ONE MORE CHANCE

Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.  (Luke 13: 8, 9)

            If there is one thing most people cannot stand, it is urgency in religion. Just as plants cannot be rushed into blooming, so the soul must be allowed to pace itself in its quest for God.  The high pressure tactics of the unscrupulous televangelist repel us: preying on people’s fears; using death as a lever; pushing for a decision; threatening judgment on the unwilling or indifferent.

            The “in” thing today is to find a religion that you can “feel comfortable with” and to take your time going about it.  The March 5 issue of Presbyterian Outlook has some thoughts on what is called the emerging church or the postmodern church. The postmodern church is characterized by a world view and a shift in culture that moves from being scientific, analytical, institutional and mechanical, to one driven by the mystical, experiential, relational, and organic. All traits that you don’t rush into, but kind of allow them to happen. Another commented that the postmodern church is chaotic and ambiguous, seemingly un-centered, amorphous, and lacking in any kind of structure. Characteristics which celebrate the take it easy and take your time approach.

            In contrast to the take it easy and take your time notion, what do we make of the fact that Jesus lived and spoke with an unmistakable sense of urgency?   He was at home with the imperative mood. One needs a liberal supply of exclamation points to rightly punctuate his utterances! Almost everything he said or did created a need for decision. You couldn’t see or hear Jesus and calmly return to a game of horseshoes in your backyard.

            Consider for example the story that we heard as the gospel lesson for today. It is a sermon in itself and it fairly crackles with urgency. A man has a tree that has born no fruit for years. He asks his attendant to cut it down. The attendant begs for one more year and promises to tend the tree carefully. His are the closing lines: “If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

            There is little doubt that Jesus had Israel in mind when he spoke this parable. Israel had been carefully planted and richly cultivated, but its fruit was negligible and time was running out. We could spend a good safe 15 minutes now analyzing how and why Jesus’ religious contemporaries invited judgment on their head by their fruitlessness. But that is not the point. It never is. The point is to let his words explode in our ears and speak to our experience with the hope that our uselessness to the kingdom may be challenged.

            One more chance. That’s the message. It’s later than you think!

            The story turns on three subjects. An indignant owner, a fruitless tree, and a pleading attendant. The indignant owner treats us to a view of life from God’s side. It was, after all, the owner’s orchard. It was, after all, the owner’s tree. HE HAD A RIGHT TO COME EXPECTING FRUIT. We hear much these days about everybody’s rights: Women’s rights, Indian rights, prisoners’ rights, gay rights, lesbian rights, immigrant’s rights, children’s rights, and many more. But when did you last hear anyone speak about the rights of God! He came looking for fruit. He always does. It is his right.

            We all have a host of intermediary obligations: to ourselves, to our families, to our employer, to the state, to the world. It is easy enough to become so engrossed in these as to forget that our over-riding obligation is to God who created us that we might be productive. He comes saying, “Remember me?” I made you. I sustain you. I redeemed you. I endowed you with gifts and capacities. I commissioned you to serve me in this world. I fear that our understanding of stewardship is far too limited. What you do with your money is only part of it. What are you doing with your life?

             Then there was the fruitless tree. Not there by chance like some berry bush in the woods that was pollinated by the wind, this tree was deliberately planted in the orchard. It had been carefully cultivated, watered, pruned and fertilized. It was a wanted tree. It had been, and still was, the beneficiary of a considerable investment.   

            There are thousands of men and women like that tree, even in the church.  From their youth up they have received the care and attention of others. People have invested time in them. Their parents have nurtured and cared for them. The state has protected them. The church has educated and called them to service. And they have yet to start producing!

            I have in mind here the sorrowful souls who are so narrowly horizoned as to live for nothing but themselves. Minus people- always taking in and never putting out. They have the foliage (that is, the appearance, but not the fruit. They sap the life out of the church and the world but never put anything back. Fortunately WPC is not known to be comprised of such. On the contrary, what we celebrate is who we are in mission, as for example those who a week ago went off to help in Mississippi, and returned with glowing reports yesterday.

            The last figure in this story is the husbandman, or the attendant. What does he stand for? Well, if we try to allegorize this story we will really be in trouble theologically. But in Rabinnic literature God’s attributes frequently have conversations with each other. Such is the case in this story. God’s mercy is in dialogue with his judgment. There is the tension. Cut it down! Give it one more year. Cut it down, One more year… and then…

            Apparently, God takes his righteousness, or judgment, seriously, even if we do not. It is the duty of a minister to say that God is not the easy mark that we have of him. Life is for real. Anything doesn’t go. A friend of mine is fond of a cartoon that shows Moses back on the mountain reporting to God about the reception of the Ten Commandments. The patriarch tells God that 73% are in favor of one through five, that 41% find number six unfair, and that 13% are opposed to number seven. As though God must be confirmed by somebody or other’s poll! Do you read Kudzu? In the March 5  issue of the Herald-Sun, Kudzu the preacher is kneeling, and says, “This poll just in, Lord.” In the second box he says, “I hate to break it to you, but your approval rating has slipped under fifty percent!” In the third box a gigantic lightening bolt slams on Kudzu. In the final box, with the preacher in a puddle, comes the thought, “Polls don’t impress the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!”

            If history is headed to a fairy tale ending in which all live happily ever after, the Bible has a strange way of communicating it. For when the ark was finished in the time of the flood God shut Noah in, and others out. When Moses gathered Israel about him in his old age he said, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore, choose life!

            Jesus spoke of a broad way that leads to death and a narrow way that leads to life. Period. He told of five bridesmaids who ran out of oil and missed the bridegroom when he came. He spoke of a judge at the very end who would say to some, “Depart from me,” and to others, “Come ye blessed of my father.  No minister can be faithful to the whole council of God who does not speak to the urgency that runs through the scriptures.

            But this must be the last word. Always, there is grace, figured here in the husbandman. Each of us has felt the double thrust of judgment and grace. The husbandman did not deny the owner’s allegations. It was all true… the tree had been there for a long time and it had shown nothing. He still pleaded that the tree be spared. I’ll cultivate it some more. I’ll loosen the earth around it to give the air, the sun and the rain another chance.

            One more chance. What else can the story mean but that? Some chance in your life will be the last chance. No one has forever. At some point a rejection will be a final rejection and a drift will harden into a destiny.

            I’m not interested in judging anyone this morning. I’ve got enough problems with my own response to the gospel. All I’m saying is that God’s patience has its limits. If we are wearing on God’s patience we know who we are. John Calvin, always in his tell it like it is commentary, said of this story, “The substance of it is, that many are endured for a time who deserve to be cut off; but that they gain nothing by the delay, if they persist in their obstinacy.

            Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.

Prayer

Lord, give us in this Lenten season a sober estimate of where we are with you.

Deliver us from the influences of bad religion in which sentiment prevails over truth.

And give us, most of all, the wisdom to discern the difference between things that matter, and that which matters most.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.