My mom is blogging for her church too. Funnily enough, we didn't discuss these projects beforehand; we just discovered we had chosen the same Lenten discipline. She's a pastor in Gloucester, MA and left a gushy comment on here not long ago. One of her better entries is on the patience of God. And she turns to this image of God the gardener waiting gently on the fig tree to produce fruit. I love this idea of a patient God giving us what we need to thrive and then giving us the time and space to grow the bounty we were meant to give. As I think on ministry here at Hope Lutheran, we are producing fruit for the garderner. But we are also waiting...waiting for the nutrients God has mixed into our soil to do its work in us. We are waiting for two new pastors: an interim, then our called pastor, we are waiting on each other in the back of forth of organizing. I myself am waiting to be ordained. We are waiting on many things. It's not easy. But it is exciting.
Which brings me to the mysterious last line of the story: the man in charge tells the gardener that if the fig tree produces no fruit within a year, cut it on down. Some people interpret this as a kind of warning of our final judgement. Other people see it as Jesus' way of getting urgent as he implores us to repent. Still some see it as a dramatic moment...what will happen to the tree? The story never tells us. (See Matt Skinner again on workingpreacher.org). I'm going to take a different line -- I think the man tells the gardener to go ahead and cut if it bears no figs because the man KNOWS it will. There's just no question. When God tends to us, we won't be able to do anything BUT produce fruit. The man has total faith in his little tree.
Reflection
- How do you interpret this last line?
- What do figs and repentence have to do with each other?
- Who are you in the story: the man waiting, the tree nourished, the gardener tending, all of them?
How patient you are with us, O God. How patiently you water, feed, and sustain us. How patiently you wait for the fruit of our very beings to push its way from our depths. Amen
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