This sermon is focused on both Luke 13:1-9 and 1 Corinthians 10:1-13. Unfortunately if you went at Bethlehem this morning you missed dried figs and Fig Newtons. So I know why the owner of the vineyard wanted fruit to produce from his fig tree: figs are wonderful. Seriously have you had one recently? They are so sweet, almost too sweet, as in you can’t eat more than two in a sitting. I’ve only ever have had dried figs, at least that I remember, but even these dried ones are in a way moist. And figs are a very versatile food. You can eat them plain, either fresh or dried, they make excellent fillings for pastries such as the ever popular fig Newton. You can make a glaze for your meat or put them in your salad and you can even make fig bread. The owner of this vineyard wanted his fruit, he wanted his harvest so that the tree was not just sitting there but producing food for his consumption and possibly a crop to sell for money.
So I can see why this owner thought this fruitless tree was a waste of the soil, because not only want it not producing fruit, it was also taking up space, a lot of space. While the average fig tree is only 10 to 30 feet tall, the branches spread out in a large circle often covering more area than height. So if this fig tree was 10 feet tall, it could take up almost 400 square feet of planting space. Think of all the other things that could have been planted in that same amount of space – for comparison, the average home garden today is about 300 square feet.
But yet it is the owner and not the gardener who wanted to destroy the unproducing tree. I get the feeling that the owner might not have know a lot about what actually took place in his vineyard, about the hard work that went into producing the fruit and wine that he loved to eat and drink. He probably did not know a lot about how to care for a tree, how pruning helped it produce more fruit or how the weather affected the crop. If he was really ignorant and arrogant he might not have even have known when various fruits were even in season. So it probably is not a stretch to guess that this owner probably did not know that it takes the average fig tree 3-5 years after planting to produce fruit. This fig tree that he had waited three years for was not yet mature enough to bear fruit.
In our modern context, when we are so disconnected with where food comes from and how it is made, we sometimes behave like the owner. We don’t always associate food to the season in which they are harvested. When our produce comes from not just across the country but across the world, we forget that there is actually a time of year when peppers, apples, potatoes, oranges and all the other produce that we buy at the grocery store is actually in season. We might realize that apples are cheaper in the fall or that they are from New Jersey instead of New Zealand but there is hardly a fruit or vegetable out there that you can’t find year round in the grocery stores.
We expect the food to be there whether it is in season or not, just like the owner expected fruit to be on the tree, even if it was not mature enough to produce fruit.
And sometimes this demand for things when they are not available translates to other parts of our lives. We expect only good to happen in our lives, even if we know that bad things happen too. We expect people to be as committed to our interests and causes, even if they have other interest and causes. We expect people to do only what is right, even if we ourselves often make mistakes and do the wrong things.
But yet this tree was saved, not by the owner but by the gardener. The gardener convinced the owner to give it another chance, to give it one more year to mature, to bear fruit. But yet the gardener was not going to leave it alone for the year, to withstand the elements on its own in the hopes that it may bear fruit. Instead the gardener was going to care for it, to nurture it, to tend to it, to put manure around it, he probably was also going to prune the tree and water it too. But let’s go back to that manure for a moment.
Manure is well manure, animal excrement. The stuff that makes your nose wrinkle and keeps people away. It is the stuff we flush down our toilets and hope we never have to think of again. And if for some reason, we do have to think of it again, that means there is something wrong with our sewer or septic system and then we are in deep….manure.
And yet out if this…manure, the stuff we often don’t want to think about, hopefully good will happen. Out of this excrement, out of waste, fruit will hopefully be produced.
Manure happens, bad things happen in our lives. The last verse of our second reading today which actually says “[God] 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” is often misquoted as “God will not give you more than you can handle.” Those two sayings are not the same.
When we build up our muscle strength we do it by pushing our muscles to the limit, to strain them, and after awhile what was once difficult becomes easy and our muscles grow. When you start lifting weights you may not be able to handle it, unable to complete as many reps as you would like, you may collapse in exhaustion at the end, but yet your strength grows. It sucks, it hurts, you feel weak and tired and it may take days to recover but you grow and you endure.
God gives us the strength to handle the tests given to us. But yet God is not the one who gave us those tests.
Shortly after my nephew was born, my sister called me. My sister has always wanted to be a mom but a few years ago she found out that she might not be able to get pregnant and while the pregnancy was not a difficult one, she did have to endure extra monitoring and test and have a c-section in order to make she that both she and the baby would survive. So during this phone call she asked me “Do you think God gave me all those medical problems and the harder pregnancy to test me? To make sure that I would be a good mom?”
That is a fairly normal question, one that many people have asked in some way. Do you think God was testing me to make sure that I am a good person?
And all I could reply to her was “God does not test you. God did not give you those medical problems. But God did give you the doctors and nurses who cared for you and treated you, a loving husband, parents and family who supported you and now has given you this beautiful baby.” Those tested were not given from God, they are part of life, they are the manure that is given to us in life and well manure happens.
But God is the one who gives us the strength and the support so that we can endure the manure. God is the one who tends to us, who nurtures us, who takes the manure, the stinky animal excrement, and makes good things happen out of it. God allows figs, sweet fruit, to produce out of the manure that can be our lives.
Manure is not always a bad thing. It may seem like it when it first happens, stuff that we don’t want to deal with, stuff that we just want to flush way. But sometimes good things come from the things which we want least. While God is not the one who tests us, gives us the manure, for that is definitely an earthly thing and not a godly thing, God is the one who gives us the strength, the nurturing so that we can produce sweet fruit.
God strengthens and nurtures us through the people who have been sent into our lives who love and care for us, family, friends, co-workers, fellow congregation members, and God strengthens and nurtures us through our faith. When we worship our faith is strengthen, when we give generously to others our faith is strengthen, when we read scriptures our faith is strengthen and when we offer up prayers our faith is strengthen. So let us strengthen our faith with prayer.
Let us pray:
God of strength, thank you for the ways you nurture us, the ways you care for and love us. Allow us to continue to grow in our strength and faith and endure any tests life gives to us. Allow us to bear sweet fruit. In your holy name we pray. Amen.
