God's gardener gives the shrub another shot...

Thanks be to God: for the first time in a full week my insides are not in turmoil! I think I can say with a measure of certainty that this bout of the flu has now passed.  And while there are no guarantees in life that another bug just as virulent might make it my way, for now I believe the great storm is over. 

The reason for mentioning this has to do with missing worship this morning. It is the third Sunday of Lent and I wanted to check in with the faith community at St. Paul's Chapel in NYC. When we are away from the city, we still like to take in the liturgy by participating on-line: we pray and sing and pass the peace as if we were sitting in the old chapel that once welcomed George Washington. Their music program is heavenly, too. But I was not even awake until 11:11 am so I missed the whole party. That said, the gospel from St. Luke for today comes from chapter 13: 1-9 and concludes like this:

“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘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.’”

I am fascinated by the grace implied in the words and actions of the gardener. And when this is coupled with Isaiah 55 - one of my favorites in all holy scripture - the tenderness of the Lord is revealed. You see, the gardener gives this failing tree extra attention and nourishment promising that it will bear good fruit.  As Israel's ancient prophet taught, God's ways are not our ways. God's heart is shaped in patience and trust, a steadfast love that endures forever.

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live... Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near... For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

The scholars I consult when considering Scripture say that the first three years of a fig tree's existence are written off: the tree needs to mature and become ritually clean - so this tree is now six years old but still sluggish. The preacher and teacher, Brian Stoffregen, consults the German professor, Joachim Jeremias, who concludes that:

The first three years of a fig-tree's growth were allowed to elapse before its fruit became clean (Lev 19:23), hence six years had already passed since it was planted. It is thus hopelessly barren... A fig-tree absorbs a specially large amount of nourishment and hence deprives the surrounding vines of their needed sustenance... (note that) manuring a vineyard is not mentioned in any passage of the OT; more over, as a matter of duty, the undemanding fig-tree does not need such care. (Yet) the gardener proposes to do something unusual, to take the last possible measures (give the tree special fertilizer and care and delay any judgment.) (See http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/ luke13x1.htm)

On the third Sunday of Lent, the liturgical Jesus seems to be saying that he has set aside yet another full year for us to practice repentance. "I have come to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor," Jesus announced at the start of his public ministry in St. Luke's gospel. St. John the Baptism warned that the ax of God's judgment was about to be laid to the root of the barren tree when he began his ministry. But his cousin, Jesus, says the Baptizer is mistaken: a full year of renewal and repentance is in order. 

Matt Skinner of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN puts a wise spin on the word repentance in this context noting: "Repentance becomes less interesting when people mistake it to mean moral uprightness, expressions of regret, or a "180-degree turn around." Rather, here and many other places in the Bible, it refers to a changed mind, to a new way of seeing things,(a willingness to be) being persuaded to adopt a different perspective." I often liked to quote the opening words from Douglas John Hall's master work, his systematic theology for North Americans, Thinking the Faith, as he wrote:

Jesus says in his society there is a new way for people to live: you show wisdom, by trusting people; you handle leadership, by serving; you deal with offenders, by forgiving; you handle money, by sharing; you handle enemies, by loving; and you handle violence, by suffering. In fact, you have a new attitude towards everything, toward everybody. Toward nature, toward the state in which you happen to live, toward women, toward men, toward slaves, toward all and every single being. Because this is the Jesus society and you repent, NOT by feeling bad, but by thinking different. (Rudy Wiebe, The Blue Mountains of China, pp. 215-216) 

This is, of course, a contemporary restatement of St. Paul's wisdom in Romans 12:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.  (Romans 12, The Message, Eugene Peterson)

Two observations about repentance resonate with me. First, repentance starts with God's invitation to tenderly cleanse and renew my heart. Second, if I honor this grace, then I must respond in a way that sees my self, my life and my surroundings through the eyes of Jesus. Or better yet: God's mercy encourages me to search for the presence of Jesus in all events, emotions and experiences.  While I was resting this week, I read a biography of Fred Rogers and came across this quote from an address he gave at Dartmouth College:

I am very interested in choices, and what it is and who it is that enable us human beings to make the choices we make all through our lives. What choices lead to ethnic cleansing? What choices lead to healing? What choices lead to the destruction of the environment, the erosion of the Sabbath, suicide bombing, or teenagers shooting teachers? What choices encourage heroism in the midst of chaos? (Maxwell King, The Good Neighbor, p. 327)

Mr. Rogers, I learned, was a friend of Henri Nouwen. I can imagine these two wounded healers sitting around Rogers' Nantucket cottage fretting about the ways they missed the mark while building one another up in respectful love. Both men, you see, worried that they were always inadequate to their neighbor. Incomplete in their love of God. Knowing of their anxiety, helps me because I, too feel like a loser. In so many ways, these words of Nouwen could be my own:

In my own life I well know how hard it is for me to trust that I am loved, and to trust that the intimacy I most crave is there for me. I most often live as if I have to earn love, do something noteworthy, and then perhaps I might get something in return. This attitude touches the whole question of what is called in the spiritual life, the "first love." Do I really believe that I am loved first, independent of what I do or what I accomplish? This is an important question because as long as I think that what I most need I have to earn, deserve and collect by hard work, I will never get what I most need and desire, which is a love that cannot be earned, but that is freely given. Thus, my return is my willingness to renounce such thoughts and to choose to live more and more from my true identity as a cherished child of God.

On the third Sunday of Lent, I realize that I haven't made it very far in my Lenten reading. At the same time, I realize how deeply I am searching for Jesus in almost everything I do. I think that's better than plowing through my assigned tasks, don't you? Lent is not a burden, it is a joy. Fr. Keating called it a dance that allows us to change direction and change our thinking so that we live into love and all its fullness. I am so grateful that Jesus the gardener said: "give this runty little tree another shot, ok? I'll tend to her. Love her. Fertilize her and then we'll talk." Indeed, that is what I shall do for myself and those I love for God's ways truly are not my ways - and that really is good news!