What did you think when you first heard that President Trump was infected with the coronavirus? “What else did you expect? You were warned! What’s next, more chaos? What happens to our nation?”
I think there is a lesson here beside the ones about wearing masks, washings hands, and social distancing. That lesson is found in Luke 13:1-9, the parable of the Fig Tree.
Two events serve as the lesson’s background. First, while Galileans were sacrificing animals at Jerusalem, Pilate came suddenly upon them killing them, mingling their blood with the blood of the sacrificial animals. Second, eighteen people died when the tower in Siloam unexpectedly collapsed on them. It's in the setting of unexpected tragedy that Jesus tells the Parable of the Fig Tree.
Keep in mind that in Jesus day, tragedy was considered the result of sin. Jesus suggests not equating tragedy with divine punishment. Sin does not make violence come. It just comes. So, since we all need to repent, take advantage of God’s grace and repent now. before the unexpected.
That’s what the parable a fig tree is about. A carefully tended yet fruitless tree may continue to live because it has been given more time to bear fruit. If it doesn’t, the result will be the ax.
So, which will happen? The tree producing fruit and avoiding the ax? The tree taking advantage of second chances?
Today’s crises of the unexpected, shake our foundations of life and faith and the complacencies we use to get through ordinary life. They impress upon us the risks in our existence.
Our hope is that God's work of faithful love, like the parable's gardener, prepares us for the unexpected. That in this moment of the unexpected, God transforms us through grace to bear the fruit of compassion toward those still trapped under the anxiety of the unexpected.
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