{"id":1463,"date":"2013-02-24T14:23:43","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T19:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2013-02-24T14:23:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T19:23:43","slug":"siloam-and-the-fig-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/siloam-and-the-fig-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Siloam and the Fig Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast<\/em><\/p>\n

terrible shadows, that each of the so-called<\/p>\n

senseless acts has its thread looping<\/p>\n

back through the world and into a human heart.<\/p>\n

-Mary Oliver, in Shadows\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jesus was teaching, as he always did, in the streets, teaching ordinary folks who had never seen the inside of a school to hope in a world they had not seen, a world not run by street bosses, price fixers, Herod with his huge building program, Caesar on a pedestal, the tyrants of this life.\u00a0 Then\u00a0someone told him what Pilate had done.\u00a0 Pilate had killed people from Jesus\u2019 home province, Galilee,\u00a0 who were at worship in the old Temple near the Tower of Siloam in Jerusalem, and in the disaster, their blood was mingled with the sacrifices on the altar.<\/p>\n

The spinal shiver went through Jerusalem in a heartbeat.\u00a0 People \u00a0knew the desecration was a warning.\u00a0 Strong, holy things had been violated:\u00a0 the altar in the high temple; the ritual practices held there; the sacred place reserved for priestly anointed hands; the animals, made holy by prayers, and making them holy in their offered\u00a0lives; the murdered Galileans who had been standing at that altar.\u00a0 In a single stroke Pilate humiliated the nation and its culture,\u00a0and the very presence of God.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s the man?<\/em><\/p>\n

Pilate, in this act of desecration,<\/p>\n

says he is.<\/p>\n

Jesus names the place: the Tower of Siloam.\u00a0 Eighteen men had been praying there, deliberately there, at the old temple built by King David in the old city, now somewhat removed from Romanized Jerusalem with its newly expanded temple, Herod\u2019s work.*\u00a0 David\u2019s temple, G.W. Buchanan suggests*, was built very near, perhaps only yards away from\u00a0the circular Siloam Tower, which was its protection.\u00a0 The temple was next to the spring of Siloam.\u00a0 Buchanan notes the many biblical prophets who detail the stairs that went down to the spring from the temple, and the ruins of the footing of the Tower that have been found in our current century.<\/p>\n

Pilate engineered the collapse of that Tower onto those worshipping Galileans, who were resistant to the new and improved temple.\u00a0 Or was it an act of God?<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s the man?<\/em>\u00a0 I know that spinal shiver.\u00a0\u00a0 Sikhs at their worship, near Milwaukee, WI.\u00a0 The Old Order Amish school children in their classroom in Lancaster County, PA.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Archbishop Oscar Romero shot dead while saying mass at the chapel in La Divina Providencia Hospital in San Salvador.**\u00a0 Newtown. Aurora.\u00a0 Columbine.\u00a0 Rwanda.\u00a0 I cannot begin to name the desecrations that have happened in my own lifetime.\u00a0\u00a0 In all these hours, the Joker has\u00a0ruled.\u00a0 Lunacy looms larger than life itself. \u00a0And where was God?\u00a0 Are these altars devoid of the powers they praise?<\/p>\n

And then there are the natural disasters. \u00a0Sandy.\u00a0 Katrina.\u00a0 The Japanese tsunami.\u00a0 Joplin, MO.\u00a0 The cataloguing does not end.<\/p>\n

And the temptation to give up on God has pulled at my heart time after time.\u00a0 What is the point of the church, if the church insists only on serving itself?\u00a0 What is the value of the nation, if the flag is wrapped around corruption and torture?\u00a0 Where is the justice in a system that cannot set us free of these terrors?\u00a0 What is the point of our worship, if things do not change?<\/p>\n

In Jerusalem then, and among us everywhere, the unending temptation is to disbelieve in the powers of truth,\u00a0in justice or wisdom, or the hand of God at work or the love of God in this world.<\/p>\n

Jesus knows this temptation is at work in us, and he presses for turning, turning, turning, away from the bleakness of despair.\u00a0 Turn, he urges, toward the warm altar of hope.\u00a0 No, life is not fair, but you can be fair.\u00a0 No, life is not beautiful, but you can be beautiful in your living.\u00a0 No, life is not faithful, but you can be faithful.\u00a0 The Man<\/em> may be powerful in hate, but that does not make him God.\u00a0 And you can be powerful in love, which will step your feet into the kingdom of heaven, here and now.<\/p>\n

Whether our lives and our deaths<\/em><\/p>\n

were for peace and a new hope<\/p>\n

or for nothing<\/p>\n

we cannot say,<\/p>\n

it is you who must say this.<\/p>\n

We leave you our deaths.<\/p>\n

Give them their meaning.<\/p>\n

The words, from Archibald MacLeish\u2019s poem, The Young Dead Soldiers,<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0echo Jesus\u2019 wisdom, as he urges them to choose the life of fruitful trees:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He turns the conversation to a tale about a\u00a0fig tree, the icon of Israel.\u00a0 He is talking about them now,\u00a0 about their own lives.\u00a0 A man had a fig tree that bore no fruit.\u00a0 He complains to the gardener, Three years, and nothing! Cut it down!\u00a0\u00a0 And the gardener pleads for the tree, saying, let me try one more year, I\u2019ll dig around it and see if I can bring forth something.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

God, too, feels this temptation, this despair.\u00a0 And argues about that feeling with the gardener, who is a mingled image, part God and also plenty of us, who work to sustain life in so many ways, mothers, farmers, fishermen, teachers and priests, those who always work to see things in more than one way.\u00a0 We are all the gardener.\u00a0 As is God, who not only creates but also works at sustaining life in this world.\u00a0 God is\u00a0the gardener, and the tree, the fruit and the bare waiting branches, the one with empty hands and the one who owns it all.\u00a0 And God is always arguing\u00a0for a little extra time, for our sakes.<\/p>\n

And here we\u00a0are,\u00a0not cut down.\u00a0 We have a little more time.\u00a0 Fruitfulness is ours to choose,\u00a0 an act of faith, an act of beauty, a work of justice, extending time into another season.\u00a0 And this is our choice, not how it makes us feel, but the meaning we choose to give \u00a0it.\u00a0 It requires a\u00a0turning, of\u00a0the soul\/the soil.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

*from an article by George Wesley Buchanan, Wesley Theological Seminary, in The Expository Times<\/strong><\/em>, 2003, published by Associates for\u00a0Scriptural Knowledge<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

**a newly-made Canadian video about Archbishop Romero can be seen at www.themartyrsproject.com<\/a>\u00a0and has much to say about the fruitfulness that has come from that terrible event.<\/p>\n

Illustrations:<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0<\/strong> The Tower of Siloam<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0 by Tissot, James Jacques Joseph, 1836-1902, Brooklyn Art Museum.\u00a0 from Art in the Christian Tradition, Vanderbilt Divinity School Library.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Archbishop Oscar Romero<\/em><\/span>,<\/strong> wikipedia.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong>\u00a0 The Barren Fig Tree.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 by Tissot, James Jacques Joseph, 1876, illustration for The Life of Christ.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast terrible shadows, that each of the so-called senseless acts has its thread looping back through the world and into a human heart. -Mary Oliver, in Shadows Jesus was teaching, as he always did, in the streets, teaching ordinary folks who had never seen the inside of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2483,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bites"],"yoast_head":"\nSiloam and the Fig Tree<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast terrible shadows, that each of the so-called senseless acts has its thread looping back through the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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