“A Gardener God”

Luke 13:1-9    Isaiah 55:1-9

March 7, 2010     Third Sunday in Lent

First Congregational UCC/Reverend Deb Davis                  

     Have you ever heard someone say something like this before … something like:

     “For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree … and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?”

     Maybe you’ve heard the voice of an angry parent … who tells his son: “For years I’ve waited for you to amount to something … to show some initiative. I’m afraid you will never amount to anything.”

     Or maybe you’ve heard the voice of a fellow American … who says of undocumented people living in this country … “All they do is use up our resources … and live off the government … and take up space they don’t deserve to take up.”

     Or maybe you’ve sensed our culture’s voice … saying this person life is worth more than that ones … … because this one is well educated … or she has a lot of money … or he knows the right people.

     There are any number of situation when we might hear words like these from this morning’s gospel … maybe from people we know … maybe from media personalities … or maybe from ourselves on some days … … on those days when we are feeling holier than thou … and making judgments … and are just convinced … that even if pounds and pounds of fertilizer were available … this person or that person will never do much for the world … isn’t producing fruit of any kind … is merely taking up space … and wasting good soil.

     Yes … these words sound like they could come from a whole lot of people … in a whole lot of situations … we’ve probably all heard them or said them … … but the one place they don’t sound like they could come from … the one place that I would not expect to hear these words … is from God.

     Not from the God who tells us this morning … through the Prophet Isaiah … that we are invited to a free banquet … invited to come and buy wine and milk without money and without price … the God who throughout the Hebrew Bible … just wants the people to return … no questions asked … this God that provides us with heavy hope.

     These verses from Isaiah that Norm read for us … offer us what might be described as the heart of the biblical message: God loves us, no matter what, and reaches out to us even in the worst of times … making promises that God will give us what we most need: homecoming when we are lost … a rich feast when we are hungry … flowing water to satisfy our thirst … a community of hope when we long for meaning in our lives.

     Underlying this text … there is this deep, deep compassion for all people … and for all the messes we get ourselves into … for all the things that keep us from bearing fruit … all the things that keep us from deeply loving God and neighbor … and therefore having the abundant life God wants for us.

     Like a committed gardener … ensuring good soil and water … pruning and trimming and fertilizing … God never gives up on what we might yet become … … and the only thing that can exclude us from that love … is our own insistent that there are other places we would rather be.

     Yet there are many who have tried to put those words from Luke’s gospel into God’s mouth … that’s often how this parable is taught … that if we don’t shape up God is going to do away with us … … but I see God much more as the gardener in this story … a gardener who year after year … despite what we do or fail to do … says, “Let’s give it one more shot” … a gardener who defends the tree against the worldly expectations of the owner … the God who gives us as many second chances as we need.

     The God … of whose grace the author Anne Lamott writes: “I do not understand the mystery of grace … only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”

     Or like a friend once told Lamott when she was at a very low point in her own life … believing God couldn’t possible love her, “God has to love you … that’s God’s job.”

     And so this morning … I’d like us to think about this parable Jesus tells about the fig tree … and think of God as the gardener … the one that cares for all those that the world … that we … might see as “less than” ... as unimportant … as dispensable … as just using up good soil.

     And then think about what this means for our lives … what amazing promise that provides for us with all of our shortcomings and warts and baggage … as well as for all those other people … that we think are a waste of time.

     We continue this week … further and further along our Lenten journey … deeper and deeper into this season of the church year that is a time for making decisions about who God is … and the way we choose to live our lives.

     Again on this third Sunday in Lent … the lectionary gives us a story of how generous our God is … which … if we could actually take that into our souls … if we could actually believe it … might provide us with the security … with the safety net … … might give us the courage … to risk some truth telling about ourselves … risk some healing … risk opening ourselves up to God’s grace.

     Because we all know … those people that we look at with judgment … those we think are just a waste of good soil … probably remind us of ourselves … my hunch is if we would be willing to look deeply enough at those we judge … we might find ourselves looking back at us.

     We might at least discover what it is that we fear … if we were willing to take the time to look.

     But so much in life keeps us busy and distracted … so we don’t look deeply … but I suspect it is our own hunger … our own thirst … our own homesickness … that leads to the fear that causes us to say “cut it down … it’s pointless trying to save it … it is of no use” … … because at some deep level … we believe that about ourselves.

     We turn our back on blessing … and then that allows us to turn our back on others … allows us to perpetuate the fiction that says God must like us because we are prosperous … and God doesn’t like them because they are poor … or in prison … or undocumented.

     Now let me be clear here about what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that with God “anything goes” … not at all … right there in Isaiah the text says, “let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts” … nor am I saying that we have to accept the behavior of people who hurt us and hurt others. I’m not talking about not having consequences.

     But we do need to be reminded … that most often it is the safety net of love and forgiveness – along with challenge … that allows human behavior to change … most often … it is love and forgiveness that provides the fertilizer … that a fruitless tree needs if it is ever to produce fruit.

     One of you asked me recently if I thought there were people so broken they couldn’t be fixed. And then you told me a story of a young boy who was acting out …whose parents hold told him he couldn’t be fixed … a young boy who had probably accepted his parents’ assessment as true and was trying to prove them right.

     We have probably all heard of such cases.

     But in God’s world … there are no such people … I don’t think God ever gives up ... on anyone. And therefore the church can’t either.

     Always … as a community … we are called to be a place of welcome. This is sometimes hard for us to do as individuals … but together we are strong enough to do it … to be that place of nourishment … of life … because we do not know what hungry … thirsty … or homesick people might walk through our doors … or which ones are already here.

     So on those days when you can not find any compassion for those you feel are just wasting good soil … bring that feeling here … so others can remind you of God’s amazing grace … and in that way be reminded that God’s grace is available to you as well.

       In that way … we can convey God as large – as larger than anything we can imagine … large enough to show compassion and to forgive and to accept … even when we … by ourselves … can not offer it to others … or ourselves.

      This table we come to today … symbolizes all the love this gardener God has for each of us … that’s why all are welcome … why all are invited … not by me or by you … but by the Body of Christ … by our God … this God who gives us another chance and another and yet another.

     There is a short story by JRR Tolkien … the author we know best for his Lord of the Rings trilogy. This short story is about a man named Niggle … who loves to paint although he isn’t very good.

    Niggle is a pretty average guy … who although irritated by the interruptions from his neighbor needing his help … most of the time helps him anyway … grumbling all the while.

     All in all … he’s a like most of us … nothing great but not too bad.

     One day Niggle dies and enters what appears to be purgatory … where he eventually learns about things he refused to learn about in life … a place where he has all the time he needs … and has to work pretty hard to straighten out his thinking.

     And then one day he hears two voices outside his door. Voice One is pretty critical of him … bringing up all the things he did wrong in life … the mistakes he made. Voice One argues that he needs quite a bit more time in purgatory.

     But Voice Two … who we learn has the ultimate say … argues that Niggle’s heart was usually in the right place … and Voice One responds, “Yes, but it did not function properly” … and back and forth the two go … continuing to argue over Niggle.

     And finally Voice Two decides: “I think this is a case for a little gentle treatment now.”

     Now all the while Niggle has been listening … and he decides he has never heard anything so generous as Voice Two … and suddenly he felt ashamed.

     To hear that he was considered a case for gentle treatment overwhelmed him and made him blush in the dark. It was like being publicly praised … when you and all the audience knew that the praise was not deserved.   

     We are all so tended … by Voice Two … by that gardener God … by amazing grace. Amen.