Today’s passage is Luke 13:1-17. Jesus tells the crowd that people who die in spectacular ways are not more sinful. Twice he tells them to repent so they won’t die eternally. He tells a parable of a man who wants a fig tree cut down because it doesn’t bear fruit but his gardener asks for one more year to care for it. When Jesus is criticized for healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath he calls his critics hypocrites.
Why does the man agree to give the fig tree one more chance?
Did the synagogue rulers agree to start healing on the Sabbath?
“Bent over and could not straighten up” (11)
I am like the woman bent over for eighteen years and unable to straighten up.
For most of my life I have been a spiritual cripple, self-righteously judging others and cutting down with my angry words the fig tree people who didn’t bear the fruit I expected and wanted from them.
God has healed me of my infirmity (12) but I still keep bending over and narrowing my compassion, my discernment and my love.
My repentance is never ending because I keep sinning.
My brother in law loves me but I keep resisting his regard by judging him harshly for the smallest of things.
Since my wife and I stopped criticizing him to his face in our efforts to guide him in the ways we saw fit and decided were best for him, he has improved in his attitude and helpfulness in the house, doing laundry and some cleaning, for instance.
But I fight my expectations of him all the time and even when he is helpful I compare his efforts to my ideal behavior for him.
Against his perfect self in my imagination, his imperfect real self doesn’t stand a chance.
Here is one example.
He never used to do laundry but now he does.
But the way he hangs up the clothes, his and ours, is sloppy and often leaves big creases in the shirts or pants because of his carelessness.
And in my mind, I curse him and his efforts, for which I immediately repent.
My work is not to chop down his fig tree but help fertilize it.
Now I re-hang the laundry when I can so the shirts don’t have hanger bulges in the chest or back.
It is a small moment of Jesus helping to straighten me by my straightening shirts.
Application: Help my brother in law hang the shirts rather than doing it afterwards.
Lord, help me stop cutting down fig trees. Keep straightening me, Lord, so that I can live without being bent over.
