"Cut it down." Lk 13:9
Jesus often uses images from nature to help his disciples understand the Gospel. This is no accident. Because most of his disciples were illiterate, he could not urge them to read the Torah more carefully, but being unschooled did not mean they were unintelligent. In fact, the apostles may have been brilliant in ways we could never imagine, and would have been able to take Jesus'stories, songs, and images, fold them into their everyday lives, and retell them in ways that changed the lives of their listeners.
How wrong some on the Rabbis were to dismiss the first disciples because they were uneducated, and no wonder Jesus talked about cutting down the fig tree that was not bearing fruit. Too many in the Jewish community of Jesus' day were locked into a narrow and harsh interpretation of the Torah (the law and prophets) and were unable to learn from the wisdom Jesus embodied and proclaimed. Even sadder, they dismissed Jesus' disciples as poor fisherman who knew nothing about the law or the prophets. At the very least, the Jews who refused to look beyond their own artificial boundaries needed to be pruned in order to let go of branches that were sucking the life out of the fig tree of God's law.
Today, ask God to free you from prejudices.
Do you dismiss people because they speak poorly, dress poorly or are not good conversationalists?
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