Text: Luke 13: 6-9
I
can't recall when we've had such an early azalea season, can you? The azaleas
in our yard started pinking by the end of January. Whether these precocious plants were wise to
rush into their springtime dress remains to be seen. The recent cold snap may
prevent the fullest profusion of Mobile's favorite flower this year. Still, even if the azalea yield this season
is less than usual, there will be lavender, fuchsia, white, pink, and the Pride
of Mobile pinky-red blossoms enough.
There will be enough.
The
parable that Jesus tells in today's Gospel lesson describes the opposite problem
for gardeners: a delayed yield, a plant that was slow to produce, a fig tree,
to be specific, that bore no figs. So
you might think our early blooming azaleas are detouring us from the story of
the late bearing fig tree.
Until
I tell you that one of our azalea plants took many years to bloom.
When
George and I moved back home to Alabama, his parents gave us half a dozen
azalea plants from their property in Lowndes County, small azaleas from an
ancient lineage originating in Mobile and with the promise they’d grow into a
lush line along one side of our lawn. My
in-laws said, "If you're going to live in Mobile, you're required by law
to have azaleas." I never checked the city ordinances on that, but I’m
pretty sure it's true. So George planted
and watered the transplanted azaleas, and sure enough, they did what azaleas do
in Mobile: they thrived. All except one
of the plants. Through no fault of its
own. The next-door neighbor's dog took a liking to one of the bushes, by which
I mean this dog liked to "water" it.
Sadly, the dog-watered plant soon died--leaving a gap in the azalea
hedge. We could have bought another
azalea, but my historian husband liked the idea of our azaleas all sharing the
same history.
So George took a cutting
from one of the healthy plants and potted it and placed it on the patio. For the next two or three years he tended
that twig. Truly, it was nothing but an eight-inch
stick for two years. Impatient as I am, after
a few months I gave up on The Twig, as I disdainfully dubbed it, and suggested
we just buy an azalea to match the others. Even if The Twig survived, it
would never catch up to the others and would never thrive and bloom. But George
kept faith in his twig in the clay pot.
He and I would step outside on the patio some evenings, and he'd point
out a new leaf that had sprouted but which I could barely see. Such a feeble
sign of hope brought out the worst in me. So I'd taunt that twig with invective
so awful your average twig would have just keeled over and died.
But
George's twig did not. Very gradually that unpromising twig really took root
and leafed out a bit more and then branched out. So George prepared the soil for it in the
place of its dead predecessor. And he
put a little wire fence around the site to keep out the neighbor's dog. And
planted The Twig. And by the next season
it was blooming pinkly, sidling up happily against its bigger relatives. If you
go to our house today, you will see a bank of blooming azaleas, and you will be
able to tell that one plant is smaller than the others--but just barely. It's catching up. And it's fairly beaming with blooms.
If
Jesus were to recast the parable of the fig tree today, the barren fig tree
would be played by The Twig, the landowner wanting to cut down the tree to make
room for something bigger and better would be played by myself, and the
compassionate gardener who, after three years, still held out hope that the fig
tree would one day bear fruit would be played by George. The gardeners of azaleas and figs and human
hearts are the ones who say, "Don't give up on this one." "Hold
off." "Don't cut it down
yet." "Give her
time." "Give him a
chance."
But
unlike the story of The Taunted Twig, the parable of the fig tree is left open
ended. We don't know if Jesus's fig tree
ever bloomed, or if the gardener eventually had to cut if down. Will the extra
year of care be enough to help the tree produce fruit? Will the gardener's mercy pay off? We don't know. Which helps us more easily enter
the story. Because you and I don't know
what will happen next year. Will we make
use of the mercies granted us? Will
others live up to hopes we've invested in them?
Jesus apparently was not interested in crafting a story with a
simplistic ending but in creating a possibility in the listener's mind.
And
so we wonder . . . maybe, maybe, with a little more time, a little more care,
our prayer will bear fruit, our faint hope will blossom into a reality. Maybe.
To
appreciate the fig tree parable in the wider context of Luke’s Gospel, it helps
to recall a scene in Luke 3 when John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, is
preaching his stirring calls to repentance.
In a sermon announcing the coming of one greater than he, John yelled at
the crowds, "Bear fruits worthy of repentance" because "even now
the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not
bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (Luke 3: 7, 9) Luke's readers should then hear Jesus's fig
tree parable tree picking up where John's gardening metaphor let off--but
converting John’s warning to a message of mercy. John's sermon warns of an ax
waiting for those things that don't grow and produce fruit. And indeed, the
Gospels of Matthew and Mark say Jesus cursed a barren fig tree. But here Jesus’s gardener pleads for more
time and holds out more hope.
However,
Jesus's parable does not deny that those who don't grow will die. That's a fact of nature. The good gardener does not ask for an
interminable reprieve. If an organism
stops growing, it dies. And some things
NEED to die. Some relationships NEED to end.
Some ventures should NOT flourish.
But Jesus's parable does emphasize patience with ourselves and others.
Patience and mercy. There's time yet to
produce fruit. What a gracious word I need to hear!
John
the reformer was calling for the reinvigoration of the religion of his day. Our own religion is likewise
in need of reinvigoration. Christianity
needs systemic reforming if it's to produce fruit to feed hungry bodies and
souls. We who care about this
revitalization can hear John's dire warning coupled with Jesus's note of
patience and compassion. Both voices need to be heard. Christianity needs reforming. But it's not
time to chop it down. Now is the time to
aerate the soil that gets packed down and hardened. Now is the time to fertilize with “manure”--to
bring in new nutrients from some, shall we say, unlikely, sources.
Now
is the time to be patient, Open Table, with all that is yet to be produced
among us. We were planted three years
ago as a ministry of the United Church of Christ. We are young in church years. And though much good has been produced
already, let us be patient with God and with one another for the more that is
to come. We are growing in some tough
soil here. But we are putting down strong roots. Already we are bearing fruit.
Some
of the commentaries on the fig tree parable explain that fig trees usually take
three or four years to produce fruit. The
gardener of the parable, then, is not just being an optimist; the gardener KNOWS how much time and
faith and work it takes to encourage growth in a fig tree or an azalea or a
church.
Of
course, let's remember that John and Jesus preached not only to the
religious/political systems in power. They spoke to individual folks with
specific needs of body and spirit. As we
apply that story to our circumstances, that fig tree might be a child, right
here in our city, whose home life and economic circumstances and peer group and
school setting do not have the recommended ingredients for growth. But if one
person can water her spirit, she might defy the odds.
That
fig tree might also be you or me. Sometimes
we’re the gardener; sometimes the garden. I have not yet produced the kind of
fruit that could really feed a hungry world, which Paul names as “the fruit of
the Spirit” and lists as “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22). I’ve not yet produced
the beauty of spirit of which we are all capable. I could use a good
pruning. I could be more open to spiritual
and physical nutrition. I could give up habits
that keep me from branching out.
Yet
there's grace. Which reminds us that our
source of life and growth is beyond us, that all of life is a gift, and
that we can't MAKE ourselves grow or WILL ourselves not to die or MATURE
ourselves into spiritual adulthood any more than we can achieve an extra two
inches in height by dint of our own determination or sprout figs from our
fingertips or azalea blossoms out our ears.
And we have been graced with much.
More than enough. When we pay
attention to the grace we've received, we are more gracious to one another.
When
our daughter was born, I, like many moms, bought a Baby Book for my child so I
could record her growth in inches and pounds and first words and first steps. I'm guessing that
Facebook and Pinterest have now replaced the quaint old use of baby books. But back in the Dark Ages, I filled in each
of our baby's milestones in pen on pages of paper. I froze before one page, however. The publisher had
simply headed it “Mother's Message to Baby.” Really? How could I begin to say
to my daughter all that I wanted to say?
Only after many years did I finally read a poem that seemed worthy of
that page. It compares the growth of a young
girl to the growth of an apple tree that bears good fruit for the world. This is my prayer for my child, for myself,
for our church:
“Young Apple Tree, December,” by
Gail Mazur
What
you want for it you'd want
for
a child: that she take hold;
that
her roots find home in stony
winter
soil; that she take seasons
in
stride, seasons that shape and
reshape
her; that like a dancer's,
her
limbs grow pliant, graceful
and
surprising; that she know,
in
her branchings, to seek balance;
that
she know when to flower, when
to
wait for the returns; that she turn
to
a giving sun; that she know
fruit
as it ripens; that what's lost
to
her will be replaced; that early
summer
afternoons, a full blossoming
tree,
she cast lacy shadows; that change
not
frighten her, rather that change
meet
her embrace; that remembering
her
small history, she find her place
in
an orchard; that she be her own
orchard;
that she outlast you;
that
she prepare for the hungry world
(the
fallen world, the loony world)
something shapely, useful, new,
delicious.
Amen. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment