In this third Sunday in Lent, we hear Jesus tell a parable about an impatient landowner and an unproductive fig tree. Is the fig tree a waste of space and soil? Or is it an illustration of the value of rest and the folly of impatience? And where is God in this story?
Today’s Scripture readings are Colossians 1:3-6, 9-14, Psalm 40:1-8, and Luke 13:6-9, and I continue to use the resources included in A Sanctified Art’s Everything [in] Between Lenten theme, especially the commentary from Jeff Chu, from which I quote in this sermon. Similar to the first time I preached on this passage, I continue to think of David Lose’s 2013 reflection on this text at Working Preacher. As a children’s sermon for this fig tree parable, I read the children’s book The Good for Nothing Tree, by Amy Jill-Levine and Sandy Eisenberg Sasso.
Here’s the livestream from Living Hope and the sermon podcast audio from Christ the King.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
If you were going to start telling the story of Jesus to someone who didn’t know anything about Christianity, you’d probably start with something like the verse we heard on Wednesday, John 3:16 — God loved the world enough to come in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to give us life.
Or maybe you’d start with “the Lord is my shepherd” who takes care of me, who provides for me, Psalm 23—we’ll hear that one in a few weeks.
Personally, I would not start with the story we just heard. I don’t think the parable of the fig tree is on anyone’s list of top five Bible stories.
It’s a story about impatience and results, or as our Everything [in] Between theme puts it, a contrast between rest and growth. And if you google this story—yes, sometimes googling is part of the process of preparing a sermon, especially for more obscure parables—if you google this story, you’ll see a very clear, definitive interpretation. It’s not the one in that children’s book, but it’s very common. Google actually highlighted it for me as if it’s the gospel truth, the only interpretation.
That interpretation—and I’m quoting here from a pretty fundamentalist website, GotQuestions.org—is that “The three entities in the story all have clear symbolic significance. The vineyard owner represents God, the one who rightly expects to see fruit on His tree and who justly decides to destroy it when He finds none. The gardener, or vineyard keeper who cares for the trees, watering and fertilizing them to bring them to their peak of fruitfulness, represents Jesus, who feeds His people and gives them living water. The tree itself has two symbolic meanings: the nation of Israel and the individual.”
But here’s the thing: With all due respect to GotQuestions.org, that interpretation is not in the Bible. Jesus doesn’t actually explain this parable. Jesus doesn’t cast God in the role of the vineyard owner. And he could have, right?
Sometimes after he tells a parable, one of these stories with a point, Jesus explains what it means. Like when he tells the parable of the sower about a farmer scattering seeds, he tells the story to a large crowd of people, but then he pulls his disciples aside to explain to them what the different things in the story represent.
He doesn’t do that in this story.
So we could interpret this story as if God is the angry landowner demanding results and Jesus is the patient gardener who intercedes between the useless fig tree—that’s us—and say the only point of this story is that we need to more good things, produce more good spiritual fruit so that God doesn’t smite us.
Maybe there’s some value to that. We should all do more good deeds, right? We just confessed that there’s more we could do, “We find excuses and justify our inaction.”
But what if that’s not the point Jesus is trying to make here?
What if it’s not God, but us who are the ones who get impatient?
In the story, the owner of the vineyard—again, not necessarily God here—gets impatient because it’s been a while, and he’s seen no results, telling the gardener, “Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?”
But the gardener, the one who knows the soil, the one who cares for plants, the one responsible for the growth, convinces the owner to wait a bit longer. Let him tend to the fig tree, spread some fertilizer, do some pruning, and then see if it produces fruit. Don’t give up yet.
In his commentary, Jeff Chu writes, “Faithful waiting doesn’t mean doing nothing: The gardener waters, weeds, and fertilizes. And modern science is teaching us what happens in the meantime. Contrary to the peevish vineyard owner’s assertion, nothing is wasted.
Down below, the fig tree isn’t just gathering strength; it’s also building relationships. Soil-borne fungi are finding home in its roots, boosting the tree’s capacity to resist disease and take in nutrients. In return, the tree feeds the fungi.”
Sometimes what we expect to happen takes longer than we hope. Sometimes the fruit we expect to grow doesn’t blossom the way we anticipate. We confess our sin week after week, then we go out and by the next week, probably even before we leave the building, we have more to confess.
And yet, like the patient gardener, like the kids in the story, God keeps giving us new chances. Over and over, God gives us new chances to live well and produce fruit. More chances than we deserve, more than we appreciate, more than we can hope for.
When we’re ready to throw in the towel, God says, “Hold on, maybe a little longer.” When we’re ready to give up on ourselves, the Holy Spirit reminds us of our identity as God’s beloved children, who we are in Christ.
Sometimes, our impatience may be with God. When we pray, and don’t see an answer, when we’re tempted to give up on God, perhaps we’re the ones who need a reminder to keep waiting, to trust God is still active, even when it’s not visible to us.
Writing to the church in Colossae, Paul reminds us that our hope is in heaven. Our hope is in the good news of Jesus Christ, the good news that God doesn’t give up on us, the good news that God is still working. God’s work is bearing fruit, even when it’s hard for us to see.
Some of you took a survey a few months ago about our church, part of a nationwide survey assessing the impact of the pandemic on faith communities. Council, we’ll talk about some of the survey results at our meeting this week, but one of the questions that stuck out to me from those who took the survey was “I am excited about the future of this congregation.”
[It’s a small sample size, but here at Christ the King, the majority weren’t sure or disagreed with that statement.
It’s a small sample size, but here at Living Hope everyone either agreed or wasn’t sure about that statement. There’s a lot of optimism.]
How do we wait for God to act, trusting in the Holy Spirit to be fertilizing and pruning, and at the same time produce the fruit God calls us to produce?
Can we trust God to hold the future? Can we trust God to give us strength to endure, and not just to endure, but to thrive and bear good fruit for God’s kingdom?
A young fig tree takes years to produce fruit. Kristen Krueger writes (in this week’s ELCA World Hunger Sermon Starters email), “Here is where we see Jesus try to balance patience for growth and action toward change.” That’s a balance we’re always working on as a congregation, and in our own lives. What does it look like to be content with where we are, what God has given us, while still feeling the urgency of Jesus’ call to repentance and new life?
How do we encourage others in the meantime?
As we think today about rest and growth, I’m reminded that five years ago this weekend was the first time probably in the history of this church (other than snowstorms) that we didn’t gather for worship.
The pandemic forced us as a church—really as a whole society—into an abrupt season of both rest and growth.
Rest, in that all our regular routines were disrupted. We couldn’t gather for worship, school was closed, commutes vanished. Do you remember stories about wildlife thriving, levels of pollution falling?
And of course, growth in skills we never wanted to learn, checking in on our neighbors, sharing rolls of toilet paper, working remotely. For better or worse, we learned as churches that some of the things we thought were essential weren’t as important as we thought, that worship can happen outside a building. We learned ways to include people at home in worship services.
On that survey, a good portion of the people responding said their faith had actually grown through the pandemic, that they’re more active at church than they had been before.
There’s no big anniversary markers of the pandemic, because I think we’re not sure as a society what to think about it, and there’s not a clear date we can point to. For me, it’s suspending in-person worship, but I realize that’s probably not your strongest marker.
We’re still fighting politically over causes and responses, and there are still many grieving over people who died from covid, including Karen, our office secretary at Christ the King.
Perhaps we all could use some rest and reflection on what we’ve been through. And in the midst of rest, reflection on the growth God is accomplishing in us, the work God is calling us to in the future. Because God is not done with us. God is not done with you.
As our Psalm said, wait for the Lord, who hears your cry, lifts you from the pit, and makes your steps secure. God is tending, fertilizing, pruning you to produce good fruit. In Christ, God is making you new.
Again, and again, and again. Thanks be to God. Amen