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“Remembering What Matters”

Isaiah 55:1-9

Luke 13:1-9

Lent 3

March 7, 2010

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

 

Then he told this parable: ‘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 round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’

 

              How do you express what is essential about you?  How do you display to the world, the “you” that IS you?  How much would you give to express that which is essentially who you are?

              Anousheh Ansari answered questions just like these yesterday on NPR’s Morning Edition Saturday.  Dr. Ansari was interviewed by Scott Simon about her trip into space which cost the entrepreneur about $20 million of her own money in order to part of the team that went to the international space station in 2006. 

              She told the story of growing up in Tehran and gazing up at the stars each evening, wondering about her purpose in the universe and the vast infinity that is space.  Her family eventually emigrated to the United States where she received her education and built a very successful business with her husband; the kind of success that allowed her to plunk down $20 million for a trip into space. 

              In the course of the interview, defending the great expense of the trip, she offered that she would have even taken a one way trip into space.  The implication was obvious: this act, this event, defined her so intimately and accurately that she was willing to sacrifice her all for it.

              The question remains and should be answered by each of us: How do we express our essential self in this world?  Do we do it by our work, our family, our faith, our loves, our addictions, our missteps or our successes?  Just how do we express what is at the very essence of our beings?

              I believe that this is exactly what is happening in this little passage we hear today from the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus is preaching to the gathered crowds and receives news of a great tragedy; a humanly manufactured tragedy involving the Roman governor Pilate slaughtering God-fearing Jews as they go about their religious duties.  This news reaches Jesus from the crowd, almost as if the crowd is responding to his preaching and asking about the very essence of God: look what happens to folks who claim to be righteous persons; doesn’t God care, don’t you care?

              Jesus adds to this report a recalling of another, natural tragedy of a great tower crushing the life out of a dozen and a half persons in Jerusalem.  “Who’s at fault here: the people or the God who has allowed this to happen?”  That seems to be the question that Jesus if framing for the persons who are presenting the news.  How Jesus replies is instructive indeed!

              Jesus tells them a parable of a barren fig tree; a tree that is expected to produce fruit but doesn’t.  What should the response be? For some, it is the response of the owner: “Cut it down!  Get rid of it now so that real growth might come from some other source!”

              Jesus surely and confidently points their attention to the response of the good gardener: “Give it time! Don’t be so quick to pull the plug here!  Have mercy!”

              In this little parable Jesus reveals what is the very essence of God, even in the face of judgment: mercy. The correlation that Christ makes to his original hearers and to us as well is that if God is so merciful to us, allowing us time and good things for growth, we ought to respond.  We ought to grow and lead lives that bear fruit.  We ought to respond to the mercy and goodness of God in the very manner of our living, so that we might be the reflection of the very essence of God in our life!

              In Jesus Christ, God reveals the very essence of God.  In Jesus Christ, the mercy and grace of God is demonstrated and displayed in such a way that it cannot be ignored by us.  In Jesus Christ, we see what a great price God is willing to pay to demonstrate just who God is to this world: the price of self-sacrifice.

              This is a key part of understanding the season of Lent in the church.  It is during this season that this demonstration of self-sacrificing love and mercy is sharply drawn.  In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the very principle of the barren fig tree is enacted.  We, who believe ourselves to know better, are cast in the role of the owner, the one who wants to pull the plug on this experiment of growth and fruit bearing.  We fail to have the patience that is required when it comes to others.  We, like the original crowd to which Jesus spoke, want to find someone to blame; we want to assert our judgment.  We want answered the question about slaughtered Galileans or those who were crushed by the falling tower: “Who is to blame here… is it them; is it God; is it the powers that be?”

              In the final assessment, the whole story of creation and redemption that we read in scripture and that we especially hone in on during this Lenten season reminds us that what really matters is this great love of God for humankind.  It is this incredible, almost unbelievable, self-sacrificing grace that God demonstrates for us in Jesus Christ that matters.  This is what really matters; this is the very heart of God, the very essence of God laid bare for all to see, marvel at and to respond to with lives turned toward him.  This is the picture of God, the good gardener, giving more time, more effort, more grace to bring about growth in us and in this world.

              There’s a good story about a church group that got that; that understood this about the very essence of God.  The story is borrowed from old preaching professor, Tom Long who actually borrowed it from someone else.  Here’s what he wrote:

 

Pastoral theologian Seward Hiltner 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 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 times.

 

              How do you demonstrate who you are at your very essence?  A better question is answered by Jesus Christ in this wonderful story about tragedies, fig trees and God: Just what is the very essence of God?  Just how has God demonstrated the very being of God?

              The answer is what really matters.  Lent calls us all to remember what really matters: That in Jesus Christ, in his life, death and resurrection, God has plainly demonstrated just what is at the very essence of the divine heart: not judgment, not law, not lists of who is in or who is out … but mercy … mercy enough for you, for me, for the world and for all barren fig trees just about to bloom.  Thanks be to God!