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How Are You Perishing?
8 min
Gospel
Lk 13:1-9
There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Silo′am fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”
Readings are taken from Dynamic Catholic’s Bible: RSV Catholic Edition.
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Transcript
How Are You Perishing?
What jumps out at you today? There's a lot going on here. So Jesus starts talking about these Galileans whose blood Pilate has mingled with their sacrifices, you know, and, you know, people's obviously temptation was to think, well, these people were bad people, and, you know, we're better than them, and they're worse than us, and we're not like them.
And Jesus is saying, that isn't true. You might be like them, and in fact, you might be worse than them. And what does he say? He says, "Repent or perish. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish ." So there's a lot right there, right? "All" so he's not saying, oh, one or two of you might perish.
"All likewise perish ." Repent or perish. And repenting is a lifelong journey, right? Repenting is to turn back to God. We turn away from him in little ways, like by little degrees, and then we realize, oh, I've turned away from God again. And then maybe it happens in a day, maybe it happens in a week, maybe it happens in a year.
But how are you being called to repent at this moment in your life? And how are you already perishing? Because that's the thing about sin. It's not like, oh, we do the sin now and then the perishing is all saved up for the afterlife. No. We start to perish now. You know, sin destroys our lives in very real ways. It complicates our lives beyond belief.
You know, somebody was asking me about something recently, and my answer to them was like, okay, but all of the theology aside, why would you want to complicate your life with that sin? Because it is going to complicate your life. It is going to make your life messy. It is going to cause you to perish in lots of ways. And so there's a relationship between sin and perishing.
In the middle is repenting. How are we being called to repent today? Not somebody else, but ourselves. And of course, Jesus is talking about comparing here, right? So what do we got going on here? We got this comparison. People thinking, well, I'm different to them. I'm better than them. They're worse than me. And this comparison is constant. It's in our human nature. It's very dangerous. It's insidious. It's like a cancer.
And so Jesus says," Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish ." And then just in case we were confused, he comes back. He tells another example, and he says exactly the same thing." Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish ." And so to look today at, like, in what ways are you perishing?
And what behavior does that relate to? And how can we repent of that behavior? And then the second part of the reading is really another whole reading. And Jesus is telling the parable of the fig tree. The fig tree is doing nothing, okay? And think, like, this part just sounds so hard - hearted to me. I mean, so cold - hearted, all right?
What does it say? It says, "Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?" Wow. That just seems it seems just very harsh, right? "Cut it down ." Okay, it's one thing to say, "Cut it down," but then why should it use.
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