The Odyssey of Schadenfreude

   

Lent 3: The Odyssey of Schadenfreude

Luke 13:1-9

      Desecrating the dead. Towers falling and killing people. The Gospels are not for lacking in violence and gore, but not the gratuitous kind of violence.The examples that Jesus gives in the gospel reading sounds like he’s saying that bad things happened to people because they were sinners. He goes on to say that it could happen to the people there, listening to him. Jesus appears to be speaking about what we call theodicy today, or trying to figure out why God punishes, smites, destroys, or otherwise punishes the faithful. And sometimes our reaction to theodicy, when it involves others, is summed up in the bouncy German word “schadenfreude” which means to take pleasure or delight in the suffering of others. When we find ourselves at the wrong end of fate, our reaction to theodicy involving us can be self-pity, or anger, or withdrawal, or apostasy - walking away from God. It isn’t fun being the person whose misfortunes from God provide entertainment for others. Theodicy is a difficult subject to deal with, and there have been numerous ways in which the answer to “why” has been formed.
     But Jesus isn’t talking about theodicy here. He’s talking about schadenfreude, and about the reaction people have when they see something bad happening to someone else. We hear it a lot: “Those immigrants knew their children would get separated and locked up if they tried to cross the border illegally,” or “Lock him/her up!” or “All of those government employees voted for the people that caused the shutdown.” My social media streams provide a daily dose of those and other similar sentiments. “At least I’m not that person” seems to be a common feeling underneath; it’s sometimes a sweaty, nervous denial that betrays shame and guilt because they got caught and I didn’t. “There but for the grace of God, go I” could follow the feeling of denial. It’s an attempt to look better by making someone else look worse by comparison, but that’s like falling into a mud hole and thinking “At least I’m not like that guy. Look at him, covered in mud.” The message that Jesus delivers is that misfortune isn’t always tied to sinfulness, or how bad off someone is. We’re all sinners, we’re all imperfect and no one is better than anyone else, if that’s the way you want to look at it. Do you really want to see the world that way?
     Then Jesus tells a parable, the one about the gardener and the fig tree, and it doesn’t seem to fit with what he was just saying about sin and evil in the world. This sudden shift is easy to gloss over, but answers a question if we linger and think about it. To start, a landowner has a fig tree on it, and I’ll take poetic license here to say that he probably has other trees that provide fruit, nuts, or olives, and being a vineyard, has lots of grapes for making wine. He is probably wealthy, since he can sell the grapes and fruit after he’s taken what he wants for himself. He expects a lot from his land, and has no time for poor or absent production. For three years, one fig tree has not produced any fruit. It’s a drag on resources, costing him more to keep the unproductive tree than replacing it with a productive tree. There’s only so much time in the growing season, and he has only so much money, and he’s not going to give anything more to the tree that isn’t going to contribute to his business. He wants it gone.
     At this point, the gardener speaks up for the tree, defending it. He asks the landowner to give it another chance. Now, this gardener knows his stuff, if only because he’s still working for the landowner. The landowner is going to look at the people working for him the same way he’s looking at the fig tree - if you don’t produce for me, then you have no place here. This gardener knows the plants and soil well. He’s digging in the dirt every day, looking carefully at each tree and grapevine and getting to know them very well. He knows every trunk, every stem, every knot, every wilted leaf, everything good and bad, healthy and unhealthy about his plants. So when he speaks on behalf of the unproductive fig tree, he speaks with full knowledge of the tree. More importantly, he speaks with compassion for it, knowing that it is flawed and not contributing. He has faith that with some extra care, the tree will bloom and produce fruit. The gardener sees the world the way that Jesus asks us to see the world, with compassion and full knowledge that it is not perfect. The gardener acts with faith, spreading hope for the tree as he spreads fertilizer around its trunk.
     This is still an unsettling thought, though: if we are to see the world knowing it isn’t perfect, then we might not be perfect either. The imperfect tree is not any better because the gardener promises to make it productive. The landowner is not any better because the tree he wants to be removed is staying. We are not any better because we are the same as those we point fingers at. The question of being any better flies right over the head of the gardener not because he’s clueless, but because he’s too busy building up. The gardener is not concerned about himself or the landowner, but for the tree. He wants to give the tree a chance to thrive, to contribute, to have a chance at doing what it was created to do.
     This is how Jesus wants us to see the world. We are shown compassion ourselves in Jesus’ words to the sinners around him. We are given many more chances to thrive, to contribute, to be who we are created to be. We don’t have to keep track of who’s worse off than we are because we are loved, and shown compassion, and are wanted by God as we are. We’re not about to be cut down, thrown out, burned with the trash, and forgotten. We don’t have to act like someone else is more deserving of the fig trees uprooting than we are. Jesus is calling us to pass on the compassion that we have been shown. He is calling us to have faith that hoping for better times is not foolish or naive. He is calling us to help others to thrive, to contribute, to be fruitful, by starting with ourselves because he has faith in us. God is reaching out to us through the Holy Spirit to live as Jesus did, because God believes in us and in what we can be. Why else would the Son of God speak to us about hope for a flawed tree?