“Choices 4: Choosing the Manure Way” - Sermon for Lent 3, Feb. 28, 2016

“Choosing the Manure Way”

Sermon, Year C, Lent 3, February 28, 2016 

© Rev. David J. Huber

Focus Scripture: Luke 13:1-9

(there is no recording of this sermon, or of the worship service)

Jesus taught a lot in parables. Parables are short stories that offer one or more characters doing whatever, and that leads to a moral question or teaching. But they are fairly open-ended because they are designed not to make one specific, concrete point, but to provide something to think about. So parables can have multiple meanings. There can also be a temptation when reading parables, or thinking about them, to think that one character in the parable must be God (or perhaps representing Jesus), one character who represents the wrong position, one who represents the correct position… but they rarely work that way. God is not necessarily a character in the parables. 

But in this parable of the fig tree, we might ask the question of how does the parable read if we put God in different positions. What if God is the vineyard owner that wants to cut the tree down? That gives, maybe, a little different vision of God than we are used to thinking of. Then who is the one who wants to save the tree - perhaps Jesus? A faithful disciple? Someone willing to speak up against God doing an act of injustice?

Or what if God is the one who wants to save the tree? If that one is God, then perhaps that makes the vineyard owner the Roman Empire. Or could it be the scribes? Pharisees? You?

Or what if - and bear with me on this one, because it’s going to sound weird, but I think it’s legitimate - what if God is the manure? Te fertilizer? The catalyst and source of growth? What if the gardener who wants to save the tree is spreading God around the roots of the tree? 

That’s a powerful image, I think. The image that we grow if we have God spread around us at our roots, and if our roots are firmly grounded in God and covered with the the nutrient-rich fertilizer of God’s presence.

And if the manure is God, then could mean that the gardener is just a regular schlub like you and like me, which means that we, too, have the power to spread God around the roots of other people. 

Or, as is also the case in parables, maybe it’s just a story about a man who wants to take down a non-productive tree, and another man who says, “No - I know a better way.” 

It’s poetic, isn’t it?

Or to rephrase it in terms of our Lenten theme of “choices”, it could look like this:

“I choose to cut down this tree because it is non-productive.”

“No, I choose to resist your idea, and offer a choice of a better way. Let me fertilize it and give it some love.”

“Okay, I choose to be patient about the tree, and let you do that.”

That looks nice, doesn’t it? The man chooses to help the tree grow instead of cutting it down.

We are talking about choices this Lent.

Let’s build on last week. Last week was Jesus lamenting that Jerusalem is the place that stones the prophets and kills those who are sent to it. Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem at this point. In fact, the passage we read last week occurs shortly after this one. So he is, in a sense, lamenting the lack of people in Jerusalem who want to help the trees grow. In last week’s sermon, we talked about whether to choose throw stones at that which gets in our way, irritates us, challenges us, forces us to change… or whether we choose not to throw the stone.

I left you with a mission to take a stone from the bowl of stones on our prayer station, and keep it with you for the week. Put it in your pocket or purse, some place where you would encounter it often, as a reminder not to throw it. A reminder to be more aware of how you are making choices. To remind you to ask the question as you are making a choice, “Is this a choice that moves me forward along Jesus’ path, the path to Jerusalem, or a way that leads me off the path?”

I said to bring your stone today and put it back in the bowl to see if we have as many stones today as we did last week, which would mean we were all faithful about not throwing it.

But as I went through this week with that stone in my pocket, I found myself being much more aware about how I make choices, in a good way, than I normally am. Even more so than I expected knowing that I would have the stone in my pocket. I don’t want to give up my stone, and I’m keeping it in my pocket. I’m going to carry it the rest of Lent because it made a difference in me. In unexpected ways. I’m actually quite surprised. I don’t know what your experience was - and I would like to hear what your experience was - but for me it has been a much more significant one than I thought it would be, in a very positive, faith-growing way. Especially so in my interactions with other people, of which I had many this week. Which perhaps is why the stone felt so present. Maybe if I hadn’t been around people this week it would not have been as powerful. Who knows? I‘d like to think the stone would have been as present a reminder to me, but that could just be pretending to be more faithful and self-aware than I really am.

This week I was at Northstar middle school on Tuesday as a judge for their National History Day projects that the 8th graders do. I met some great people, saw some that I knew, and experienced some truly creative and intelligent teenagers. There were many really impressive displays. I was there for the full day, and the stone was in my pocket, tempering my critiques and my interactions with the students, with my fellow judges, with the school staff. Then I was at Sojourners on Thursday night. Last night, Saturday night, we had a pizza party at the YMCA for some of the families who are served by the County’s Coordinated Services Team, which I’m the clergy representative for. 

The stone was a constant reminder not to throw it. But not just to keep from doing a negative, it also served to remind me to be more positive. To be more careful. To lift up, to be positive, to be gentle.

As a follower of Jesus, I want always to grow in my followership, grow in faith, grow in fidelity to following this path that Jesus sets before us. The path that our worship team has symbolically represented here in the sanctuary with this cloth and the prayer stations, leading up to the tomb and the cross.

That stone in my pocket helped me stay focused. And most importantly, it helped me grow.

And growth is a theme of this parable about the fig tree.

Jesus is pro-growth.

A fig tree gives no fruit, and it’s old enough that it should be producing. 

“Cut it down!” the owner says.

“You only get one chance, and you blew it!” he says.

“Prepare to meet the fate you deserve for not being like other trees your age, for not conforming to my expectations, for not meeting my needs, for not being a productive member of fig tree society!”

“Down with it!”

A stone throwing moment? Or was he fully justified to choose destruction of the tree because of its failure?

Hmmm…

And then the gardener speaks up, to ask for leniency. “Give it another try. It just needs some tender love, some fertilizer, some injection of God around its roots. Let it go for a year, and see if it produces fruit. Choose life over death. Choose nurturing over destruction. Choose patient perseverance, even though it means breaking the rules about what is valuable and what isn’t, and even though it requires some sacrifice, instead of doing what’s logical, expedient, or normal.”

Choices.

We are always faced with choices. 

And we are all fig trees that at times are not bearing fruit, or not bearing fruit that is as good as we are capable. Who, with some cultivation and loving fertilizer, can make even better fruit, if only someone chooses to believe in us. The gardeners in our life. And our neighbors are also broken fruit trees, who, with some cultivation and loving fertilizer, can make even better fruit if only we choose to believe in them, as God chooses to believe in us. 

For we, too, can be gardeners. Choose even to be the fertilizer, choose to help others grow as God chooses us. Choose to invite people into the garden that is Plymouth to be nurtured, fed, tended, and have God spread around their roots. To choose to let God work through us, and for us, so that we may produce better fruit of God’s imagining. To choose the way of life and growth for ourselves and others just as God has already made a choice for us.

“Let me put some manure around its roots, and let it go for another year. This is a better way.”

Let us pray: Tending, growing God, you work so hard tending to our roots to help us grow and bear good spirit fruit. You have made a choice for us. Help us to accept your choice, and to make a choice for others. Help us always, please, to make more faithful choices. Amen.