Bearing fruit, pruning and digging

Lent 3-C March 7, 2010
Exodus 3:1-15
Ps. 63:1-8 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

Weren’t we lured outside yesterday by the sunny skies and warm temperatures? I don’t know about you, but growing up in the north here, I feel that experiencing such nice weather so early in the spring – or late in the winter – seems like a trick, a tease. Was this fear, that such a spring might be too good to be true, in the mind of the poet T.S. Eliot[i] when he wrote:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Aren’t we northerners to a certain extent much more comfortable when we can hunker down in our winter woolies? Like Eliot wrote:

Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Come on, now: doesn’t a part of us feel that all the little life we will ever get consists of those dried tubers?

Some of you, thankfully, grew up in more southern climes, closer to the parts of the globe where the sun shines more reliably than it does around here, where the temperatures are warmer, and you don’t have to wear winter woolies. Perhaps that gives you more of a sense of optimism during this season of Lent – the word “Lent” after all comes from the English word “to lengthen.” This is the season when the days lengthen. The earth DOES turn. The summer WILL come, even if we, steeped in fear and disappointment, regard such days as yesterday’s mid-March sunshine as a cruel interlude between blizzards.

So what did you think of yesterday’s sunshine?

And what do you think of today’s gospel? Is Jesus saying we deserve to perish, like that fig tree that bears no fruit? Should we be cut down, lest we waste the soil in which we are planted? Or is Jesus the wise gardener, prudently pruning and digging, so we, the potentially fruit-full fig tree can flourish?

However you read it, these words of Jesus are a challenge. Think of what that might mean in your own life: where in your own life are you not bearing fruit? Where are the twigs that need to be trimmed, the dead branches that need to be lopped off? Perhaps the discipline of the Twelve Steps would be good for all of us as we think about what Jesus says, like that 4th step of “a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” A scary prospect if we really took it seriously. What parts of your life are not bearing fruit? Do you need to dig around your roots a little bit, to see if things will come up better next year?

St. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, usually a source of beautiful spiritual guidance, is a little tough to read this morning, too. He writes of a bunch of people perishing because they aren’t good enough – yikes! – and then listen again to these words of comfort:

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.

My experience has been that when I am in the middle of such a period of testing, I do not quite know if that is true. It seems at those moments that God is giving me far more than I can handle, and that even if I have the strength to endure, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing it very well at all.

Since Jesus has brought up the image of the fig tree, let’s think a little bit more about gardening. At this time of the year, straightening out a garden does seem like one of those tests that God has given me that are too much to handle. The amount of work to clean up the detritus of winter seems endless, the soil is muddy, and ravages of ice and snow and salt have taken their toll. But, like yesterday’s sunny day, isn’t there always hope in a garden?

I was reminded yesterday[ii] of an old novel, The Secret Garden. In this story,

… two sickly and spoiled children, Mary and Colin … find a hidden garden neglected and overgrown. The garden is discovered in the Lenten springtime:

When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead … Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and making things out of nothing. One day things weren't there and another they were.

The work of pruning and digging lead Mary and Colin out of their sickly loneliness into health, and the miracle of life springing out of the chaos and mud of the hidden garden leads them to feelings they never had before. In the novel, a friend starts to sing:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above ye Heavenly Host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Colin, the little boy in the book, has never been to church, has never heard those words.

It is a very nice song, [he says.] I like it. Perhaps it means just what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the Magic.

Last week I said, “Let go and let God.” That’s one of those things that’s as hard to hear as “God won’t give you more than you can handle” or “For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree and still I find none. Cut it down!”

At times like that, perhaps the most we can do is to be thankful to the Magic, as we dig around the roots of our lives, in hope that with that care and attention we will, someday, bear the fruit God wants us to bear. At times like that, perhaps all we can do is sing.

[i] The Wasteland
[ii] http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20100301JJ.shtml