Luke 13:1-9 Commentary

On the surface, this exchange about suffering as punishment for sins seems simple enough to understand, but there is a lot more to reckon with. To be sure, the need for everyone to repent—and soon—is the clear point Jesus is making. Not only does his parable make the point that time is short, but he repeats twice in the matter of three sentences: “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Jesus has been teaching a crowd of people and he has clearly settled into the theme of each person taking responsibility to understand what’s really important to do right now. The end of chapter 12 includes Jesus’s warning to not only learn how to interpret the times, but a reminder to take action to settle one’s disputes before reaching the judgement seat.

This seems to spark a question in some of his listeners, presumably from Jerusalem. Has Jesus heard about the great offense that happened in the temple, where Pilate had some Galileans killed while they were making a sacrifice to Yahweh? (We presume that those who raise the subject are from Jerusalem because they were prejudiced against people from the region of Galilee, viewing them as less faithful—and therefore more sinful).

Hidden in their question is the real question: who is to blame? Did they deserve their awful death because they were being punished by God for their sins? Or is Pilate to blame? Is this cause for rebellion? Both speak to different things that the people of the time thought true: God punished in real-time, and they were an occupied people whose God was being disrespected and blasphemed by those in power. Hidden just below this surface was the hope that they would see God’s curses and punishments come upon their enemy—”both foreign and domestic.” Jesus doesn’t even bother to take the political bait and address the wrong done by Pilate. He hones in on the real heart of the matter for his people.

Does sin make bad things happen? The answer is yes. But is every bad thing that happens to someone a personal punishment for their sin? No. Jesus himself says as much in verse 2: those who died a gruesome death were not any worse sinners than any of their neighbours. “But unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Jesus then uses another recent tragedy: when the people in Jerusalem died when the tower fell on them, were they way worse people than anyone else? No. And yet, death still comes and it will come for you too if you do not repent. Or, as Justo González summarises the gist of Jesus’s answer, “The surprising thing is not that so many die but that we still live. If it were a matter of sin, we would all be dead.”

If who is to blame was the hidden question, the hidden disposition of those asking it was comparison. It was very likely an unconscious bias and concern, one that had become second nature to them. The reason they were interested in hearing declaratively whose sin was responsible for such great suffering is because they needed to keep confirming that they themselves weren’t that bad. If they weren’t reaping bad outcomes from what they were sowing while others were clearly getting their comeuppance, then there was no need to change how they were living. They would still be superior to the Galilean Jews (or Pilate, depending on Jesus’s answer).

Hence Jesus’s repetition of “but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Then Jesus tells them a story that cryptically warns them that they have been coddled for a long time but the moment of decision is coming near. Those who are ignoring the call to repentance and new life in obedience are like the fig tear that repeatedly failed to bear fruit. By looking and asking about everyone else instead of wondering about themselves, the people are failing to see that they are not producing the kind of life that God desires. The vineyard owner is ready to chop the tree down and to stop giving it space among his vines, but his gardener petitions for some grace and commits himself to heaping extra attention and care upon this tree to see if he can turn it around and lead it to productivity for the vineyard owner. If, after doing that for a full growing rotation, the tree still refuses to be fruitful, then the gardener will acquiesce.

One of the points is that we can easily misinterpret our environmental conditions when evaluating our own sinfulness. “Blessings” of wealth and comfort may actually be a sign of weak faith: God knows we won’t turn to God if it feels too hard or uncomfortable—that we need to be coddled and accommodated.

In the short span of a paragraph or two, Jesus has turned everything upside down. The people in the crowd started from a posture of superior comparison and now they are left wondering if they are actually inferior. But of course, that’s not actually Jesus’s point—it’s just our human nature to always be comparing ourselves to someone else. Jesus’s point is that “unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” There is no comparing at all, just the one basic condition and need for every human. Instead of looking at and wondering about and comparing ourselves to others, we’re supposed to look towards God as we look inward at ourselves.

Textual Point

Like our own Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition wondered about sin and temporal punishment a fair amount—a clear example is John 9 where they ask Jesus about whose sin caused a man to be born blind, or how Job’s friends explain his situation to him. Some commentators helpfully point to Deuteronomy 28. There God promises blessings for obedience and, in a much longer section, curses for disobedience. This short list is far from exhaustive.

[Note: In addition to these weekly sermon commentaries on the CEP website, we also have a resource page for Lent and Easter with more preaching and worship ideas as well as sample sermons on the Year C Lectionary texts.]

Illustration Idea

Now that I’m a parent of a one-year-old, I use the internet to ask a lot of questions about age-appropriate ways to serve food to my child. The social media algorithm sends me a lot of videos about how to hide vegetables in meals, how to sneak nutrients into favourites, and the tricks that parents use to combat their fussy eaters. To get kids to do something that they need to do for their own good, we do all sorts of things to make the experience more palatable for them. We puree veggies into sauces, we try to put it on their favourite Paw Patrol spoons, we promise their favourite fruit if they eat all three of their green beans, yada yada yada. I am reminded of Paul’s description of Christians in 1 Corinthians 3: they need to make the move from being fed spiritual milk and move to the solid food of the faith, but to do so, they need to take responsibility for themselves. This is what Jesus is saying too: it’s time to look at your own life and repent because death comes for everyone.