“Life is Short… Stay Awake for It.”
Isaiah 55:1-9
Luke 13:1-9
Pastor CONTACT _Con-3D0BC2301 \c \s \l Melanie Hammond Clark
March 7, 2010
I must confess I really don’t like these parables where Jesus actually does sound like a relative of John the Baptist. “Repent or perish” is not how I like to think of Jesus. I can handle it from his crazy cousin in camel’s hair, but Jesus? Please, no.
So what then do we do with this story of the barren tree?
In her sermon “On Cutting the Fig Tree”, Joanna Adams notes, “You must always remember that every parable that (Jesus) told, whether it was about a lost coin or a rich fool or a prodigal son, was spoken to a particular and concrete situation. The parable of the fig tree was addressed to the covenant people to whom much had been given and from whom God was expecting a great deal, but was being sorely disappointed. The people had asked Jesus about two tragic events – one, the collapse of a tower; the other, a massacre that had taken place in the temple. They had wanted to know if these were signs of God’s divine judgment against those who had lost their lives. Jesus had little patience with the abstract question, ‘Does God cause people to suffer because of their sins?’ What he was more interested in was in having the people to whom he spoke realize their own responsibility for the way they lived their lives before God and for the commitment of the faith community to the purposes of God. To that end, he told them a story that allowed them to listen in on the internal debate that takes place within the heart of God. In the discussion between the gardener and the owner, the debate between ‘justified judgment’ and merciful grace becomes audible: Cut it down! No, let’s give the tree a little more time.
“This conversation should not have been a new one for the children of Israel,” says Adams. “As they read their scriptures, they would have encountered the prophet Hosea overhearing the same debate: ‘I shall bring Israel to desolation… I shall pour out my wrath upon them… But then, how can I give them up…? How can I hand them over…? My compassion grows warm and tender’ (Hosea 5:9-10; 11:8-9).
I think we are so used to the street preachers and television evangelists that when we hear the word “Repent” all we can think of are judgmental scowls and haunting signs of wrath. Repentance has been flung to the basement of our mainline protestant house like a discarded piece of memorabilia that we’d rather not discuss.
But repentance is a word that is for us, not against us. Movie images of the grim reaper and auditory messages of the hateful preacher make it hard for us to hear Jesus’ voice in its concern for us, to see Jesus’ face in its pure pain for our choices. Jesus deals with us not in gleeful judgment but in heart-rending compassion – compassion based in the reality that he cannot, God will not, make us do anything against our will. All God can do is keep laying out the reality of our choices and their consequences. Jesus asks us to repent, to literally “turn around”, so we can see God again, see ourselves again, and see the risks and responsibilities in front of us before we throw away our only chance at this life and the life to come.
As the Caribou Coffee slogan I like so much says: “Life is short…Stay awake for it.”
Really, that is what Jesus is saying. Don’t distract yourself with how others are doing or what others are not doing. God doesn’t grade on a curve. In fact, God doesn’t grade at all. God deals with each of us according to what we have been given to work with, according to what God’s intent is for us. We don’t find that out by reading a rule book or getting mass instructions that apply to all people for every situation. No, God speaks relationally, not informationally. Life is not about knowing enough to get a passing grade. It is about listening to and learning from God so we can be mentored, guided, and empowered to be our best selves; not for our own purposes but for God’s.
C.S. Lewis wisely reminds us, “Repentance is not something God demands of you before God will take you back and which God could let you off if he chose; it is simply a description of what going back to God is like. The past hanging thickly over us needs to be remembered in order to be forgotten… Repentance is for our sakes, not to punish us but to free us from the harmful effects of accumulated sin,” effects that cloud our perspective, disguise our real needs, separate us from God, and lead us to trivial, if not fully destructive, ways of life… and ways of death.
I know when I read today’s parable it does feel like a warning about ways of death. It hits me like a scary threat. But if I read it in the context of all I know about Jesus, if I read it in the context of all of Scripture, then I am reminded that Jesus came so that we might have life and have it abundantly. So while we can choose to hear the fig tree story as a warning to be prepared to die, as I considered the text more fully it seems to me that its real lesson is to be more prepared to live.
We all know, whether from our own experience or from someone else’s, that when we are faced with a life threatening situation we are scared to death. But then, if we come through it, we are awakened to life. Jesus faces us with our death that we might be awakened to our life. In today’s gospel, Jesus did not tell us why tyrants are given free reign or why towers fall. Our answers are found only through other questions: “Why was I given life? What will I do with this one short life?”
You know the 9/11 survivors ask those questions. You know the survivors of recent devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chili will be asking the same things. Disease, traffic accidents, crime, emotional disorders, random violence… Life is filled with seething, unrelieved ambiguities. Unlike Pat Robertson, Jesus affirms that these calamities are not God’s doing to punish us. As Philip Yancey helpfully reminds us, “Don’t confuse life with God.” But still, these heart-wrenching, life-threatening calamities stand as painfully graphic reminders that life is fragile.
In her sermon “Life Giving Fear”, Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that it is not a bad thing for us to feel the full fragility of our lives. It is not a bad thing for us to count our breaths in the dark; not if it makes us turn toward the light.
“That torn place your fear has opened up inside you is a holy place. Look around while you are there. Pay attention to what you feel. It may hurt you to stay there, and it may hurt you to see, but it is not the kind of hurt that leads to death. It is the kind that leads to life.”
Is part of you perishing? In Isaiah’s words, “Have you been spending your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Repent, turn around, change direction, look at God whose loving gaze is set upon you, waiting, waiting for your return.
I don’t know what goodness, what brave commitment, what tender-hearted spirit God may have planted in your heart long ago that needs attention and nurture to thrive, but I am certain there is something in you waiting to be born that would make this community a better community, that would make your profession more honorable, that would make your home more loving, that would make this church even more vibrant with compassion and care. It does not have to be a big thing; it just has to be you. Turn toward God. Grow toward the Light. There is something in you that is waiting to blossom forth.
Don’t take this good news lightly; take it seriously. Life is fragile. Life is short. Stay awake for it. Amen.