The Barren Fig Tree - The Gift of Time

You think it was about the ones the tower fell on.

It was never about them. It was about you — the one still standing.

Jesus is not preaching to a crowd of seekers here. Someone in the crowd hands Him the news: Pilate has butchered Galileans at the altar, their blood mixed with their sacrifices. And underneath the report is the oldest comfort in the world — they must have had it coming. They were worse. We’re fine.

He takes it away twice.

“Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay.” Then He reaches for the eighteen crushed under the tower in Siloam and says it again. The manner of a death tells you nothing about the soul that died. Stop reading the graveyard for verdicts.

But He does not let the dead off. They perished. And the ones still breathing will perish the same — not by tower, not by sword, but as sinners — “except ye repent.”

Then the picture. A fig tree in a vineyard. Best ground, every provision, three years of the owner coming to look for fruit and finding none. “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” And the vinedresser: “Lord, let it alone this year also.”

That’s the gift. Not a pardon. Not a lowered bar. A year. Time — the one thing the dead have run out of and you have not. And it’s already running while He speaks.

Here is what the sweet readings miss: left alone, the tree is dead. The axe was already ordered. The only reason it stands is that someone volunteered to dig around it and feed it — to spend himself on a tree that has given him nothing and might give him nothing still. The season comes with labor. Grace here is not waiting. It is digging.

And still — “if it bear fruit, well: and if not.” The digging is necessary and it is not enough. The vinedresser stakes the effort. He cannot stake the fruit. The axe stays raised over a tree that has been worked.

The parable never tells you what the tree did. That’s not a missing ending. That’s your ending, and you’re writing it right now, in the season you cannot see the edge of.

The Bereans searched the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so (Acts 17:11). Do the same with this one. Don’t take the comfortable reading. Read the paragraph that produces the parable and let it press where it presses.

You’ve been given this year also. What’s on your tree?

Episode Link: