When I first saw the wonderful parsonage that this church has for
its Senior Pastor up on 19th Street, I feel in love with it right
away. Why? Because there was a big, beautiful jacaranda tree in the
front yard in full bloom and jacaranda trees are one of my favorite
things about living in southern California. I know some people don’t
like them because the blossoms are sticky and messy. But what could
be more beautiful than a lawn covered with those gorgeous lavender
blossoms? And there was one, in what would become my front yard. I
would get to see that beautiful carpet of blossoms every year, every
spring, just by looking out the front window.
But
a couple years ago, its blossoms and its leaves became more and more
sparse. The wonderful man who is the gardener at our parsonages and
here at the church, Joel Gomez, consulted with me. He was very gentle
and understanding, but what he had to tell me was not what I wanted
to hear. “The tree is going to need to come out, Patricia. It’s
old. It’s dying.” I pleaded and he agreed to wait and
see for another year. He pruned it and fertilized it and we monitored
its watering schedule. I said little prayers for my jacaranda. But
though I didn’t want to admit it, it got worse instead of better.
And finally Joel said: “Patricia, it’s got to come down.
I’m afraid that in a strong wind, one of those big branches
could come down and fall on the roof!”
Very
reluctantly, I finally agreed and the tree came down. That day, Joel
came by to comfort me and to commiserate about losing a tree that
has really become a friend. But I have to say that on a couple of
those very windy nights we had this winter, I was grateful to not
have to worry about a branch falling on the house. And as much as
I still miss that tree, the gardener was right. It was time. The old
jacaranda wasn’t bearing fruit, as the gospel-writer would say.
It had to go in order to make space for something new to happen. And
soon a new tree is going to be planted in our front yard.
Now
I’m not a gardener, myself. I’m not patient enough. Well,
I am patient with people. I’m not a “my way or the highway”
kind of person. I’m just not very patient with plants. But several
of my great-grandparents were gardeners and farmers and from the stories
I’ve heard over the years, I’ve learned that they bring
a strange mix of patience and rather brutal realism to what they do.
On the one hand, they are patient with the soil and with their crops.
They know how to read what’s going on with the earth and rain
and moon and the seed. They know when to wait. They know when to fertilize
and when to let the land lie fallow. But on the other hand, they also
know when it’s time to dig things up and plow things over and
get on with it. When you have to feed your family or make your living
with what you grow and harvest, you’ve gotta get rid of the
stuff that just isn’t producing as it should and move on. Plant
the next crop. Look to the future, not the past.
In
the story Luke tells this morning, Jesus says that God is just like
a gardener. Patient, but not forever. Realistic, but focused on what
needs to happen. And sometimes that means waiting another year and
sometimes that means getting on with it. And that’s a powerful
word for us in this season of Lent when we’re to let God work
in us to turn the earth around the roots of our souls and prune and
trim and cut back in order for new life to grow.
This
aspect of who God is isn’t real popular. There was a time when
the fire-and-brimstone preachers were expected to rail about the wrath
of God that would be visited upon woeful sinners, the God who from
on high strike down and cut off and clean things up by plowing everything
under. Most of us, at least most of us who choose to attend a nice,
moderate Methodist church now, aren’t too keen on meeting that
sort of preaching or that sort of God. But maybe we’ve gone
too far to the other extreme. We really prefer our God now to be about
unconditional love, don’t we? The God who loves everyone, the
God who forgives everyone, the God who forgives everything about us
and doesn’t really ask much of us in return.
In
fact, we prefer a God nowadays who lets us get away with most everything
and anything. We can be wasteful and greedy and selfish. We can be
self-centered and superficial. We can be lazy. We can neglect the
poor and needy. We can waste the earth’s resources. We can hate
our enemies and ignore our neighbors. We can love sparingly, in fits
and starts. We can even forget about God for long periods of time.
And then we can slip into church and imagine that God didn’t
notice, doesn’t care, doesn’t expect much of us. That
God will just “be there for us” and give us a big hug
and then simply let us go on about our business as if our lives and
our values and our actions don’t really count for much, don’t
really matter. It’s what the Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
called “cheap grace”, forgiveness without any reckoning.
But
we were not made for small, meaningless lives. Our lives do matter
and how we live them matters very much. The God we really need, you
see, is the God Jesus shows us in this parable of the fig tree. A
both/and God. A God who both loves us with an infinite patience and
who holds us accountable for the time we have on this earth. A gardener
God, a vinedresser God in Luke’s words, who is both willing
to wait one more year and who expects to see us bear fruit. This is
a costly grace, an expensive grace, a cross-shaped grace, that comes
with what has been called “a merciful urgency, an urgency fueled
by God’s love…”
The
church gives us the season of Lent to do the work of pruning and tilling
and cutting back in our lives and in our souls. The time of Lent is
a time of merciful urgency. God expects us to get on with acting as
stewards of what we’ve so graciously been given—our time,
our gifts, our love, our resources. Faithful stewards of all that
has been entrusted to us so that our lives bear fruit worthy of God’s
investment in us. The time is now, God says. I will not act arbitrarily.
But I expect to see change in you, my people. I expect to see faithfulness.
God the gardener, you see, is not looking back, not judging us or
condemning us on account of our past failings. God the gardener is
already looking ahead in expectation, opening the door to a new future
for us, a future of abundant fruitfulness and faithfulness in our
lives, through our lives, from our lives.
All
this got me thinking a lot about my great-grandparents and grandparents,
about the gardens and the fields and the orchards they tended. About
the kind of wisdom they knew, a wisdom shared by the gardeners among
you. A wisdom that is still a healing balm to the earth in this imperiled
time, and a healing balm to the humans that live upon it. The wisdom
of a gardener God.
I
recently learned that it’s possible even for city dwellers right
here in Southern California to plant an orchard of fruit-bearing trees
right in the back yard. A 6’ x 30’ yard, for example,
can accommodate up to twelve trees, by planting several in a hole
or 3’ on center in a straight line. Imagine how wonderful and
delicious that could be for a family or a neighborhood. There are
two keys to success, the tree expert said. One is to choose trees
timed for successive ripening, one after another. In this way, he
said, you can have different fruit all summer. But, he said, “the
one thing you have to be most concerned about is pruning.” You
want to maintain your trees low, at a height no taller than a person
with your hands up above your head. Pruning is everything.”
Or
else. For example, a plum tree left unpruned, grown to a 18’
height, will produce about 1200 plums a summer. Studies have shown
that a family of four will eat about 50 plums and that leaves 1,150
to pawn off on your friends and neighbors. “It’s not fun”,
he said, “your tree has become a big source of intense anxiety.”
But if you pay attention to maintenance, prune your trees, keep them
down low, he said, “eating is the joy you get.”
There
it is. The wisdom of the gardener. One of the amazing gifts of gardeners
is their ability to look ahead and see what is possible. They plant
seeds and trees and anticipate the crop. They plant bulbs and look
forward to the flowers. They sculpt a garden and see what it will
look like when the plants mature. And all along the way they prune,
they cut back, they plow under in order for the earth to bring forth
its yield. It’s all part of opening the door to the future,
making the future possible, compelled by a kind of merciful urgency
that anticipates a bountiful harvest.
This,
I believe, is the love of the gardener God for us. The both/and God
who is both willing to wait one more year and who expects to see us
bear fruit. The God who loves us in the way the apostle Paul describes:
“love is patient, love is kind…not envious or boastful
or arrogant…love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices
in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things.”
Maybe
the vineyard, the place God the gardener is working on us right now,
is the whole earth, or maybe it’s the church, or maybe it’s
our home, our family, our life. Whatever it is, God is not willing
to give up and let us go. God loves us so much, and in that love,
holds us accountable and expects great things of us.
Pruning
is everything. So, what is it in your life that needs to go in order
for a new door to open, in order for new and wonderful fruit to mature?
As
we continue through the season of Lent, may God grant us grace with
merciful urgency to dig around the soil of our hearts, and prune back
all that is unworthy in us and pray with urgent longing for deeper
faith and new life.
Amen.
Notes:
John R. Donahue: “a
merciful urgency”
Ed Laivo on KCRW,
“The Food Show,” March 3, 2007.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
First
United Methodist Church
1008 Eleventh Street
Santa Monica, CA 90403
www.santamonicaumc.org
(310) 393-8258
Tending
the Future