Also, at the same time, Lent is a time to slow down and reflect and just discover God in nature, friendships, and whatever feeds our souls. Here is my sermon of last week to help us "feed our roots" (souls).
Lent 3 2013
Luke 13:1-9
God’s Grace in Suffering: The Parable of the Fig Tree
| A beautiful fig tree leaf with fruit |
For four days this week I thought that the hero/heroine of this story is the fig tree.
How many of you have seen fig trees? Leaf is from Mousa and Kris’s sun room in Essex.
Googled, fossils founds 12, 00 years ago, close to Jericho, the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. Even before wheat was cultivated, people in drier climates Middle East, Mediterranean cultivated figs; the fruit is delicious and nutritious, and the trees provide shade in dry desert climates and habitat for birds. In Genesis, Adam and Eve had fig trees!~
I’ve seen and loved large, towering fig trees in Italy; so large they don’t I’m sure need much manure; the figs droop and drop down, walking under then the delicious fruit smell wafts through the air.
I’ve also seen and stopped by fig trees, in Brooklyn, planted by people yearning for their homeland (Palestine, Italy), scrawny in about this much dirt and apartment building on one side and sidewalk on the other. Barely making leaves, rarely fruit.
A fig tree needs care, burlap over them in winter (for those I’ve seen in New Jersey) and fertilizer, from animals or maybe Jake’s liquid fertilizer from his worm bin, poured on the soil to nourish the roots, which, by the way, are extensive and deep to keep the tree alive in droughts and difficult environments.
This fig tree that the owner sees is barren, little seems to be happening, the juice of life has gone out.
A person living in Dismas of Vermont, which has residential programs to help ex-prisoners make the transition from prison to the community and a life of harmony and fruitfulness, wrote:
“Have you ever had a period in your life when indecision, confusion, dissatisfaction with your current position in life, and an overall feeling of helplessness had consumed you? Thrown up your hands and proclaimed “no mas”? It’s a veritable cornucopia of negative feelings and emotions that can be defeated only with help, and lots of it. A great support system, where people understand situations of this nature and will help someone start anew without judgment, a nurturing environment [that is Dismas House]”.
Or is the main character the owner, who says the truth, doesn’t mince words, and strips away denial: “You have no fruit.” Or, you are a goat, when I was hungry you did not feed me, thirsty, you did not give me drink, naked and you did not clothe me.”
And continues, unless you change and grow into who I meant you to be, into your full potential, you will feel that you have missed out, and it will gnaw at you, and you will become cynical, envious of others who seem to have it better or have more; you will be biter and sad and judgmental.
And if the owner really gets going, he or she may say “you will never bear fruit again, your life is over; you are not of use to anyone; you are lost. You may as well curse life and die.”
Or is the main character the Gardener? “Come unto me all you who are weary and I will give you rest…for your souls.” It’s OK to be barren now, for a time; yes to have lost your creativity and not know what to do. It may seem like death…but..wait.
The Lenten study book’s [Falling Upwards: Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life] author Fr. Richard Rohr may speak the words of the Gardener: There are two halve of life, roughly divided by middle age. The first is outer focused, a career, a family, a worldly identity, building a container.
The second is an inner journey, an inner task to find the essence of the container, which is the soul.
And, speaking like a caring Gardener, there is no avoiding, in the change from the first to the second half, experiences that feel like death, failure suffering, loss, breakdown, powerlessness, barrenness.
Why? Because life itself knows cycles; winter and sinner; death that nourishes life. The Gardener says sometimes this is called the Dark Night of the Soul (which is a territory entered by people and perhaps even now the church); where the outer fruits (success in life; hundreds of people filling church pews) is no more; but there is deeper growth, and that takes time and nourishment; time to take in manure; to see that waiting yields insight like shoots that rise from ashes; that God is not a venture capitalist, focused on growth and profit and appealing new products for spiritual consumption but is rather a Gardener, attuned to the natural cycles of life and to what is underground and to the vulnerable, and who knows how to nourish roots.
The Gardener says “You don’t have to white knuckle solutions to the feeling experience of barrenness, of grief, aloneness, smallness, and fear of (evidence of) the real problems that rightly scare you: church decline, violence, greed, hunger, diminishment of my beautiful forests and rivers and streams…
Behold, I make all things new, even you;
In order to bear fruit, you need friends, people who say they love you, and time, and not panic; God’s time is different, and isn’t about to cut you off at the knees.
Can you accept the idea that you are not doing fabulous things. Bearenness is needed in order to usher in a deeper reality; it happens again and again throughout Lent and life.
We are like the ex-prisoner, needing a nurturing environment and people who love and are not judgmental; we are the hero and heroine who need to go through suffering to deepen spiritually, as in the 12-steps we are powerless.
What do you need that nourishes you? It’s not us ourselves that makes this happen; barennness helps us realize we need to wait…and rely on God in our need.
One parishioner spoke about her year of grief; going down deeply spiritually, trusting God and friends; and seeing nature as giving her insight…
To stand like that fig tree and be cared for isn’t so bad; is it possible that the owner is the super-ego,, demanding that we bear external fruit that is different from the purpose God wants to give us?
“Dark Night of the Church”—essay in the Christian Century, Rev. Tony Robinson, applied St. John of the Cross’ famous dark night imagery to the church: “ God at work wrenching our alluring memories of social prominence and significance from our minds, ripping dreams of fame and fortune from our imaginations?” Moving beyond the container to the essence.
God creates the Dark Night to strengthen faith in God, to realize our fundamental union with God in love. Sociological studies reveal a church in decline: conflict, aging, lack of young adults; church history rooms filled with trophies from the church’s softball team are rarely visited; the church in Europe and America has lost its social prominence.
Theological reality is different: Strength and life come from trust in God, not ourselves. What does God have to say about this, about us, we are asking in this time of envisioning, of long range planning? Could it be that the most important thing to do is wait and trust and be fed by God? That, contrary to the panicked need for answers or even an out, there is time enough to grow in depth of faith in God? Truly liberated from union with God in love will we be delighted in God’s good time by the fruits we will bear?
Blessings, Pr. Nancy
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