.  Why wait?  Not because to do so might mean you lose your chance – which the fig tree story seems to imply -  but much more because what is on offer is God’s loving mercy, forgiveness and promise of a fuller and richer life – a more loved and loving life.  With that promise from God what’s the point in putting it off?