Readings (Year C):
Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15
Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 11
1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
Luke 13:1-9
Reflection: Continue the next chapter
Our gospel today didn’t exactly have an ending. Jesus’ parable closes with the gardener bargaining with the fig tree owner to let him keep the fig tree for just another year, to see if it bears fruit or not. We as listeners do not ever learn whether the fig tree owner said yes to this request, or what happened to the fig tree. The story ends just there.
The rest of our readings this Sunday are a lot less ambiguous, or so it seems. As typical of Lenten readings, our reading from 1 Corinthians and the first part of our Gospel from Luke speak of calls to repentance, interlaced with threats of destruction. But the roots and reason for our repentance is always God’s mercy, as our first reading beautifully reminds us of God’s liberating mercy shown to Moses and the Israelites in the burning bush. In times of enslavement and despair, God reveals Godself to the people of Israel, and promises them that God has witnessed the affliction of God’s people. Just as God is merciful to those who suffer, we too are called to repent from our indifferences and wrongdoings, especially from the ways that our actions harm the lives of others.
The choice that God offers us, at each moment, is not the stark choice between repenting and perishing. Rather, God calls each of us by name, just like God had called Moses, to a unique vocation to become and receive mercy. And God gives us that freedom to say yes to these daily vocations of mercy. God calls us to find the holy grounds where God is revealed in our lives—whether in our devotional practices, in church spaces, in our service to the poor, and in our care for the earth. Our Lenten call to repentance is never a threat of destruction, but a call to return to God’s mercy.
The parable of the fig tree today doesn’t have a clear ending because God is giving us a choice and a voice to continue to write the next chapter of God’s story of mercy. Jesus is telling us that our lives, too, may have times where everything seems dull and slow, and we may not feel like our faith is bearing fruit or that God is near. Jesus reminds us that those times are never the end. In those times, God nourishes us with mercy and waits for us patiently. Our stories, just like the story of the fig tree, is also not over. And the next chapter of our stories can always be rewritten whenever we say, once again, yes to God’s mercy.
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