3/23/25 Sermon

As Jesus journeys closer to Jerusalem—closer to the cross—the tension in the Gospel of Luke tightens. People come to him with stories of recent tragedies: Galileans slaughtered by Pilate, and others crushed when a tower fell in Siloam. These are headlines filled with grief, and underneath the reports is a haunting question: Did they deserve it? It’s the age-old instinct to explain suffering by assigning blame. But Jesus refuses that narrative. Instead, he turns the spotlight onto those asking the question—and, by extension, onto us.

Rather than offering easy answers, he offers a call to repentance. Not a threat, but a wake-up call. Not punishment, but invitation. Then, he tells a story about a fig tree that hasn’t borne fruit, a frustrated landowner ready to give up, and a gardener who sees potential and asks for more time. This parable sits right in the tension between urgency and grace—between the call to change and the mercy that makes change possible.

This moment in Luke reminds us that time isn’t unlimited. Jesus is moving toward his own death, fully aware of the cost ahead, yet still pouring out love, still calling people to transformation. He knows how high the stakes are. And yet, even here, we find a God who is more gardener than judge—who digs around our roots, who still believes something beautiful might grow. This passage isn’t just about judgment—it’s about what love looks like when time is short. And it asks us: What will we do with the time we have? Will we love like Jesus loved, even when it costs us something? Let us listen to God’s word to us in this time and in this place as we find in…

Luke 13:1–9

Some who were present on that occasion told Jesus about the Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. He replied, “Do you think the suffering of these Galileans proves that they were more sinful than all the other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did. What about those eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think they were more guilty of wrongdoing than everyone else who lives in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.”

Jesus told this parable: “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertilizer. Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’”

WORD OF THE LORD

I don’t know about you but I’ve had to do my share of unpopular things because they were the right thing to do and I’ve had to go through some hard stuff and some uncomfortable, sometimes painful situations because I had to. But I’ve never done something intentionally knowing that what I was doing was going to get me killed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done some horribly stupid things that I look back on and think that it’s a miracle I’m still alive. And when I was a kid, my mother asked me more than once if I was trying to get myself killed - like  I told you about the time my friends and I filled a baby jar full of gunpowder, rigged firecracker wicks to it, and stuck it in a picnic table in the middle of an empty park. But I didn’t think about my own death in that moment until the pieces of wood came flying past me. But I can’t think of a time when I knew that what I was doing was going to kill me. Of course, I’m still alive so maybe that time just hasn’t come yet…

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I can’t understand Jesus’s mindset to make this trip to Jerusalem when at least Luke makes it pretty clear that Jesus knew what was going to happen to him. And while the differences between Jesus and I are vast and plenty, I don’t think I would have had the courage Jesus did to make such a journey. Now, a lot of people tell me that Jesus didn’t really have a choice and that it was God’s plan for him. Which I say sure. But… I mean… Honestly? I mean I would have been tempted to tell God what to do with that plan.

Maybe Jesus knew it was inevitable. He had made too many enemies—disrupted too many systems, upset too many power structures, befriended all the wrong kinds of people. He wasn’t doing what others wanted or expected him to do. He was turning the world upside down. Maybe he realized there was no outrunning the consequences. So he went—not because he wanted to die, but because he knew that, one way or another, his fate would catch up with him.

Or maybe, like someone who’s just been told they only have so much time left, Jesus chose to make the most of every moment. Maybe he wanted to touch as many lives as he could, make the biggest impact possible while he still had the chance. And even though Jerusalem would be the place of his death, maybe he knew it was also the place where his message could reach the most people. Or maybe—just maybe—he was that deeply convicted in God’s plan. Maybe he knew that beyond the pain and the cross, Easter morning still waited.

I don’t know. If we can just pause here and maybe pretend that we’re not in church, I’m not a pastor, this isn’t a sermon, and what I’m about to say isn’t potentially heretical, I’ll tell you something.

Sometimes when it’s quiet and no one is around, I pretend that Jesus isn’t God. I pretend he’s an actual person like you and me. And when I take the Divinity out of the equation and I read the Gospel stories, I often find myself wondering things like what must Jesus be thinking and feeling on his journey into Jerusalem. If he knows he’s going to be killed, why in the world does he go? What was he trying to accomplish? And I’ll tell you, sometimes it gives me great comfort to remember that we also claim that Jesus was fully human. Fully Divine and Fully human we say. But sometimes it just helps me to remember that Jesus was fully human. Because that means he must have had thoughts, feelings, struggles, and conflicts as he made his journey. Just like any of us do on our journeys.

Why does he make this journey? Sometimes it’s like watching a scary movie where the person is about to open the door that the killer is behind. I want to yell at him, “Don’t Go!” But he goes anyways. And what he knows will happen, happens. He’s beaten and tortured to death. And why? Because he cared too much. Because he loved too hard. Because he thought better of us than we think of ourselves. Because he saw our potential and invited us to live up to it. Why is it that we always seem to kill these people?

Malcolm X was fine when he was preaching hate. Once he began talking of peace, love, and reconciliation they shot him. Gandhi was shot and killed. Martin Luther King was shot and killed. Did you know his mother was shot and killed while playing the organ in church on a Sunday morning in 1974? Harvey Milk, Itzak Rabin, Oscar Romero, Bobby Kennedy, Michael Collins of Ireland, Sister Dorothy Stang in Brazil, Medgar Evers, That’s just naming a few… a very few… within the last 100 years… We seem to like to kill peacemakers who ask us to do and be better. Being that kind of prophet isn’t a safe profession.

But Jesus goes anyway—knowing he will be betrayed and killed by the very people he loves and is fighting for. Can you imagine what that must have felt like? Do you think he made the rest of the journey heartbroken, fully aware of what was coming? Maybe that’s why there’s such urgency in so many of his teachings—because he knew time was running out. And honestly, wouldn’t it be almost impossible to keep loving, to keep teaching about love, when you know your words are falling on the ears of those who will eventually call for your death?

There’s that moment when people come to him talking about tragedy—the Galileans killed by Pilate, the people crushed when the tower in Siloam collapsed—and instead of offering comfort, Jesus turns the question back on them. “Do you think they were worse sinners? No. But unless you repent, you too will perish.”

It’s a hard word. But maybe it’s meant to be. Maybe it’s a wake-up call.

Jesus isn’t blaming the victims here. He’s rejecting that old, tired idea that tragedy is divine punishment. He’s saying: don’t waste your time trying to assign blame—use this moment to reflect on your own life. You don’t know how much time you have.

It’s not a threat—it’s an invitation. An invitation to live awake. To live with intention. To live with compassion.

Then, as if to soften the edge, he tells a story. A fig tree that hasn’t borne fruit. The owner’s ready to cut it down. But the gardener—God bless that gardener—says, “Give it one more year. Let me dig around it. Let me feed it. Let’s see what happens.”

That’s grace.

The owner sees failure. The gardener sees possibility. The owner is done. The gardener says, “Wait. Let me care for it.”

We often read that story as a warning—and it is. But it’s also mercy. The gardener isn’t naive. He sees the barrenness. He knows the risks. But he still asks for time. He still wants to nurture. He still believes something beautiful could come.

And I wonder if that’s what Jesus was carrying with him as he went to Jerusalem. The urgency of time. The ache of empathy. The belief that even if the tree’s been fruitless so far, there’s still hope. Still time to tend it. Still time to love it into flourishing.

Why doesn’t he just give up? Why doesn’t he walk away? I mean certainly if Jesus is at all human let alone fully human, he had to lay in bed some nights wishing and wanting just to walk away and live a normal life. Find a nice Jewish girl and settle down. Raise a few kids. Live in whatever equivalent they had to a Suburb and etch out a decent living as a carpenter. I mean say what you want about domestic life, but even on it’s worst days it’s better than being crucified. I mean could you really blame the guy if he thought that, if he thought about just walking away from the whole thing?

But he goes anyways never knowing what a normal life would look like for him. And what’s really crazy is when I’m alone and it’s quiet and I’m feeling potentially heretical thinking about this human Jesus, wanting him to run because I love the guy and don’t want to see anything bad happen to him, and wondering why in the world he went anyways… What’s really crazy about the whole thing is the answer to that question.

And the answer is that he went because of me… and he went because of you.

Think about that for just a minute. Let that sink in. He went because of us. Not because we messed up so badly that his blood sacrifice was the only thing that could set it right, but he went because he loved us that much, that deeply, that fully and he wanted us to know what that love looks like and feels like.

He went and did it not because of Good Friday but he went and did it to show us Easter. To remind us that even if the world could kill us for caring too much, loving too deeply, or standing with those no one else will touch, hatred still won’t get the last word. He went on the journey and did it because in the end love wins. Darkness never casts out the light. Hatred doesn’t ever beat love. Death doesn’t conquer life. He did it because there isn’t a cost too high to pay for love because Love will always win in the end.

Sometimes on our own journeys or at least on my own journey in life, I know I’ve held back sometimes because it seems to cost too much to love and care deeply about people - Sometimes financially but more often it’s time or frustration or hurt that it seems to cost and I don’t always want to pay it. And yet here’s this guy marching toward his own doom, paying the ultimate price to show me, ME, that it’s worth the price; that in the end love always wins. That Love’s the best bet and the best yield in investment.

Why does he go? He goes to show us what love looks like and that love is worth it. And when I sit back and realize that, I feel like I can give at least a little bit more of whatever I have in this life to make sure there’s more love in this world. If he can make that journey, pay dearly, and show me that it’s ultimately okay in the end, then maybe I can make that journey with him. Not because I have to but because I want to. In 1st John, John writes, “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.” We love because he first loved us.

Why does he make his journey? Because he loves us. He goes because he loves us. He loves us. Man, if that doesn’t inspire us to try and give a little more of ourselves to others, I don’t know what will…

So as you go on this Lenten journey, may you know that Jesus loves you more than you will ever know or fully understand.

May you love like he loves: wastefully, carelessly, and freely. You won’t run out.

And may you go on your journey knowing that in the end love wins. Love always wins. And it’s worth it.