Here is a question for you.
What do the Chicago Cubs, Bulls, Blackhawks, Bears, and especially the Chicago White Sox have in common with the fig tree in Jesus’ parable.
Answer. They are all waiting until next year.
Lot’s of next years have passed in Chicago sports until this year comes to fruition.
Shall we go down the trail of tears.
The Chicago Cubs waited 107 years before winning a World Series in 2016 and have not been in one since.
The Chicago Bears last won a Super Bowl in 1985 and have lived off those laurels from then until now.
The Chicago Blackhawks, who had some phenomenal years in the teens with three Stanley Cups in 2010, 2013 and 2015 but since then, disappearance.
The Bulls, during the Jordan, Pippin, Phil Jackson days of the 1990's when they won six NBA championships. Count them six championships but, alas, none since.
And the White Sox, who last won a World Series in 2005 after an 88 year drought but who last year set a Major League Baseball record for futility by managing to lose 121 games. This year doesn’t look much better for them as it looks like their rebuilding process will take longer than that of the Kennedy Expressway.
The only team to have won a championship in recent memory was the Chicago Sky in who were the champions of the WNBA in 2021. Other than that, Chicago sports teams have had more “five-year plans” than the old Sovie Union.
Clearly, by what I have just put you through, I watch a lot of sports however the one thing I do not do is listen to a lot of sports radio.
The reason is that for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week one can listen to men and women, mostly men – some of whose playing days are long since past and others who couldn’t run 50 yards for 50 million dollars or throw a beach ball into the ocean from the beach – try to explain their favourite team’s latest failures.
In seeking out the reason they usually try to find something or someone to blame for a franchise’s flops which is a temptation in almost any aspect of life.
Who caused this? Why did this happen? Who's to blame?
And this, let’s find the victim, and blame them goes far beyond sports or sports radio.
There is a wonderful line in Amor Towels best-seller, The Lincoln Highway, where one of the characters says about life in a small town.
“Living in the big city, rushing around amid all that hammering and clamoring, the events of life can begin to seem random. But in a {small town} when a piano falls out of a window and lands on a fellow’s head, there’s a good chance you’ll know why he deserved it.”1
That is the issue that confronts Jesus in today’s gospel. It is a much bigger question than why sometimes a particular sports team is so bad but rather the age old question of if when bad things happen to some people do they deserve it.
One thing is clear “the people who ask Jesus their versions of the ‘why?’ question already have an answer in mind. They don’t approach Jesus blank slate; they show up hoping to confirm what they already believe. That is, they come expecting Jesus to verify their deeply held assumption that people suffer because they’re sinful. That folks get what they deserve. That bad things happen to bad people.”2
When a piano falls on someone’s head we want to know why they deserved it.
“We want there to be a reason for human suffering, a moment we can pinpoint where a person’s life went off the rails.”3
We know why our sports team fail. No relief pitching. An offensive line that is porous at best and can’t protect the quarterback. No goal tending. Bad managers. Some years I remember, management and fans have even taken to blaming the broadcasters. That may be more of an excuse than a reason but still we believe the reasons why failures happen need to be discovered so that may be pointed out. Whether the problems actually get fixed or not is another matter.
In life, pointing out the failures of the guy who has the piano fall on his head, or who are killed by a despot like Pilate, or who meet their end when a building falls on them hold us apart from those who suffer.
“The kind of judgement we are quick to use in other people’s situation based on some ledger of fairness does not reflect God’s logic.”4
The logic Jesus came to tell us about is radically different. “In Luke’s story Jesus emphatically rejects the simplistic notions {of} blaming the victims of caprice or casualty.”5 Instead Jesus is calling us to repent, to turn our backs on such idle speculation and bear fruit worthy of repentance.
Thus Jesus little story about a fig tree that is totally non-productive.
From any rational point of view the owner of the fig tree was absolutely right when he said to his gardener “‘Look, I have come expecting fruit on this fig-tree for three years running and never found any. Better cut it down. Why should it use up valuable space?’”6
And if I could quote Jesus’ solution from the original Greek you would be wide eyed as I am sure his original listeners were.
As Dr. William Willimon told his astounded congregation once.
The Greek word koprion that’s politely translated in most of our English Bibles as “fertilizer” or sometimes “dung” is a crude word, found nowhere in scripture. “It’s “fertilizer” in church but if this weren’t church, I might tell you what it really means. It’s a crude, four letter word not appropriate for church. And that is the word Jesus uses here! “Let me pile some koprion on it, dig around it, and maybe the dung will do it.7
Like so many of Jesus parables he just leaves it there. We never know what happens to that fig tree. We never know if when next year comes “the ax is being laid to its roots” or it is weighed down with so many figs the land-owner is setting up his own personal first century Fig Newton factory.
What Jesus is telling us is that the same thing offered to the fig tree is being offered us. It’s a gift we can waist wondering why pianos fall on some guys head, or towers that are supposed to be well-built crumble, or why rulers prey on the innocent or why our sports teams are so consistently bad or we can be like Chicago Sports fans who, just a few days from now will pack both ballparks in the hope that maybe this season, maybe this year, things will be different.
"Sometimes, God’s greatest mercy is time, time to learn from our past, to profit from our mistakes, time to start over. Christians have a word for that sort of mercy — repentance."8
That’s the message of Lent that there is still time. Time to repent. Time to change.
“‘Even now, cried John the Baptist, the ax is lying at the root of the trees.’ But instead today Jesus tells us that his “gracious and patient hand reaches out to halt the ax” and instead of giving up when we fail says instead, “‘Let’s give this hopeless case one more year.”9
In other words, let's give this one “time for amendment of life and the grace and comfort of the Holy Spirit.”
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1. Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2023)
2. Debie Thomas, “What Are You Asking?” Journey with Jesus, March 13, 2022, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3348-what-are-you-asking.
3. Mihee Kim- Kort, “March 23, 2025: Third Sunday in Lent,” The Christian Century, March 9, 2022, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/march-20-lent-3c-luke-13-1-9
4. ibid.
5. David L. Tiede, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament - Luke (Minneapolis,, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1988), 247.
6. Luke 13:6-9. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).
7. William H. Willimon, “By God’s Grace There’s Still Time,” Pulpit Resource, Year C, 47, no. 1 (2019): 36–38.
8. William H Willimon, “Time to Change,” Pulpit Resource, Year C, 53, no. 1 (2025): 36–38.
9. Thomas G. Long, “Breaking and Entering: Sunday, March 18 (Luke 13:1-9) ,” The Christian Century, March 7, 2021, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/breaking-and-entering?
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