Sermon: “Looking for Fruit, Explanations & Faith.”
One of the true blessings of living in Southern California is the combination of Sunshine and Fruits. How blessed it is to be able in the month of March to walk into your garden and pick wipe oranges, mandarins and lemons. Or to pick the many healthy green avocadoes hanging in an abundance on our tree.
As a Dane, I really have never gotten used to this or tired of this fruit access, even after almost 20 years here.
It is a blessing.
It is abundance.
It is nature’s finest and gracious gift.
Some years ago, we had a dwarf Peach tree in the garden. Despite its small size it was beautifully blooming every year and gave us an incredible harvest of ripe juicy healthy small peaches. Each of them a bite of sunshine and pleasure. In Californias climate, peach trees can bloom anywhere from late winter to early spring. With the most beautiful stunning pink flowers enchanting every garden and promising a bountiful harvest in late Spring/ early Summer.
At Harvest we savored the peaches: there were simply too many to enjoy at one time. So, we shared. I made peach jam. Peach cobblers. Peach salads. Peach Breakfast.
Then one spring the beautiful little tree did look quite barren. Some of the branches were dead and hardly any small buds or flowers were found. So, we pruned it as good gardeners. Cut some of the barren branches. Fertilize the dirt. Watered it. Nurtured it. Just one more year.
That year we only had a few peaches, and the tree looked increasingly barren. The following year it was completely barren, and all the branches were dead. We cut it further down, just to keep trying. Give it one more year, we thought.
Finally, we had to cut it down completely.
No more fruit, No more abundance. No more life to share. But we kept on trying and believing to the very end.
What is the purpose of a peach tree? To bear fruit? To bloom? To grow? To be? Is it worth anything or any trouble when it is barren and dying? Why bother? Why keep trying?
I do think that being a believer part of our DNA is to keep trying. Keep believing. Keep hoping, Keep loving.
The parable of Jesus about the Fig tree planted in the vineyard has so many layers to unfold, so many meanings to us and so much Gospel, - but let me begin with the words of Jesus just prior to his parable.
Jesus was talking to the people who were pressing in on him and pressing him like any persisting paparazzi journalist for him to have an opinion on some horrific tragedies and deaths of that time. Events now lost to history but vivid on that day. This was what people were talking about: cultic sacrifices mingled by Pontius Pilate with Galilean blood, a tall Tower in Siloam that crushed 18 people in its sudden fall. It was the scary news of that day, as we watch and witness and comment on our daily scary news of horrific violence against a 14 year old boy in San Bernardino walking home from school, a 3 year old child slipping through a sliding door and drowning in the pool, a deadly crash on 405.
Jesus was speaking into the scary news and our sometimes very misguided human ways of trying to explain the suffering, the devastation and the deaths.
When people suffer, especially the ones we know and love, we often rush to name a reason for their suffering, trying to explain maladies as mere preparation for greater blessings, to minimize pain to make way for God’s Glory. As someone once told me when she was terminal ill of cancer: “Most everyone I meet is dying to make me certain. They want me to know, with a doubt, that there is a hidden logic to this seeming chaos.” Everything happens for a reason. You just need more faith. God will never give you more than you can candle.
In my life and in my call as a pastor I have seen my share of wonderful faithful people suffering unimageable losses and suffering – and often we can not handle and carry the burdens. Only if others refrain from explaining and instead listen with compassion and empathy and stay.
Our eagerness to find explanations and reason in everything, we might have swept away pain or simply stayed away as we could not handle it.
From the vantage of our privileges, protections and positions, we might explain that poverty and illness are but the outcomes of a series of poor individual decisions. We might assume that any sickness and disaster are but lines between the cursed and the truly blessed. Just pray more.
It is very human that we tend to rush to a mind of reason to explain instead of rushing to a heart that cracks open with tears, empathy and compassion.
Possibly because we want explanations. We want to know why. We want to control this complex world and life. Possible because our time of reason, explanations, control and privilege does not leave us time to sit with pain in a spiritual religious way.
I cherish how Jesus is present in this complicated, scary, unpredictable life of ours. I cherish how Jesus spent time with the afflicted, the sick, the dying and the despairing. I cherish that Jesus is direct in his speech.
Death, Jesus explains, is not purposeful or meaningful. Death does pursue us all, whether we fall victims of fatal accidents, terminal illness or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death is coming for us all.
Death does not have a meaning. Life does. That is why we keep believing. Keep trying, keep hoping. Keep loving. Despite everything that hurts, we cannot explain.
To illustrate this faith, Jesus, tells the story about a tree.
A man grows frustrated with a fig tree he has planted. The tree will not bloom or produce. It is barren. It produces nothing. It is useless. He is ready to uproot it and spare the soil from hosting these lazy roots.
But the gardener intercedes. Asking for one more year of nurture, cultivation and hope. Give it one more year, he asks. There is still hope even for this fruitless tree.
One more year. Just one more year.
Doesn’t that sound familiar? When we fight illness, depression, devastation, Just give us more time.
Some might say what the point is. The tree is barren, there is no life. Might as well move on. WE only see waste, not possibility. We only see loss, not courage or resilience.
Some might say try it. Give it more time. The gardener saw possibilities where others saw impossibility.
We should pray that the Holy moving Spirit took away our deep instinct to explain everything, the want to understand everything, to make sense, - and redirect our mind and heart.
The towers might fall. The cars might crash. Our loved ones might be sick. But we are like a fig tree, given one more chance despite years of not bearing fruit. We are waiting for something or someone to cultivate us, nurture us, water us.
What if the spirit can help us overcome our desire to understand, order and explain and dare us to make the leap of faith instead where we can find hope, faith and love.
What if the spirit can help us shift our instincts to compassion and empathy first before explanation? So, when we encounter suffering, tragedies, despair and loneliness our first gesture might be to sit alongside those who suffer, to join them in their grief, to pray and keep trying, believing, hoping for Gods’ grace just to give one more year, more life, more hope, more love and more peace.
Like Desmon Tutu says: Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.
Hope is being able to see possibilities despite all the impossibilities.
Hope is being able to say one more year, despite our barren trees.
Hope is to keep trying, keep believing, keep loving, and keep trusting in God’s Abundant Grace.