After “butter” and “green bean,” my
oldest child's first words were “Not fair!” His little mathematical mind was
constantly calculating, making sure that his cookie was as big as his sister’s
cookie. He wanted to be sure that his little brother didn’t get extra help
playing a game just because he was the youngest. He was on the alert that his own
punishment fit to a “T” the specific rule that I had made (and often forgotten)
six months before. In order for him to feel secure, the world had to follow an
exact formula of exchange, and all consequences had to follow known and
established rules. If not, I was not being “fair,” and his outcry was loud and
indignant.
Later, as a teacher of gifted
children, I learned that most of the disruptions caused by gifted kids in the
classroom and on the playground come from an over-sensitivity in their very logical
yet immature minds to the concept of fairness. They insist that bad behavior result
in logical and unwavering punishments; they insist that good behavior be
uniformly rewarded. And who can blame them? While we adults have learned to
control our indignant responses, all of us human beings feel most secure when
we think that we have fairness all figured out.
In today’s Gospel reading from Luke, Jesus
rebukes the crowd for their participation in just such a rigid preoccupation
with God’s justice. Jesus rejects the idea that a Roman atrocity such as the
murder of righteous Jews from the Galilee be
seen as a divine response to their sins. “Do you think that because these
Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?”
he asks, answering his rhetorical question with a resounding “No, I tell you.”
In the same way, Jesus denies that the eighteen tragic deaths resulting from
the accidental collapse of a tower in Jerusalem
can be attributed to the sins of the victims. For Jesus, there is no law of
exchange that connects events in the world to an exact system of rewards and
punishments that we can read with the mathematical precision of computer code. Jesus
doesn’t try to explain why the innocent died at the hands of Pilate or under
the tower of Siloam. Our logic demands an
explanation, but Jesus isn’t interested in such a logic. Jesus doesn’t want us
to set up a system of rationalizations and explanations that give us a false
sense of security or of superiority or of inferiority.
Let us not go too far in the other
direction in our interpretation of this text, however. Jesus does not say that
there is no consequence for sin or that there is no need to repent. Both
chapters 12 and 13 of Luke’s Gospel emphasize the coming Judgment as well as
the urgent need for repentance. “Unless you all repent,” Jesus thunders, “you
will all perish just as they did.” A world without the logic of tit for tat,
yet under divine judgment, is a paradox, and like all paradoxes, it is difficult
to accept and to comprehend. To help us out, Jesus offers us this parable of
the barren fig tree, a bewilderingly simple story that offers us a different way
of thinking—and living.[1]
In small vineyards on steep, rocky hillsides, any
wasted space, soil, or water results in a dangerous loss of productivity for
the farmer. While it would not have been strange to have a fig tree in a
vineyard, it would have been expected that the fig tree do its duty and produce
figs. A responsible landowner who had not had any fruit from his tree in three
whole years would certainly be expected to demand that the sick tree be removed
from his land. Our human logic says, “No figs, no profit? That’s easy-- get rid
of the tree!” What is strange and unthinkable in this story--what shocks us
into a new way of thinking--is that the gardener suggests that the tree be
given another chance to bear fruit next year. Any self-respecting fig-grower
would know that, even with a bit of aeration and fertilizer, the chances of
getting a barren, probably half-dead fig tree to start producing again are slim
to none. Only an outlook that sees possibilities rather than proofs, will lead a
farmer even to think to give the fig tree another chance. The gardener in
Jesus’ parable sees the world in terms of hope and extreme abundance, in terms of
the kind of superabundance that we find in the heart of God. It’s the same kind
of superabundance that we see in other parables: the father who welcomes with wide-open arms
his prodigal son, the shepherd who leaves his whole flock behind to search for
one lost lamb, the host who throws open the doors of his elegant banquet hall
to riff-raff off of the street. For God, there is no such thing as “wasting the
soil,” “counting the profits” or “loving too much.”
Our logic
deems this parable annoyingly incomplete, because it does not tell us how the gardener will be rewarded for
his efforts. But that is just the point. This parable has no ending, because our
God will not let us ruminate over the past or fix limiting rules to divine
judgment. The God who appears to Moses in our Old Testament Lesson today is a
verb, an “action word,”--a verb in the Hebrew tense that refers to actions not
yet complete. In Hebrew, God says to Moses, and to all of us, “I will be who I
will be.” God is always “the one who comes,” the One of superabundant
possibility, the One who pulls us into the future, whether we are ready or not.
In the spirit
of the openness in our parable today, I will close my sermon with story and a
sign, rather than with a conclusion. Years ago, I had an avocado tree. It was
the only plant in my house, mostly because plants don’t ever seem to live very
long in my house. But this avocado tree was at least ten years old. I grew it
as a science experiment with my young children, trying to make an avocado seed
sprout in a glass of water. I didn’t think it would work. I certainly didn’t
think that the plant would grow into anything that we could keep. I thought that it would die like all of the other
plants in my house. I had been waiting for that avocado tree to die for over ten
years. It served no purpose. It bore no fruit. It was the ugliest, saddest-looking
plant you had ever seen.
It grew to be about five feet
tall, with a thin, floppy “trunk”-- really just a stem that had to be lashed to
hooks in the wall with pieces of string to keep it from drooping right onto the
ground. It never had more than ten leaves on it, and most of them were usually
turning crinkly and brown around the edges. It reminded me of the mournful
little Christmas tree that Charlie Brown brought home in the Peanuts Christmas
special, the one that loses its needles and collapses under the weight of just one
ornament. My grown-up children,
forgetting their tender childhood feelings for the tree, said, “Mom, why don’t
you do something with that ugly old plant? Get rid of it and buy one that looks
good.” But I could never quite bring myself to cast it out of the house. Somehow,
all of my sins and hurts hung from its weak and spindly branches, and my
mortality cried out from its dry, crusty, and deficient soil.
I probably would have gone on torturing
myself indefinitely with that sickly tree, until it did eventually give up and
die. One day, though, enlightened by the writings of Paul Ricoeur on the logic
of equivalence, I started to look at my old avocado tree with new eyes. The
logic of equivalence in my own mind suddenly gave way to a logic of hope, a
logic of possibility and superabundance that the tough little tree seemed to
have known all along. As the week went on, my old avocado tree began to take on
a beseeching, luminous glow. I stopped ruminating on my guilt. I closed up my seminary
books; I turned off my computer; and I drove to Home Depot. I spent money and
brought home a nice, big pot with good, new potting soil and fertilizer. I replanted
my avocado tree, fed it and watered it. I took action.
Did the tree die? Did it grow into
big, strong bundle of luscious avocadoes? I won’t tell you. It doesn’t matter
what happened to the tree. What matters is that I set that tree, and myself,
free. I turned hope into action and thereby placed my tree in the ever-loving, prolific hands of the One who comes,
forever and forever.
Do you have a tree—or a relationship,
or an idea, or a hope--somewhere in your soul or in your world that is waiting
for the freedom to live?
[1] This
interpretation of the parable is taken from Bernard Brandon Scott in Hear Then the Parable.
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