Sermon Seeds: Cut Down

Sunday, March 23, 2025
Third Sunday in Lent Sunday | Year C
(Liturgical Color: Violet)

Lectionary Citations
Isaiah 55:1-9 • Psalm 63:1-8 • 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 • Luke 13:1-9
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=l&d=27&y=384

Focus Scripture: Luke 13:1–9
Focus Theme: Cut Down
Series: Sound the Alarm: Toward Good Friday (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

My word for this year has been harvest so I have been thinking a lot about planting, tending, weeding, etc. I’ve been searching the internet, watching YouTube videos, and even talking to friends about gardening. I’ve purchased tools, equipment, and other supplies to start a vertical garden as I have no desire or capacity to create a flower bed on my lawn. When I read this passage and heard the vineyard owner threatening to cut down an unfruitful tree, a part of me immediately considered the framework of nurturing the garden and wondered why the owner wanted to immediately cut it down without doing anything to attempt to correct and strengthen it.

Thank God for the worker who recognized that the tree had redeeming value and committed to put in the work toward repair and restoration. Who is the vineyard owner in this story? Who is the worker? Who does the tree represent? More importantly, how do we find ourselves reflected in this story of pruning, cutting, and renewing?

Luke 13:1–5 continues themes of judgment and repentance. Jesus’ interlocutors report two rumors about unusual suffering and speculate about punishment for guilt. Pilate’s massacre of Galileans instantiates imperial violence. The other is an accident at the tower of Siloam. At first glance, Jesus appears to dissociate sin from suffering. Actually, he intensifies it by leveling the playing field to include everyone and warning his hearers of punishment unless they repent. But the following parable emphasizes “pastoral care” for opportunities to repent (13:6–9). A gardener cultivates and nourishes a tree so that it will bear fruit. The vineyard and fig tree are stock imagery for Israel and shalom. How will listeners transfer the meaning from the planter, the gardener, and the fruit to the situation of Jesus and God’s commonwealth?
Robert L. Brawley

The parable offers a word of caution framed by instances of tragedy. Jesus’ words do seem contradictory. On the one hand, he warns that the Galileans who perished were no more sinful than those who were spared their fate. He offers the same message regarding the victims at Siloam. At the same time, he cautions that they need to repent to avoid the same fate. The similarity lies in the doomed fate but not the causality. In other words, Jesus compares the impact of choosing a sinful life to the violence of a corrupt state and the volatility of an unpredictable accident. Jesus does not victim shame; he does chasten those who capriciously make disastrous choices.

Jesus refuses to explain the demise of either Galilean pilgrims or Siloam victims as the consequence of moral failure. Employing a repeated “Do you suppose …? No, I tell you …” question-and-reply pattern, Jesus asserts that they were not worse “sinners” (v. 2) or “debtors” (v. 4) than their peers in the Galilee and Jerusalem, respectively (debt here is synonymous with sin; cf. 11:4). Disaster, whether contrived by human brutality or the result of a tragic accident, cannot be explained as the consequence of the sins of those who suffer. On this point Jesus sides with Job against his friends (e.g., Job 4:7–9; 10:1–7; 11:4–6; 15:17–31; 22:4–11; 23:10–12) and the broad scriptural tradition to which they might appeal (e.g., Lev 26:14–33; Deut 28–30; Josh 24:19–20; Ps 1; Prov 11–12; Ezek 18; Dan 9:11–14; cf. Josephus, J.W. 5.398, 407–8; 7.32–34, 271–72).
John T. Carroll

The difference for those receiving the warning from those who suffered misfortune not of their own making is an opportunity to change, to turn, and to be fruitful. The parable of the fig tree in the vineyard does not explain what happened in Siloam or Galilee. It amplifies the choice before those who would follow Jesus.

Thus the whole narrative sustains the tensive interplay between gracious forgiveness and restoration, on the one hand, and repentance that acknowledges the claim of divine justice, on the other. Luke holds forgiveness and repentance together, even if the sequence is sometimes surprising, with gracious acceptance preceding and indeed eliciting glad and grateful reordering of life (exemplified by Levi [5:27–32], the uninvited dinner guest [7:36–50)], Zacchaeus [19:1–10], and in parable a lost-and-found son [15:11–32]). Jesus, as healer of body and soul alike, seizes the initiative in extending life-restoring grace even to sinners, but he summons them to repentance, to a reordered life, not to persistence in a disordered life (5:32).
John T. Carroll

Jesus warns them that attempts to be complicit with the power structures will not provide safety. No one is protected when a powerful ruler goes unchecked. Security and safety are illusions projected to make those untouched by an instance of violence believe that the suffering somehow caused their own pain or are deserving of it. Jesus strongly repudiates that idea.

Jesus also does not reduce repentance to simple regret or remorse. In the parable, Jesus clearly illustrates the importance of tangible outcomes. Feeling bad does not produce fruit. Guilt is not the goal. Unless something new grows from the fig tree, it’s all a waste.

Repentance is not meant to be performative; repentance is liberative. The invitation found in the parable is not to live in fear of Pilate or paranoia about accidental death. Rather, Jesus calls us to be bold knowing that the pursuit of comfort or compliance with the powerful will not keep us from the same outcomes as those who succumbed to their power.

As we journey toward Good Friday, we remember that Jesus will have an encounter with a cut down tree. Further, on that day, Jesus will be cut down by the powers of an imperialist state. The Bible is silent about the type of wood used to form the cross that Jesus would carry and then be crucified upon. Historians, arborists, and biblical scholars speculate that cypress, pine, or cedar were used.

But perhaps it was a fig tree, spiritually if not physically. The fig tree is resilient, hardy, and prolific. It can survive the burns of a fire and come back in another year with new life. It needs little nutrients or water to survive and resists pests. Fig trees also respond well to heavy pruning. It’s entirely possible that an immediate observation would suggest that a fig tree has been destroyed when it’s actually ripe for renewal.

How will Jesus make sense—this is the query implied by the report—of the deaths of Galileans whose worship of God was cruelly interrupted by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who had evidently ordered them to be killed while they were engaged in sacrificial rites in the Jerusalem temple (13:1)? Is this an instance of deserved judgment of the sort Jesus has been discussing? To this brutal act of Pilate, Jesus adds a current event of his own: the deaths of eighteen persons, victims of the collapse of a tower “in Siloam” (presumably overlooking the pool of Siloam; v. 4). Neither tragedy is attested by other sources, though the cruelty displayed by Pilate resembles actions attributed to him by both Philo (Legat. 299–305) and Josephus (Ant. 18.55–62, 85–87; J.W. 2.169–77). Pilate’s cruelty foreshadows his role in the Passion Narrative (see 23:1–25), which will afford readers opportunity to evaluate his character and at the same time, as they observe his execution of Roman justice, to interpret Jesus’ death at his direction.
John T. Carroll

In the parable, Jesus shares the complaint of the vineyard owner who has been watching and waiting for three years for the fig tree to fulfill its purpose. In the Lukan account, his public ministry lasts for three years before Jesus is cut down on Good Friday. His good works do not save him. His friendships with people in high places and the favors he might have received in turn for healing and teaching do not stop his fate. Even his desperate pleas in the garden to be released from the inevitable conclusion of his radical demonstration of the kindom go unaccepted.

It begs the question: is salvation even possible?

Jesus says yes, through repentance…not of just a person, but of a community, a people, a nation, a world. Only when the world turns from the powers of evil and imperialistic pursuits will humanity flourish with abundant life.

We move toward Good Friday. We move toward a reckoning with the fig tree. How much time do we have before we cut down?

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.”
― Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

For Further Reflection
“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.” — Cree Indian Prophecy
“They speak of Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai as the ones who dared to dream. And for that, in a city consumed by nightmares, they were cut down without mercy.” — Chloe Gong
“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.” — Richard Powers

Works Cited
Brawley, Robert L. “Luke.” Gale A. Yee, Ed. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.
Carroll, John T. Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
During the season of Lent, let us take on practices that strengthen our communal capacities. Consider what pruning needs to occur within your faith community to strengthen the ministry of the church.

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/lent-3c-march-23/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.