3/4/07

Rev. Dr. Jon Smoot  

 

What a strange little teaching from the lips of Jesus: “spare me your check-out line tabloid horror stories – do you think that all these people were so terrible that God hit the smite button instead of the save button? Don’t you know that you’re all going to die – regardless of how rotten or how smug you feel about yourself? Wise up and get on with what you know you need to do for God!” Then there’s the poor little fig tree: “I’ve been working with you for three years and silly me, I keep looking for fruit but see none – I’m sharpening my axe because you are taking up valuable real estate – so you’ve got one more year to shape up.”

 

I am not going to bother much with the first teaching here on calamities, human and natural. I will only say what Phil Hamilton said Wednesday night at our Lenten class: “Stuff happens – and it only separates me from my faith in God to look to cast blame somewhere when bad things happen.” Bingo. How easy it would be for me or for you to play arm-chair philosopher or amateur ethicist and talk about how bad things happen to good people or good things happen to bad people. How entertaining and diverting from the exquisite pain and grace in these stories.

 

In a passage right before this one in Luke, we get the context for the stories before us:

Jesus said to the crowds: “When you see a cloud rising in the west you immediately say, “Run for shelter – that’s one heckuva rainstorm coming” and it does. And when you feel the south wind blowing you immediately say, “Man is that going to be a scorcher” and it is. Well done – you’ve listened to channel 4 weather and know that with this little disruption you need to cancel the church picnic. But then he calls us hypocrites: “You can interpret the weather and make wise adjustments to nature’s disruptions, but you can’t interpret the present time – that I’m going to Jerusalem and to my death for you? I’ve told you this twice before now – You won’t listen that I’m going to Jerusalem to destroy disruption and death – and that I want you to go with me? Don’t you know that it is only in your dying with me that you will be resurrected with me?

 

So maybe what Jesus is saying to us in this story of calamities, human and natural, is this: “What I want you to do is to repent of your fear of dying and reject your avoidance behavior toward death which you do by whistling in the dark and telling horror stories to each other. What I want you to do is to get on with the joyful work I’ve given you, no matter the cost. Since I’m dying for you and for the world, you have nothing to lose but your horror. And while I’m at it, and as you appear to be listening, here’s another little story for you to digest.”

 

The owner of a vineyard has a fig tree on the property. He comes looking for fruit from it – three years in a row – no fruit. Fig trees bear fruit every year. This one has not – “Cut it down” he orders the gardener, “this tree is wasting my time and my land.” I imagine that Jesus paused right here with a mischievous and frighteningly stern glint in his eyes. At this point, the crowd must be squirming – looking for the nearest exit. They can hear the axe being sharpened from their own storied past: In Isaiah 5: 5-6, the Lord of the vineyard gets so angry with his unfruitful vines that he says: “Now here’s what I’m going to do with my vineyard. I will remove its protective hedge, and break down its wall, and it shall be trampled upon, by ravaging animals. I will make it a wasteland – refuse to hoe or prune it anymore until it is choked with briers and thorns. I’ll command the clouds to pass over and not rain on it, that’s what I’ll do.” No wonder the crowd was squirming.

 

Who is the fig tree? It’s a story about a vineyard and the owner’s rightful anger at the fruitless fig trees and those who keep them, an assault on the leadership of Israel and the church. It is a parable about fruitless leaders, not against the vineyard itself. But fill in the blank anyway you like: Israel, elders and deacons, the North American church, Bradley Hills, you and me…The owner has been coming for three years in a row, looking for some figs. Christmas Eve, Pentecost, Easter, where are the figs? Where are the adult baptisms? – Where the stories of resurrection and rebirth? – Where the power of lives set free from the fear of death, unleashed in joyful, everyday forgiveness and witness and service and advocacy in the home, at school, at work, on the Hill? Are we more interested in keeping our little house here tidy, more interested in keeping the machinery oiled than producing fruit? I sincerely hope not.

 

Two little stories from last weekend’s Session retreat. Rather, two poignant and challenging stories: When we were discussing our mission and service work at Bradley Hills and how to get people more involved, one elder asked: “What is it that makes us any different from the Rotary Club or the Kiwanis Club or any other Civic Service Club with their charitable deeds?” There was no clear answer – other than anything done to the least, the last and lost is mission. But is that enough? What does being Christian have to do with what we say or do here? Or does it at all? How would you, the members of Bradley Hills answer the elder’s question?

 

Then the matter of spirituality came up – how over and over again through interviews and questionnaires and task forces, the leadership has heard from you that you want more spirituality in your lives. One elder asked: “But doesn’t that depend on whether or not our people want to do anything about it, rather than just be wishful for it?” I am reminded of what Garrison Keillor once said: “You can become a Christian by going to church just about as easily as you can become an automobile by sleeping in a garage.” How would you, the members of Bradley Hills answer the elder’s question?

 

“Cut it down,” Jesus had said. But now the long pause is over. Now the stern glint in Jesus’ eyes changes to one of deepest compassion and love. The story resumes – for praise God, this is a parable of grace, not judgment! The gardener pleads, “Lord, let it alone 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.” You see, there is still time, and with the right amount of mercy, we may yet bear fruit, with the right fertilizer and care and urgency. There is still time.

 

But let’s not assume there will always be time. In this story we are caught up in an anguished and deeply sacred struggle. Eduard Schweitzer says this parable is a debate within the very heart of God, “God against God,” a tension between divine judgment and divine mercy. God, in God’s holiness gives us what we deserve – “Cut it down!” and God in God’s mercy offers what we do not deserve – “let it alone for one more year!” For God’s sake, let us feel that anguish and let it impel us to bear fruit.

 

Mercy and judgment mark the very nature of God toward us. Between the two hangs the church, hangs your life and mine and the life of the world. And let me tell you why there’s yet one more year – and why we’re a church and not a civic organization, and why there’s every hope in God’s mercy that we will yet bear the fruit of which our Lord would be proud.

 

 

To do this I need to tell you another little story- it comes from Methodist bishop and writer Will Willimon. “We were staying in a little chalet in Innsbruck, Austria. One afternoon we were admiring the unbelievably beautiful geraniums growing all along the front of the Inn. They were the healthiest, brightest red geraniums we had ever seen. ‘Wie rot diese Blumen sind’ I exclaimed. “How red are these flowers! How do you do it,” I asked. “What sort of fertilizer do you use?”

 

“Blut,” the landlady replied. Blut. Blood. “My husband brings me a gallon of blood from the slaughterhouse each week. These flowers grow best with blood.”

 

The word aphes in the Greek is translated in this parable as “let it alone.” “Lord, let it alone, I’ll put manure on it, tend it. Let it alone.” That word, aphes, is the same NT word for forgiveness. Blood. Forgiveness. Mercy. They travel together. Jesus came preaching, turning up the arid, barren and stubborn soil of human hearts - of your hearts and mine – determined to love us to fruitfulness for God’s sake, even if it killed him. And it did – and while he died, we tended to the well-oiled machinery of our little hopes and smaller faith, and it is from the cross that he shouted to his outraged Father and your Father and mine, “Father, aphes, Forgive - leave it alone.”

 

So, we have time because in God’s severe mercy, God in Christ was crucified - And his blood dripped down, fertilizer for us, digging right down into our roots, so that we might bear fruit, have time to bear fruit. That’s why there is more time, and more importantly, that’s why we’re a church. We are who we are, and do what we do, because Jesus suffered and died – because God’s compassion and love extends that far – and that compassion and love must be extended to others by us. That is the fruit that God is looking for.

 

We have all that we need to bear fruit. Your life and mine have been buried with Christ in his baptism of blood and in our own baptism, and now we must be raised to fearless living – now we get to go out of here and act like it, bearing fruit, for God’s sake and for God’s world. Amen – May it be so.