Texts: Isaiah 55: 1-9; Luke 13: 1-9
Sermon at Congregational United Church of Christ in Mineral Point, Wis.
The Jewish rabbi we call Jesus tells a story about a fig tree in desperate need of water and other nourishment to live.
And what about us? What does the story of the barren fig tree have to say to us?
Fig trees are probably not our biggest concern these days.
There’s the lingering pandemic.
There’s inflation – especially if you need to put gas in your car.
There’s that war in Ukraine.
And then there’s our own nagging sense that sometimes we are like the fig tree – not quite thriving, maybe taking up space where we have no use.
Let’s see if we can make some sense out of these stories that people have grappled with across the centuries. Let’s see if they can offer us hope in the midst of our pretty tumultuous world.
The easy one is the reading from Isaiah. The Jewish people have been in exile, forced away from their homeland by a conquering army. You might think of them like the more than three million Ukrainians who have fled from their nation in the last few weeks.
Isaiah tells his people – and the people of our day – “You’ll summon nations you’ve never heard of, and nations who’ve never heard of you will come running to you because of me, your God, who has honored you.”
God is with you, even in your troubles, Isaiah says. People will arrive to help. So come to the waters, take the bread and wine and milk being offered to you, seek the Lord.
OK – I can understand all that.
But then along comes Jesus talking about Galileans being murdered, workers being killed in an accident, a fig tree not producing any figs – and then leaving us all in suspense about whether the fig tree will live or die.
That’s harder to understand. But I think in the midst of it all, there is a message of hope for each one of us.
It’s not just that God will give us another chance like the owner of the vineyard did for the tree. It’s that we have value to God on our good days and on our bad days.
It’s that for all the troubles around us – whether in the world or in our own lives – there’s always a chance for growth.
There’s the message that we are worthy and that God loves us, just as God loved the people in exile in Isaiah’s time, just as God loves the refugees in our time, just as God loves each one of us here this morning.
That story that Jesus tells at the beginning of the Gospel reading is a bit grisly: “Some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.”
What was that about?
We don’t know for sure. That story appears nowhere else in the Bible or in any ancient histories. It suggests that the Romans attacked some Jews from the northern area called Galilee – Jesus’ home area – in the Temple while they were there to offer sacrifices and their blood flowed right into what they were offering as sacrifices.
It’s a vivid, horrific image of the brutality of Rome – not unlike the vivid, horrific images we are seeing right now out of Ukraine and that we have seen from so many other lands over the years – from Iraq, from Rwanda, from Yemen, from Syria, from Ethiopia, from Vietnam.
Then there is the tower that collapsed, killing the workers. The common wisdom was that people who died in these situations must have been sinners who God was punishing.
No way, says Jesus. Each one of us has shortcomings in our lives. God does not strike us down for those. Maybe the tower collapsed because of careless oversight by those who wanted it built. Industrial accidents are not just a new phenomenon.
But then we get to the fig tree.
Why a fig tree?
Well, it was an extraordinarily common tree in Jesus’ time, in this land of Israel. It was one of the first plants cultivated by humans, shaping the world of agriculture nearly 1,000 years before the planting of things like wheat and rye.
It makes other appearances in the Bible.
In the beautiful love poem known as the Song of Songs, the man says to the woman, “The green fig forms on the fig tree, the vines in blossom give off fragrance. Arise, my darling, my fair one, come away!”
The prophet Micah wrote: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.”
So you can see why there were high expectations for the fig tree in Jesus’ story. And yet, it was barren. There was no fruit. It was taking up valuable space in the owner’s vineyard. Clearly, the wisest thing to do would be to cut it down.
“Wait!” says the gardener. “Give it another year.”
But this is not just a wait-and-see proposition. The gardener says he will tend the tree, mulch it, put manure around it.
Here’s the thing. Fig trees do well in dry climates. That’s because they have roots that go deep in search of water. When they are thirsty, they need that water that Isaiah was writing about. They need the nutrients that come from rich manure. If you drive through Wisconsin farmland, you know the richness of that manure.
And then Jesus leaves us wondering. What happened? Did the fig tree bear fruit? Did it fail again? Did the owner order it cut down – this time for real?
How would you write the end of this story?
How would you like your own story to go?
Let’s think first of the barren fig tree representing all those barren spots in our world, those places that lack love and care, those places where swords have not been put down, but where rockets have replaced swords, where children are killed while sheltering in a theater, where apartments are bombed, where soldiers and tanks do battle with one another, creating their own rivers of blood as people sacrifice their lives.
Let’s think of the barren fig tree as the emptiness families feel when a loved one is maimed or killed in the workplace, where not enough care was given to safety, where carelessness led to tragedy.
Let’s think of the barren fig tree as that part of our lives where we did not live up to our own expectations, to the expectations of others, to the expectations of God.
It’s not hard to be tempted to give up on all of those situations. How could anything good come out of this? Maybe we should just give up on the prospects of peace, on the prospects of justice in the workplace, on the prospects of our own worth.
Enter the gardener.
Let’s do a fast-forward here. I know we are in Lent. We are only half way to Easter. But remember this story from Easter morning.
Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb where Jesus was buried and in the Gospel according to John, we find her encountering someone she assumes is the gardener. It turns out, the “gardener” is Jesus.
So in this parable from the Gospel according to Luke, it is the gardener who offers the path forward for the fig tree, for those caught in barren circumstances, for each of us, actually,
What can we do to nurture each other’s lives?
What nutrients can we provide to bring life in the midst of hopelessness?
On its own, the tree probably would not bear fruit. It would be disposed of.
But with help, the tree has hope.
With each other, we have hope.
Maybe it begins with recognizing that even in those moments when we feel worthless like the barren fig tree, in God’s sight, we have value, we have potential.
Maybe it begins with recognizing that in all those barren places in our world – in those war zones, in those places trapped by exploitation, in those places where climate change seems to be creating more barrenness than we thought possible – in all those places, when we join together, we can bring hope, we can bring life.
Right now I am reading a book called Fierce Love by Jacqui Lewis that focuses on how we first need to love ourselves, then love those we are in relationship with and then love our world. Remember those words from the Hebrew scriptures that Jesus made a hallmark of his teaching? “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jacqui Lewis draws on a quote from that great font of theological wisdom – actress Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy fame. “Love yourself first and everything else falls in line.”
Jacqui Lewis calls loving ourselves “the fuel in the tank of our souls.” It’s what enables us to love others and to make the world a better place. And we need others to help us fill our tanks, others who like the gardener with the fig tree will let us know that we are seen and we are known and we are loved. And then we need to do that for those around us.
Come to the water!
Come and nourish yourself with bread and wine!
Listen so that you may live!
And with that life, savor your value, knowing that just like that fig tree, that you have value beyond anything you may do, that there is hope that can always blossom forth, even when we least expect it.
For that, we can say Thanks be to God!
For that, we can say Amen!
