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March
7, 2010
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
3rd Lent, Year C, RCL
the Rev. Elizabeth Molitors
“[The
gardener] replied, ‘Sir, let it alone
for one more year, until I dig around
it and put manure on it. If it bears
fruit next year, well and good; but
if not, you can cut it down.’”
Luke 13:8-9
In
his sermon last week, when George asked
us to think about the question “Who
is Jesus?” my mind flashed to certain
scenes from my childhood.
I grew up outside of Akron, Ohio; my
grandparents lived on the west side
of Cleveland, about 45 minutes from
our house. We had a custom of visiting
them almost every other weekend, usually
after church on Sunday.
Each visit was pretty much the same,
which for me, as a kid, was a good thing.
When you walked into my grandparents’
3rd floor apartment, you could expect
to see a game playing on television:
the Browns or the Fighting Irish of
Notre Dame during football season; my
grandfather’s beloved Cleveland Indians
during baseball season. There on the
dining room table sat the box of Russell
Stover chocolates, the cut glass dish
of toasted almonds, and the red and
yellow square bowl filled with fresh
fruit.
After coats were taken and pleasantries
exchanged, the adults moved into the
eat-in kitchen to gather around the
table for an afternoon of penny ante
poker. Not serious poker, like they
play in tournaments in Las Vegas, but
a friendly, low-stakes match with games
with funny names like acey-deucey and
night baseball, and soon after the card-playing
started, the room was loud with conversation
and laughter, the air dense with cigar
and cigarette smoke. I would often watch
for a while, trying to figure out the
intricacies of the game, but eventually
I drifted off, in search of a little
quiet.
My destination was the front bedroom
– the guest room; far enough away from
the action that the noise became just
a murmur. I’d sit on the floor, on the
sculpted cream carpeting, with my back
against the bed, and read through every
book and magazine that was stacked on
the little bedside table. There were
things for children – the Little Golden
Books and tiny volumes of the stories
of Beatrix Potter. There were serious
adult things, too, like the John F.
Kennedy memorial edition of Life Magazine
from late 1963. And there was this book,
on the lives of the saints, dated 1933;
it was my father’s, when he was a child.
I knew that the pleasant stories captured
in Beatrix Potter and the Little Golden
books weren’t all that life was about.
The Life Magazine included graphic photos
of JFK’s assassination, the swearing-in
of Lyndon Johnson with Jackie Kennedy
standing nearby in her blood-stained
coat, pictures of the funeral cortege
down Pennsylvania Avenue. And this book
about the saints wasn’t all sweetness
and light, either. Though the pictures
look soft and ethereal, the text is
pretty blunt, describing women and men
of faith, killed by drowning or burning
at the stake or being beheaded.
I knew – I could see – that life might
be hard and faith could have costs,
but all that seemed distant in time
or place from the warm, familiar place
where I sat, with the whole of my family
just a few rooms away.
Safety, familiarity, protection. That
seems like the Jesus from last week’s
gospel passage, Jesus as brooding hen,
gathering vulnerable chicks beneath
strong wings. That’s the kind of Jesus
I saw in the paintings and statues all
around my grandparents’ home – Jesus
as a little child, sitting on his mother’s
lap offering a blessing with his outstretched
hand; Jesus as the Good Shepherd, an
exhausted little sheep draped around
his shoulders.
This week’s Jesus, as he tells the story
of the parable of the fig tree, doesn’t
seem quite so safe or familiar or protective.
At first glance, though, the parable
looks like it’s going to be about the
compassion of Jesus - Jesus is the gardener
who intervenes to prevent the landowner,
God, from chopping down the fig tree
that isn’t bearing fruit. You and I,
we’re the fig tree. But then Jesus the
gardener throws in a catch that makes
me uncomfortable – he’s going to go
to work on the tree, digging around
it and adding fertilizer, but he won’t
do the work indefinitely. If, after
a year, there still isn’t any fruit,
then the landowner can come back and
cut the tree down.
I don’t know how you react when you
hear this story, but I totally focus
on the looming deadline. A year? That’s
it? Not only is a year not a very long
time, but I can think of plenty of years
in my life when I don’t think I was
bearing much in the way of fruit. And
what does this say about Jesus? Going
back to George’s question from last
week, “Who is this Jesus?” Are there
really limits to the efforts he will
make on our behalf? Are their limits
to God’s patience?
But if, for a moment, I can take my
mind off of that 1 year timeline, I
begin to realize the other points of
the story. Like, we’re intended to bear
fruit; if we’re the fig trees, then
we’ve been created to bear fruit. God
is not asking us to do or be something
that we’re not capable of – we’re simply
being called to live into the potential
of how we’ve been made. In Galatians,
Paul talks about the fruits of the Spirit,
which are those characteristics that
show on the outside the image of God
that is on our insides – qualities like
patience, kindness, love and joy and
gentleness.
And maybe the landowner’s expectation
and demand that these trees bear fruit
is not so much a judgment against us,
but a measure of God’s regard for us.
We weren’t created simply to be passive
recipients of God’s grace, but active
partners in bringing to light the goodness
and abundance that is part of God’s
created order.
I think it’s only human for us to want,
sometimes, to go back to that time in
our lives when knowing who Jesus is
meant sitting safely in our grandparents’
spare bedroom, reading familiar stories,
comforted by the murmur of voices not
far away. But that’s not where we’re
meant to stay. May we be open, this
Lent, to the ways that Jesus is digging
around our roots to help us respond
to God’s call for us to believe in and
act on the reality of our own fruitfulness.
Amen.
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