Luke 13:1-9
One of the most important discoveries I’ve made in my life is that not all of my assumptions in life are true. These assumptions are called “presuppositions.”
Please forgive me, I know this is not a word that we use in normal everyday conversation, but this is precisely what Jesus is addressing in this text. These presuppositions are often the engine that drives much of how we look at our world.
So what is a presupposition?
The short answer is simple:
A presupposition is basically an unsubstantiated assumption.
Now as we grow in our Christian faith and into adult maturity we should consider examining and exposing some of our long-held assumptions.
So allow me to share with you a few of my early assumptions that seriously needed examination and exposure in order to help me grow as a Christian and a human being:
I once believed—based on an assumption of course—that people of color were somehow inferior to white folks. I entered adulthood just assuming that this was a biological fact even though I had no verifiable evidence to support such an assumption. I never questioned its veracity. It took years of examining that presupposition and naming it for what it was: White privilege.
I wasn’t able to let go of that presupposition until I was brave enough to name it in order to expose it for what it is.
One of the most ludicrous assumptions I held for years was that poor people are poor simply because they are lazy! I heard this growing up and grew into adulthood believing this was the case for all poor people. But my seeing real backbreaking poverty in developing countries, such as Mexico, Central, and South America, exposed that presupposition to be utterly false, not to mention my awareness that poverty may be traced in many cases to human greed.
Welfare fraud aside, and that’s an issue to be sure, poverty is not the result of people being lazy. People simply don’t choose to be poor. They don’t want to be poor any more than you or I do. There are complex reasons for poverty in our world (greed being one). We need to expose this presupposition for what it is, a lie intended to absolve us from taking some responsibility to care for the poor, as Jesus instructed us to do.
For most of my Christian ministry, I believed (and taught) that Capitalism was a Biblically based economic system. I have later come to see the fallacy of this presupposition since the Bible itself does not support it as a Divinely sanctioned system. In fact, the term Capitalism is nowhere to be found in the Bible or in early Christian writings. Additionally, the book of Acts suggests an economy of an entirely different stripe (Acts 4:32ff).
Now, this doesn’t mean that Capitalism is bad. It isn’t! Most of us here this morning have benefitted from living in a Capitalistic country. It has its downside for sure, just like any other economic system, but overall we are fortunate to live under such a system.
But just be aware that God did not create Capitalism—humans did!
So in our text this morning we find Jesus addressing an age-old presupposition or assumption about Sin and Suffering. It was commonly assumed back then “that folks get what they deserve, that bad things happen to bad people.”
Look, we aren’t much different, are we? I know I’m not. When something awful or tragic happens in my life I immediately go to my default position:
“Well, God must be angry with me” or “I must have done something terrible to deserve this.”
Come on, admit it, you’ve made similar assumptions too, right? Haven’t we all? But, are they legitimate assumptions about how God reacts to our sin? If something happens to me is it because I sinned? Do bad things happen to bad people? Is this a valid assumption?
No! It is not!
I tell you, this is a horrible way to live, what with the fear of Divine retribution hanging over one’s head 24/7. It causes one to look for an angry God lurking behind every bush waiting to catch us in some misdeed and then zing us with a punishing lightning bolt.
Well, Jesus responds to this kind of thinking in our text this morning:
“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans . . . Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?”
Folks were responding to these two tragic incidents by asking a familiar question:
“Was this the result of sinning against God?”
Actually, they already knew the answer to their question. They were looking for Jesus to confirm their assumptions about the relationship between their Sin and Suffering. Well, Jesus exposes that dreadful presupposition with one word:
“No!”
Then Jesus tells a really strange story about a withering fig tree. Jesus loved telling stories in situations like this, when folks were struggling with mysteries that are nearly impossible to understand, like the relationship between Sin and Suffering.
He preferred stories to clichés.
An owner of a vineyard sees that a fig tree in his garden is withering away, offering no good fruit to eat for the past three years. So he decides to chop down the tree since it is barren. But the gardener asks the owner to give the fig tree one more year so he could spread manure around it to help it regain its vitality. If the tree still fails to produce after one year then the owner can chop down the tree.
Such a strange story, right?
Well, what I hear Jesus saying in this story represents two versions of God when it comes to the issue of Sin and Suffering. The vineyard owner represents one version of God who wants to chop down the tree without a second chance. This version is the one the people assumed best explains the two incidences Jesus addresses in our text: Punishment by death (or suffering).
The gardener in the story represents the version of God that Jesus would promote: A loving God who is willing to give second chances (and third, and fourth if necessary) to those who fall into the grip of Sin. This is the version of God who is willing to get his hands dirty with manure (Incarnation)) to help us grow beyond our sinful lapses.
Yes, this version reflects God as willing to get his hands dirty redeeming us from our sin, not punishing us.
So when we look at this barren fig tree what do we see?
I would suggest that we see ourselves: Barren, fruitless, prone to lapses into Sin, and fumbling through life making missteps and mistakes. We’ve all been in such places in life, haven’t we? Sometimes those barren places last for years and God seems to have vanished from our lives. We don’t even pray anymore. We may even interpret his apparent absence of God as judgment for our sin.
But Jesus assures us that God is the God of second chances throughout life. He assures us that even in our most barren periods in life God is planting good soil (manure) all around us, prodding us to grow beyond our barrenness. God is with us, in us helping move us to more fertile ground.
So this strange story exposes any assumptions we might have that God is an unrelenting punishing God who offers us no second chances in life. Rather, God is the Gardener in our lives toiling the soil within us in order to move us out of our barren places into a fruit-bearing life.
More importantly, we learn from this interpretation that bad things don’t just happen to bad people but good people as well—but God remains forever faithful.
Yes, some of our presuppositions are totally worth exposing. The sooner we recognize the folly of living by all our unexamined assumptions the better life becomes for us. The happier we will be and I believe healthier too.
Stephen A. Hulsey
March 24, 2019
Lake Shore Presbyterian Church