Give Things TIME to Grow

Sermon on time, wisdom, death, and life.  Luke 13: 1 – 9

Check out Simona Frenkel & The Choir as they sing:  Nobody Knows

Jesus was teaching, as he always did, in the streets, teaching ordinary people, people who had never seen the inside of a temple, people who were being ripped off by the likes of Herod and Pilate, the tyrants of Jesus’ life.  Then someone in the crowd told Jesus what Pilate had done.  Pilate had killed people from Galilee, who were worshipping in the Old Temple near the Tower of Siloam in Jerusalem, and in the disaster, their blood was mingled with the sacrifices on the altar.

This sent a collective shiver through the community because people knew that the desecration of a temple was a warning.  Strong, holy things had been violated:  the alter in the high temple, the ritual practices held there, the sacred place reserved for priests, the place made holy by the sacrifice of animals was now mingled with the blood of worshippers.

Pilate engineered the collapse of the tower onto the worshipping Galileans because they had refused to worship at the new and improved temple built by Herod. Or was this an act of God?

“Do you suppose that these Galileans were greatersinners than allotherGalileans because they suffered thisfate?  Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worsethan all the men who live in Jerusalem?  I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

We ask the same questions today.

Was 9/11 a sign of God’s judgment?

Has the church become toxic to the next generation?

And the cataloguing goes on and on.  In all of these dark moments it seems as if evil has triumphed over good.  In all of these, lunacy looms larger than life itself.  And where is God?  Are these altars devoid of all the powers they praise?

The temptation to give up on God has pulled at our hearts and minds.  What is the point of the church, if the church cannot explain these things?  Where is the justice in a system that cannot set us free from these terrors?  What is the point of worship, if things do not change?

In Jerusalem then, and among us everywhere, the unending temptation is to disbelieve in the powers of truth, in justice or love or to even see the hand of God at work in this world.

Jesus knows this temptation is at work in us, and he presses us to turn away from it, to turn and repent from focusing on the bleakness of despair.  Turn, he urges, toward the life of hope and love.  Is life fair?  No it is not. But you can be fair in your life. Is life beautiful?  Not all the time.  But you can be a source of beauty.

Pilate may have the power to hate, but that does not make him God.  And you can be powerful in love, which will step your feet into the kingdom of heaven, right here and right now.

We must choose what kind of life we want to lead in the midst of sin and suffering, in the midst of hope and despair. We must always choose and Jesus now turns the conversation to us as he tells us the parable of the fig tree.

“A man had a fig tree that bore no fruit. He complains to the gardener, three years, and nothing!  Cut it down! The owner says, but the gardener pleads for the tree, saying, let me try one more year, I’ll dig around it and see if I can bring forth something.”

Over the course of my ministry I have seen people who many would label “unreachable.”  What a thing to say about anyone.  That someone is beyond redemption or beyond hope.  No need to try any harder.  It’ just impossible to reach some people.  And so it’s an easy step to say No fruit here.  No figs, useless.  We communicate in our words in our actions or inactions – “Cut them down, they are wasting soil that could better be utilized on someone else.

How often have you felt written off, labeled unreachable, been cut down to size, dismissed or rendered invisible?

Whether you are a white man or a person of color.  Have you felt like someone has been taking your inventory? Have you been written off or labeled a waste of time and space?

But Luke’s story says otherwise.  The Gardner tells us that no human being gets to say when the time for transformation is up, that’s Jesus’ call and his alone.  Clearly, the stories of the Galileans and the ones at Siloam reveal the reality that the time for repentance, change and transformation is not infinite, but only God gets to say when time’s up.

Further, in this time between barrenness and fruit bearing, Jesus does not sit back, twiddling his thumbs, counting of the days until he can take the axe to the root.  No instead he trusts in God’s power to give life to one that has been written off as worthless.  The Spirit blows where it wills.  The Word of the Lord refuses to return empty.  God is always doing a new thing.

Instead of twiddling his thumbs Jesus gets his hands dirty, by reaching out to those who have been written off.  He reaches out to touch lepers, dine with prostitutes and tax collectors and welcomes children as signs of God’s kingdom.  He even stretches out his arms on the cross to reach those deemed unreachable – including the thief who is hanging next to him.

And as his disciples Jesus sends out into the world to teach, heal and proclaim the Good News, pointing to those places where life and hope are springing forth in a world awash in death and despair.  Places where laughter and sorrow are embraced.  Places where our defenses drop and we become vulnerable again so that love can get in.

Now when I read the parable of the barren fig tree, I ask myself: Who and what have I deemed beyond reach and unworthy of effort, concern or resources?  What have I pronounced dead that God sees as ripe for new life?  What, and who, have I cut down to size that I should have been supporting and building up?

The gardener in this parable understands that power.  He says, “Give me time.  Let me dig and tend.  Nurture and nourish, prune and water.  Expect transformation, growth and fruit.  Then we’ll see what happens.”  Our time is not infinite, but our time’s not up yet either.

“Everyone here has a gift to use and share.” Sometimes, you just need to dig a little bit more and a little bit longer to find it.  Sometimes God puts you in an unexpected place with unexpected people in order to remind you that so much of what’s been labeled unreachable, impossible, dead and buried is ripe for radical transformation, growth and new life.  It just needs a gardener who cares!

And so here we are – not cut down.  We have been given a little more time.  Being fruitful is ours to choose.  It’s an act of faith, an act of hope, a work of justice, extending time into another season – a season of growth rather than death. And this is our choice.  Do we choose life or do we choose death.  To choose life, Jesus tells us, requires a turning of more than mere soil.  It requires a turning of our souls.  Amen