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|
 An
Interpretation
Past Sermons from Pastor Tim...
-
The Year of the Fig?
- Luke 13: 1-9
- March
11, 2007
- Oh God, it
is so hard to let you be God!
- I want to
explain things – why they happen. There must be a way to find
cause-and-effect patterns for every good and every evil.
- Yet we each
have stories of terrible tragedies that have happened to good and
faithful people. Maybe they have happened to you.
- We want to
make sense of things that make no sense. We tend to put words into
God’s mouth that are human words rather than God’s. We wonder what we
did wrong. We scour our behavior, relationships, diets, beliefs. In
reality we find ourselves less interested in truth than consequences.
What we absolutely crave, above all, is control over the chaos of our
lives.
- Many years
ago now, William Sloan Coffin preached a sermon about our temptation
to speak God’s mind and God’s thoughts. During the years when Rev.
Coffin was senior minister of Riverside Church in New York City, his
son Alex was killed in a tragic car accident. Alex was driving in a
terrible storm; he lost control of his car and careened into the
waters of Boston Harbor. The following Sunday, Dr. Coffin preached
about his son’s death. He thanked all the people for their messages of
condolence, for food brought to their home, for an arm around his
shoulder when no words would do. But he also raged and ranted. He
raged about the well-meaning folks who had hinted that Alex’s death
was God’s will!
- “I knew the
anger would do me good,” he said.
- Then he
went on.
- “Do you
think it was God’s will that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield
wiper… that he was probably driving too fast in such a storm, that he
probably had a couple of ‘frosties’ too many?
- Do you
think it was God’s will that there are no street lights along that
stretch of road and no guard rail separating the road and Boston
Harbor? The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is…
‘It is the will of God.’ Never do we know enough to say that. My own
consolation lies in knowing that when the waves closed over the
sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”
- Oh God, it
is so hard to let you be God!
- We long to
make sense of senseless tragedies and search for reasons even when
there are none available to us. Jesus anticipated our questions in
today’s gospel reading. Two terrible events had happened in Jerusalem.
One in the temple, the other near the pool of Siloam. In the first
instance, Pilate, the Roman governor, had killed some Galileans who
were making sacrifices at the temple and then he mixed their blood
with the sacrifices. No doubt this was a warning to other Jews to
remember that Rome was in charge. In the other incident, a tower fell
on people near the pool of Siloam killing 18 people who simply
happened to be there. How can such things be explained?
- Luke does
not divulge to us the motive of those who told Jesus about the
Galilean tragedy. The implication is that those who died deserved what
they got, or at least that is the question Jesus intuited.
- “Do you
think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were
worse sinners than all other Galileans?”
- Now….if you
were Jesus, wouldn’t you have solved a lot of problems by stating a
formula, an equation, like this?
- #1 It
answers the riddle of why bad things happen to good people: they
don’t. Bad things only happen to bad people.
- # 2 It
punishes sinners right out in the open as a warning to everyone.
- #3 It
gives us a God who obeys the laws of physics. For every action there
is an opposite and equal reaction.
- ANY
QUESTIONS?
- Good, it’s
settled once and for all throughout the centuries to come.
- It’s a
tempting equation for you and me to say, but Jesus won’t go there.
- “No,” he
tells the crowd, “but unless you repent, you will all perish as they
did.”
- Where I
came from, way down south in Kansas, this is what we call giving with
one hand and taking away with the other. No, Jesus says, there is no
connection between suffering and the sin. (collectively) WHEW. But…
unless you repent, you are going to lose some blood too.
(collectively) OH.
- I love
listening to the Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Comes on
daily on NPR stations. It’s also on-line everyday to access at your
will.
- This was
Thursday’s poem of the day:
- Prayer
Requests at a Mennonite Church
- Pray for
the Smucker family. Their son Nathaniel’s coat and shirt were caught
in the gears while grinding grain. Nothing would give, so now he is
gone. We made his clothes too well. Perhaps this is our sin.
- Pray for
the Birky family. Their son Jacob fell to his death in the granary.
He was covered in corn before they could stop the pouring – chest
crushed by the weight, seed spilling from his mouth. We hope
something will grow from this, besides our grief.
- Pray for
the Hartzler family. Their youngest has left the church and no longer
believes that Christ died for her sins. She buys clothes at the
mall. Tongue pierced, nose as well. Her shirt shows her belly where
a ring of gold sprouts. We pray she will remember that her Lord’s
side was pierced, that His crown held no gold, only the fried blood of
His brow.
- Pray for
the Miller family. Last week their daughter, who lives in Kalona,
lost her baby at birth. Child only half-formed; head turned the
wrong way; heart laid on the outside of her chest; one leg little
more than an afterthought. Lord, help them know that life may come
again, that we are all made whole in heaven.
- Pray for
the Stutzman family. Their son fights in the war. We call him back
to the Prince of Peace, to our Savior who knelt to gather the slave’s
ear, brushed the dirt away, lifted it to the side of his flushed
face. May we leave no scars. May we ask no blessing for the
killing done in His name.
- -by Todd
Davis from Some Heaven, Michigan State University Press.
-
- Perhaps
Jesus is saying – don’t look or cause and effect explanations. Jesus
is telling them to turn their attention toward their own lives – don’t
speculate about others.
- What about
your life? What about mine? We can spend so much time trying to
explain things – so much time worrying about other people’s lives that
we forget to pay attention to our own lives with God.
- Then Jesus
told this parable. Incomprehensible in some sense. Pay attention!
- “So then
unless you repent, change, turn around, bear fruit you will likewise
perish.”
- The fig
tree word-picture and parable is used by Jesus to tell the story of
God’s call to repentance. Will it be a parable about destruction? Will
it be a story of punishment for those who failed to repent?
- He wanted
his listeners to turn to the God who loves and redeems his people. He
wanted them to change their minds and their lives to reflect the
compassion and care that God had given to them. And he wanted them to
bear fruit – the fruits of repentance, of new life in God and God’s
love – the fruits of grace, joy, hope and peace.
- Jesus’ word
is direct.
- His call is
clear, his admonition simple. “Repent! Turn around, turn to me.
Claim my life, bask in my love, relish my compassion, enter my mercy.
Change your mind.”
- That’s what
the Greek word translated as “repent” literally means: Change your
mind – your heart, your soul, your life.
- Listen to
the definition of repentance offered by the novelist and spiritual
writer Frederick Buechner:
- To repent
is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as
something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at
the past and saying ‘I’m sorry,’ than to the future and saying,
‘Wow!’”
- Sure we
need to take stock of our lives. We do need to examine our own
personal history, make amends when necessary, and ask for God’s
forgiveness. But we dare not get stuck there. That is not real
repentance. Rather, to repent is to come to our senses, to change our
mind, to turn in some new directions, and to enter out future with a
sense of the hope, love and companionship that God offers to us in our
lives.
- Wow.
- Repent.
Change you mind. Bear fruit. Show some new actions, some new
practices, patterns and behaviors that reflect the love that God has
for you and the love that you have for God. Repent for Lent.
- Remember
the beginning of this Gospel John the Baptist called the people to
repentance. His words were harsh and unrelenting… Even now the ax is
lying at the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not
bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
- It was
shortly after John said those words that Jesus came to the Jordan to
be baptized. Soon after that, Jesus began his public ministry and that
was 3 years ago.
- Remember
the parable? For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig
tree. For three years God has been waiting for people to turn their
hearts toward Jesus, but there has not been much repentance. Instead
of repentance, the resistance to Jesus’ vision of the kingdom has
intensified over the 3 years. There isn’t any fruit on the tree, so
the owner of the vineyard says, “Cut it down!”
- But that
wasn’t the end of the parable. Oh it’s so hard to let God be God.
Maybe that’s where we would have ended the parable, since it’s crystal
clear to us if we look around today that there isn’t much repentance
going on. Cut it down – seems like the right thing for God to say. But
it doesn’t happen.
- Instead,
the gardener says, “Sir, let it alone for 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.”
- There’s
urgency and hope in the gardener’s voice. This is such an earthy
story. I pastor a church in the middle of rich farming land in and
around Alcester. Manure happens. Naturally. I asked 92 year old
Clifford Eidsness born on that piece of land north of Norway Center if
he had ever been for a ride in a limo….
- “No, but
I’ve ridden on top of a manure spreader.”
- This
parable looks like a lesson about farming. But is it? We’ve noted the
parallel between the 3 years of the parable and the 3 years of Jesus’
ministry. Jesus is the gardener, isn’t he? He refused to give up on
those who are living in the vineyard. Maybe the vineyard is the whole
earth. Maybe it’s the church. Maybe it’s your life and mine.
- Jesus
isn’t’ giving up on any of us – you, me, the church, the whole earth.
There’s hope in this parable - don’t cut the tree down. But there’s
urgency too – give me one more year.
- Could this
be the year of the fig?
- We can hear
that as a threat – like so many evangelists pressing us with the
question – “Where will you be if you die tonight?”
- But, Jesus’
parable moves in the direction of promise more than threat. “I’m
going to do everything I can to help this tree live and bear fruit.”
- While we
are speculating about why certain people died at Pilate’s or Osama’s
hands or why the others were killed by the falling tower at Siloam or
New York, Jesus, the gardener, is working on our hearts. Such
realities remind us that our time is finite. Stories like these dig at
our hearts. They get to us with the truth that we can’t keep putting
everything off until tomorrow.
- But being
scared to death can rob us of all hope. Life can then seem utterly
arbitrary – if I die, I die. There’s nothing I can do about, so why
try? Into the midst of such despair, the gardener comes. Don’t cut the
tree down. Let it alone for one more year. Jesus, the gardener, wants
us to live.
- Look at
your life, Tim, and you can fill in your name_____ and ask the hard
questions… Am I stingy in my love for others? Am I withholding
forgiveness for old wrongs? Do I refuse to believe that I can be
forgiven, carrying from year to year a growing burden of guilt and
resentment? Am I so busy making a living that I’ve forgotten to make a
life?
- Jesus digs
at us with questions like these. Jesus digs at our hearts in the
outstretched hand of every houseless beggar on the streets, of every
child not fed.
- What have
you done? What have you left undone?
- I might not
do things this way. I’m tempted to say, “You’ve had your chance – the
year has passed and you still haven’t shaped up!” But I am not God.
Nor can I put my words in God’s mouth.
- Pastoral
theologian Seward Hiltner, whom we studied in seminary class 30 years
ago, used to tell about the state-run mental hospital where truly
hopeless cases were relegated to a back ward. The psychiatrists and
other medical staff avoided this ward, making only the bare minimum of
calls and writing off the patients there as unsalvageable.
- Then one
day a women’s group from a local church began, as a matter of
compassion, to visit the patients in this hospital. No one bothered to
tell them that the patients in the back ward were abandoned cases, so
they visited them regularly, bringing flowers, fresh baked cookies,
prayer, cheerfulness and mercy.
- Before
long, some of the patients began to respond, a few of them even
becoming healthy enough to move to other wards. At one level, this was
merely a church group Doing what church groups do. At another level,
it was a sign of the parable playing true.
- Who knows?
Could this be the year for figs?
-
-
Sources:
-
Brown-Taylor, Barbara “Life-Giving
Fear”, The Christian Century, March 4, 1998
-
Davis, Todd “Prayer Requests at a
Mennonite Church” from Some Heaven, Michigan State University
Press.
-
Lemier, James “Changing Your Mind,
Bearing Fruit”, Day 1 speaker for March 11, 2007
-
Long, Thomas “Breaking and Entering”
The Christian Century, March 7, 2001
-
Lundblad, Barbara “Could This Be the
Year for Figs?” Day 1 speaker for March 18, 2001
|
