if i could i would break into flower

if i could i would no longer be barren

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke!

When Jesus wants to light a fuse and then leave the room; he tells a parable…

We hear this parable of the barren fig tree, and even before Jesus has abruptly finished, we assume we’ve gotten the moral of his little life-lesson.

The landowner is God, of course. Jesus is the gardener, trying to convince an angry God to wait a little longer before he callously has the tree cut down and tossed on the heap.

Like most assumptions, this one only holds so long as we don’t give it too much though…

Is the landowner’s character really so similar to God’s? Is the behavior of the landowner faithful to the witness of God we have in Jesus?

What if God isn’t the landowner at all?

What if we are? 

What if you are?

After all, aren’t we the ones who get impatient? Aren’t we the one’s who demand to see the tree bear fruit right now, darn it! Aren’t we the one’s who think we’re the ones to decide when enough’s enough? Aren’t we fickle?

I don’t know about you; but while I constantly try God’s patience, my patience wears thin more easily than I’d like to admit. 

Some days if the webpage I pull up doesn’t load immediately, I’m practically ready to lose it! There are days when it takes absolutely everything I have to keep myself from telling you all that I’ve had it up to here, and I’m ready to without the keys of the kingdom! Occasionally, when the idiot ahead of me is going to slow, I find it hard not to whip out in front of them and make some gesture as I pass…

No, truth be told, it’s my character that all too closely mirrors the capricious landowner’s behavior; not God’s.

And isn’t that the context for this whole parable?

Jesus has been preaching, when a few folks come up to him the way only smug, self-satisfied people can. They ask if he’s heard about those Galileans. You know, the ones who got theirs, the one’s Pilate bumped off?

Jesus rocks back on his hells. “Oh, that’s how you think it works,” he indulges. “Alight then,” he says; “let me tell you a parable.”

A parable about a people like us and a savior like him. 

And then Jesus tells this parable about, not a fig tree, but the strange gardener. 

After all, we get the landowner, don’t we?

The landowner is the reasonable one in this parable! That tree’s wasting the soil, it only makes sense to get a healthy tree put in, in its stead.

The parable’s center is this character who acts odd, who refuses to cut down a tree that hasn’t produced a single fig in over three years! The character who takes center stage is the one who, when asked what she’d do with that long barren tree, suggests putting in even more labor; digging around it, adding some fertilizer!

When you take the parable on Jesus’ terms, not our assumptions, it’s hard not to admit that landowner doesn’t act much like God. Rather, it’s all of us who get impatient, who think we know which trees should should go, that act like the temperamental landowner in this parable of Jesus’.

The landowner, all too ready to willy-nilly brandish the axe isn’t God; it’s us…

When you see the parable in that light Jesus told it, you can’t avoid the irony. The irony that we’re the one’s who are so impatient; and yet how we are exactly the one’s who desperately need God’s patience!

We’re stingy with exactly what we need…

That’s the way parables work, though.

It’s the how Jesus lights a fuse amongst an impatient people. It’s how Jesus gets a people who think they know which trees should stay and which should go, to think twice. It’s how Jesus tells os a savior like him, to a people like us…

That’s what’s really shocking about the parable. Not a landowner who grew impatient with a barren tree. But rather the gardener, who would volunteer to work harder and longer for that desperate, little tree.

Here’s the thing; to the landowner, the tree is already as good as dead. It isn’t making the miser any more money. It’s worthless to the landowner. 

The gardener, though, isn’t interested in any of that. The gardener is about something else…

And that’s what this parable is about. 

In fact, it’s what your savior is about. 

We’re a lot like the landowner. Impatient. Deluded enough to think we’re the ones who should get to receive the fruit of every tree in the vineyard. All too ready to ask Jesus to cut down the trees that aren’t bearing fruit at the exact moment we want… 

Your savior, though, that strange gardener, is about something else; about redeeming the irredeemable, forgiving the ungodly, raising the dead.

That’s what this parable is all about!

Not a God who’s all too ready to unsheathe the axe, but a people who are. Not a God who’s just itching to sharpen his hatchet, but a savior who looks on a tree that hasn’t produced for three years and thinks, “I know what I’ll do; I’ll give the tree more time, I’ll add some fertilizer and dig around it too!”

That’s the kind a savior this parable is about. The kind a savior you have! 

One who doesn’t have time to cut down the trees that aren’t bearing fruit, because he’s too busy nourishing them, caring for them, loving them. 

This parable, and all it’s irony, reminds me yet again how thankful our savior is so odd, so different from you and me. As the prophet Isaiah declares, “God’s ways are not our ways!”

You belong to an odd gardener. In fact, you’re the strange fruit in the vineyard of the lord! Our God doesn’t measure us in terms of our productivity, thank God. Our God measures us by how much he loves us. 

And that’s what this collaboration is, you know?

This experiment with the trees of Trinity and Faith. You know, this isn’t some survival strategy, right? It certainly isn’t some model of the church for the 21st century —don’t flatter yourself.

No, this is a mark of the kind of savior we have.

One who would look at two congregations, and rather than see potential trees to hack down, sees two places to pour even more resources into!

So, with all due respect, I’d to suggest that we give each other crap!

If you’re too pious for that, than be manure to one another. Me, though, I like the way “give each other crap” sounds. Plus, I think it saves us from our own hubris.

In God’s garden, we get to be crap for each other. When people ask you what you were up to this morning you can say, “Oh, being a piece of…”

Too much?

You get the idea, though…

It isn't our job to determine which trees should go. Rather, we’re the very tree God has not only given more time, but care and nourishment too. 

God has done that by given you a whole other set of sisters and brothers over there at Faith/Trinity. Sisters and brothers who need your love and support. God has done that by expanding your mission-field to Sunnyside/Saunderson Heights. 

If this is just a way to survive, a way to get along a little longer —we’re already doomed. We’re doomed because our savior isn’t that landowner. Our savior isn’t interested in productivity and the bottomline. Our savior is interested in the salvation of the world. In tending a garden that’s full of the lost and irredeemable. 

That’s just the kind of savior you have, sisters and brothers. One who has no time to brandish the axe. One who’s too busy nourishing trees like us. 

This parable, in all it’s holy eccentricities, is really just a description of the everyday, ordinary places God gets to work. It isn’t at the megachurches with their larger than life budgets, but rather at a couple of trees on the edge of the vineyard, two trees folks like us would be tempted to cut down. 

Thank God for the kind of savior we have. One who knows that with a little more love, we too will bear fruit.
Only a fool would invest even more in a tree that hasn’t blossomed in over three years, but that’s the kind of savior you have. And if we’re being honest, isn’t that the kind of savior you need?

I know I do…