The Fig Tree Without Fruit

 "One day, some people told JESUS what had occurred in the temple: Pilate had had Galileans killed, and their blood mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.  JESUS asked them, 'Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered this?  No, I tell you.  But unless you change your ways, you will all perish, as they did.

And those eighteen persons in Siloah, who were crushed when the tower fell, do you think they were more guilty than all the others in Jerusalem?  I tell you: no.  But unless you change your ways, you will all perish, as they did.'

And JESUS continued, 'A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it, but found none.  Then he said to the gardener, 'Look here, for three years now I have been looking for figs on this tree, and I have found none.  Cut it down, why should it continue to deplete the soil?'  The gardener replied, 'Leave it one more year, so that I may dig around it and add some fertilizer; perhaps it will bear fruit from now on.  But if it doesn't, you can cut it down.''" - Luke 13:1-9

(In this passage JESUS questions the idea we have of GOD's punishment.  We cannot believe in GOD without believing in justice.  For the Greeks whose gods were capricious and not very honest, justice was a divine power superior to the gods.  We always tend to make ourselves the center of the world and believe we are better than others.  If misfortune falls on someone else, we think it is just, but when it is our turn, we ask: "What have I done against GOD that this should happen to me?"

The Gospel deals with several aspects of the question.  First of all let us try to be free of a ghetto mentality [see 6:32]: the evil done by our enemies is not worse than the evil we do.

The justice of GOD goes far beyond our justice, and is only really fulfilled in the next life [the case of Lazarus, 16:19].

The misfortune, which to us here below appears as the "punishment of GOD," is no more than a sign, a pedagogical measure used by GOD to make us aware of the sin.  And GOD often converts a sinner by granting him unexpected favors [see the case of Zaccheus, 19:1].

Then why is there so much about GOD's punishment in the Old Testament?  GOD's people did not know yet an afterlife, so it was necessary to speak of GOD's punishments in this life, for these people to believe in HIS justice.  In fact GOD continues to give such signs both for persons and for communities.  It is good to know how to recognize them, keeping in mind they are not the last word of GOD's justice.)

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