Luke 13:1-9

Sorry for the lack of posts last week. I confess I found myself a little uninspired on the topic of journaling.

This week we're talking about fasting, so I think I'll have more to talk about. Its a topic that has always fascinated me.

For example, today's fast prompt is to give up a luxury item-radio in the car, television, I-pod or I-phone apps, etc.

We are surrounded by noise in our lives-from the background hum of the television, NPR as soon as we turn on the car, earbuds walking us through our exercise routine, or just the mental noise made up of the constant information that can stream at us as modern human beings.  I'm not suggesting that things like radios, TVs or Computers are not good things (we can talk, but I think a case can be made for all of them) but they do serve as a distraction from our own minds and thoughts, an excuse not to look closely at our thoughts, our fears, our behaviors in an intentional way, and I think it is worth being intentional about who we are and what we are doing in the world.  There is something to be said for silence, and resting with what is going on in our own heads, and Lent is a time to take the opportunity to claim practices that might be redeeming.

May there be quiet along with the music of our existence.


Finally, here is this week's sermon.




Sermon 3/7/2010
Luke 13:1-9, Isaiah 55:1-9
Good morning! I hope that this morning finds you well.
I hope that you continue to find yourself engaged and challenged by the Lenten journey we are on together.
This Sunday we have what is at first glance a pretty stark contrast between scripture texts. On the one hand, we have the text from Isaiah, promising that all those in need should simply come to the water of life, eating bread without price, an image of an open and welcoming kingdom of God. On the other hand, we have this story about a fig tree, where Jesus warns that if you do not repent, buildings might fall on you. Pretty conflicting images, right? But I think that they are sort of two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, you have the call to repentance and fruitfulness in the gospel text, on the other the promise of redemption and grace from times of trial if you wait on the Lord from the passage in Isaiah.
We are called to repent because in turning our love and attention toward God and toward one another, and away from ourselves, we find ourselves bearing fruit and find ourselves less focused on the fears and struggles of this world.
I think that’s part of what Jesus is driving towards when he talks about those who died at the hands of Pilate, and those who had a tower fall on them in Silaom. We are all faced with danger, and will all are mortal, and we all wrestle with the challenge of existence and the struggle to bear fruit.
Just as an aside-In this story you hear the oft parroted argument that bad things happen to bad people because God punishes us for our misdeeds.
Jesus starkly rejects this formulation, explaining that these were not the worst sinners in Galilee or Jerusalem, they were people faced with the reality that life is challenging and sometimes destructive. It’s the contra positive of his comment in Mathew 5:45 that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, or Peter’s discovery in Acts 10 that God shows no partiality. We will all die someday, and on the way there some days will be pretty miserable, so when major Christian figures like Pat Robertson blames the earthquake in Haiti on the worship of Satan , or John Hagee Hurricane Katrina on a gay pride parade , or Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 (who was it) on the ACLU and others who want to separate church and state, they argue precisely against Jesus’ words.
But that a rant, and while one that was too much fun to resist throwing into the sermon, is not really where I’m going this morning. Actually, the story I’d like to focus on is this story of the fig tree and what should be done with it.
The classic framing for this story that you may or may not be familiar with is that the landowner is God, the gardener is Jesus, and we are the fig tree. Jesus, then, intercedes between us and an angry God who wants us cut down (metaphorically speaking). Jesus is holding back the wrath for but a little while so that we have one more opportunity to repent. I am not entirely comfortable with this reading, though there are some Biblical reasons to engage it, mainly because I think both the landowner and the fig tree have some growing to do.
Think about the tree owner-
I have an uncle in California who farms an almond orchard. He planted it some 12 years ago or so. Now the thing with almonds is that it takes a tree about 5 years from the time of planting before it is ready to harvest, and some 10 years before it hits peak production, and during all that time you have to water them and fertilize them, so you have to take a pretty significant step into the unknown to plant a whole orchard, especially when you are switching from a more regular cash crop. It takes patience and planning to pull it off successfully. Now, if my uncle had become disgusted at his almond trees three years in, like this fig tree owner, he would have found himself cutting down his investment just a little bit before the time was ripe.
In the same way, in Leviticus 19:23, the Bible provides instructions on growing fruit trees. In the midst of instructions about not cutting your beard and the proper punishment for sleeping with someone else’s slave, we get this little horticultural commandment: “When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. [a] For three years you are to consider it forbidden [b] ; it must not be eaten. 24 In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the LORD. 25 But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the LORD your God.” Three years in, the landowner is tired of the tree, but he has not yet even waited long enough to avoid a violation of the law of Moses if he harvests figs. It is the gardener, then, who offers a better way, asking for the chance to try a little more patience, a little more TLC, a little more pruning, rather than ripping the whole thing up and starting again, and while we don’t actually know what happens to the fig tree, it seems like the wise gardener is the hero of this little story.
So it is this message that I’d like to highlight-that God is willing to offer more care and more tending for each of us even when we are not bearing fruit, and also that we are called to the path of the gardener, not presuming that anyone is a lost cause, working with the people around us, tending carefully over time, acknowledging that all things require patience to bear fruit. We are tempted to be like the landowner, after all, it is really hard to keep watering and fertilizing things that show no evidence of flowering. It is hard to wait, uncertain if things will ever change or transform, when we are watching recalcitrant children, stubborn churches, corrupt corporations, or our US government, so often it can feel like we are ramming our heads against a wall again and again to no real purpose. We finished a Sunday School class on the American prison system last Sunday, and one of the most frequent comments from the response forms people turned in was that it is frustrating to talk about something like the prison system that feels so difficult to change.
But I hope that as we hear this story, we take the opportunity to remember again, I hope that life takes time: time to get a good education, time to save up for a big purchase or for retirement, time to transform the heart of someone who has suffered, time to love, and if we give up to quickly because of our addiction in this quick fix society to having easy answers and rapid transformation, than the slower but deeper work self work that is our work in relationship to God will not go well.
Think about the rituals we are tasting this Lent-all of them are deep focal practices, tasks that you can spend a lifetime practicing without getting full measure of good out of them. I was talking with someone about journaling this week, and they told a story of a friend who said ‘I gave up journaling after two weeks-I was so focused on the negatives of life’ and the storyteller responded, its only after you spend a good year on the negative that the deeper things have a chance to get out.’
In the same way, if we are putting our energy in the right direction (which of course, is always a good question, because the failure to bear fruit is obviously one of the signs of a misuse of energy or something going wrong) then the passage of time is just part of allowing our roots to grow deep and our trunk to grow strong before the tastier results of faith show forth. Those times of dryness and frustration in the middle are part of the journey towards wonderful results, they are part of the process of renewal and redemption.
So as a way of thinking about and through this journey we all face through the dry land, the feeling of fruitlessness, the frustrations of daily living, I invite you to consider the oldest of the Lenten disciplines this week-the Lenten fast. I’ve got a list of possible ways of fasting in the bulletin, and I challenge you to go through the list, thinking about the various things that potentially move us away from God-our commitments to stuff, our habits and addictions, our very dependence on the things of this world, and in giving something up, for just a day, to think about the dry places in our lives, and think about both what may be getting in the way of our bearing fruit in the world, demonstrating the fruits of the spirit of love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control, and also remembering that there are times, living in a complex and challenging world, when we face a host of difficulties. Here we stand, barren fig trees, ankle deep in the farmer’s fertilizer, wondering if anything will ever sprout from these bare branches.
But the promise remains, that God is at work in us, God is tending us, and the efforts we put into self creation, into community and into each other do bear fruit, that if we come to the water of life, we will receive bread without price, and wine poured freely on our behalf, our sins will be forgiven, for we have a God who abundantly pardons.