My sweet cousin gave me a lovely little azalea for Christmas. It sits on my table and has the potential to be quite beautiful, I’m sure. However, my plant has a few issues…well not really. My plant has one issue…ME. I do NOT have a green thumb in the least, in fact I have what I like to call “thumbs of death”. I can kill a plant in a matter of days. But, this one isn’t dead yet. It’s still sitting there on my table looking sickly. I water it, I talk to it, but it still looks sad and disheveled. But…it’s NOT DEAD YET! I refuse to give up on my little plant I’m bound and determined that I’m going to see pretty white flowers. It’s not dead yet!!!
Today’s Gospel reading is about a small tree that isn’t dead yet…it is a warning…a call to repentance. Jesus uses the story of the fig tree to talk about God’s forgiveness and the importance of repentance. A crowd has gathered around Jesus and asks him about an incident that occurred…Jesus uses this moment to teach the crowd…he says unless you repent you will perish. He repeats this message again, and then follows it with the parable of the fig tree…
Once upon a time there was a man who had a whole farm full of vines and trees. One of his trees was a fig tree, but it didn’t bear any figs. Every day for three years the man went out to check his fields and as he walked by the tree he’d check for figs. And every day for 3 years… NO FIGS! Finally, he just couldn’t take it any more, so he said to his gardener, “This is ridiculous. I’ve been checking on this tree for 3 years and it STILL has no fruit. Cut it down. It’s a waste of time and dirt”. The gardener, however, replied. “Well, boss, tell ya what. You leave that tree alone for one more year. I’ll dig around it, put some manure on it, and tend to it a little more. After that year if it bears fruit, fine! If not, why then I reckon we can cut it down.” (from the Rebecca Standard Version)
This is one of Jesus’ least discussed parables, and that’s probably because none of the other parables mention it. And yes, this is a parable about the need for repentance. But, something you’ll learn about me though, is that I never seem to look at scripture the way everybody else does. See, I think that this story is more about God than it is about us repenting. It’s about God refusing to give up on us and therefore it’s about US not giving up on us either. God will NOT give up on us! God will not give up on me, God will not give up on you. God WILL NOT give up.
Nothing worth doing can be accomplished quickly.
So, let’s look a little deeper at Jesus’ parable. It’s clear. There is a tree that is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing. The owner of the land wants to chop it down. And rightfully so! That tree is a waste of space, time, energy, and dirt! Or is it? The gardener thinks differently. The gardener believes that with just 3 things, the tree might bear fruit. He thinks the fruitless fig tree needs: 1. more time. “leave the tree alone for a year”. 2. tending. It needs to be dug around and have the ground renewed. And 3. It needs manure. It needs fertilizer to help it grow and be fruitful. With these three things: time, tending, and fertilizer, the gardener believes the fig tree will indeed produce figs and after all of these things are done, and if the tree still doesn’t bear fruit, then and only then will the gardener step out of the way so the tree can be chopped down.
The first step, according to the gardener is “more time.” The gardener asks the landowner to leave the tree alone for a year…to not cut it down. But I think also, this means that the man shouldn’t go out and check on it every single day. The tree needs to be left alone! For the gardener, more time means that he will have a chance to work on the problem at hand—to give the tree a chance to grow. Now, it’s important to note that he’s not just going to sit there and do nothing to the tree for a year…he has a plan for the tree, but implementing that plan will take time. You see, nothing worth doing can be accomplished quickly. No great building has been built overnight, no great empire developed in a few days.
Great accomplishments take great amounts of time. In the case of our fig tree, it has already been non-productive for 3 years when the gardener asks for “one more year”. The gardener recognizes the importance of time. He understands that great changes do not occur over night, they occur over days, weeks, months and yes…even years. It takes time to cultivate an environment capable of bearing fruit. Bearing fruit takes time. The gardener understands this. He knows that the fig tree needs more time.
The gardener also knows that the tree needs some tending. It needs someone to get down on their hands and knees and dig up the ground around the roots. It needs someone to believe that it can indeed bear fruit. The gardener seems to understand that he could do more to help the tree be productive. Loosening up the soil around the tree, digging a bit deeper will help the water seep in and help the tree grow stronger. Tending indeed takes time, but it takes a great deal MORE than time. Tending takes patience, love, and a dream of what CAN be. The gardener believes that the tree CAN produce fruit if he is allowed to tend to it and pay attention to its needs a little more closely. Maybe the threat to cut the tree down served as a wake-up call to the Gardener, as now he realizes all that he could have been doing to help the tree. Luckily it isn’t too late. The tree has been given a second chance to bear fruit.
One of my favorite books as a child was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It’s the story of a little girl, Mary Lennox who is orphaned when her parents are killed by the cholera epidemic in India. Mary is sent to England to live with her only living relative. She’s essentially abandoned in the giant mansion, making friends of the maids and gardeners. Mary finds a SecretGarden…a large walled garden and secretly with the help of Dickon (one of the gardeners) she works to bring the Garden back to life. The garden becomes a place of healing for Mary, for her Uncle, and for her young sick cousin Colin. I was once privileged to see the musical production of this book…to hear the story lovingly set to music. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack from the show while writing this sermon, because one song keeps coming into my head over and over again. The song is called “Wick” and in it, Dickon says “When a thing is wick, it has a light about it. Maybe not a light that you can see, but hiding down below a spark’s asleep inside it, waiting for the right time to be seen. You clear away the dead parts, so the tender buds can form, loosen up the earth and let the roots get warm…when a thing is wick, it will grow” You see, “wick” is the idea that something, no matter how dead it appears, no matter how little it produces, that deep inside it, it is still alive. Through their hard work and dedication Dickon, Mary, and later Cousin Colin bring the garden back from the dead and restore it to its former glory. As the story ends its hard to decide who to be the happiest for…for Mary who has found a home, for Uncle Archibald who finally finds peace, for Colin who is well, for the garden itself…the garden that everyone had given up on and left for dead that has finally bloomed into something truly amazing.
The tree…the fig tree is “wick”. That is what I believe our gardener means when he asks to be allowed to tend to the fig tree. He sees a spark of life in the tree and realizes that he needs to clear away the dead parts and dig around the tree so the roots can get warm and water can nourish the tree from the root up. He understands that there is work to be done and that part of that work is digging a little deeper than he had previously. The gardener, in his heart of hearts, believes that the tree CAN and WILL produce fruit, and now, with the extra time and energy he has been allotted to give the little tree, he knows it’s time to dig in a little deeper and bring the tree to fruition. The gardener promises to dig deeper and work harder.
The gardener realizes however that hard work and time are not the only thing this little tree needs. It needs fertilizer. It needs someone to go to the animal pens, gather up the manure, and spread it all around and over the now exposed roots. It needs to be nourished...it needs to be fed…it needs to be fertilized. Um…ew! Fertilizer? Manure? Gross. Fertilizer is some nasty stuff—the waste and decay of once living things. And yet God literally uses the waste of animals, the bi product, to help things grow—to bring new life. The gardener knows that time and tending will not do the job alone. He knows he has to feed this plant. He knows that fertilizer is necessary, no matter how distasteful it might be.
He knows the value of fertilizer…no matter how stinky, dirty, or messy it is, he knows he has to gather up the manure and spread it around the fig tree, if the tree has a chance to bear fruit. He understands that fertilizer is a necessary part of the equation that will save the fig tree. For some reason, he believes that this tree is worth saving and he knows that he MUST fertilize it in order for that to happen. Without the necessary nutrients, the time and the tending are of little use. So, he recognizes that he’s going to have to roll up his sleeves, get dirty and deal with the stinky stuff in order to make this work. He has to deal manure in order to get the tree to bear figs.
I’ve always found it interesting, if not a little unsettling, that Jesus doesn’t give the END of this story. What happens? Does the tree live? Does it thrive? Are there figs? If not, does the land owner give yet another chance or does he chop the tree down? Or does “the rest of the story” matter in this case?
Well, we aren’t given the ending. And maybe that’s because Jesus doesn’t KNOW the ending, or because the ending isn’t important. Either way. We don’t know. We are left with the hope of what time, tending, and fertilizer can do. We are left to wonder, and hope, that the fig tree did indeed bear fruit the following season.
Here’s the thing. Each of us is like that fig tree. You see, God has not given up on us. We’ve been given time, a chance to dig deeper, and a time to fertilize. The parable shows us that God has not given up and neither should we.