We really, really want to believe that bad things happen to bad people and not to good people. We know this isn’t true, the evidence is all around us. Bad things happen to good people, and good things also happen to bad people. There is simply no connection.
The people of Jesus’s time were equally convinced, or trying to convince themselves, that being good came with a payback – despite a whole major book in the Hebrew Scriptures discussing how that wasn’t true and what that meant (the Book of Job). Jesus in today’s reading (Luke 13:1-9) is once again taking aim at this perspective (as he does John’s Gospel when asked about the blind man – “neither he nor his parents sinned” Jn 9:3). If bad things happen to some people it tells us absolutely nothing about whether they were good or bad. But Luke takes the story in a different direction from John: everyone has something they need to repent of.
That all sounds pretty ominous. Good or bad you’re going to be held to account. You should be worried.
But the parable that follows tells us something more. It seems to start with the same frustrated character, a God who has given up hope for his people, they are never going to improve, just get rid of them, start over. But the gardener (Jesus) still holds out hope. Give me time, I can still work on them.
Regardless of whether we are good, bad, or indifferent, life with all its ups and downs, good times and bad times, will happen to us. But God through his Son is still working with us, working on us. He hasn’t written us off. Regardless of whether we are good, or bad, or indifferent, Jesus hasn’t given up on us. He has hope for us. So should we.