“Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure.” (Lk. 13:8)

This morning’s sermon is the latest in my sporadic series of sermons in which I preach about things I know nothing about. I have been known to hold forth from this pulpit on topics as diverse as knitting, boxing and physics. This morning’s topic, with your kind indulgence, is manure. If that strikes you as somewhat indelicate, all I can say is that manure plays an important part --- a central part --- in today’s parable from St Luke about the barren fig tree. But first a word about the fig tree. It was not just any old tree. The fig tree was, because of the shade it provided and the sweet fruit it produced, a symbol of peace and prosperity, and above all, God’s favor. Consider, for instance, a verse from I Kings: “During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan ever to Beer-sheba, all of them under their vines and fig trees” [4:25].

So in this morning’s parable, when the owner of the vineyard discovers a barren fig tree, indeed a fig tree that had been barren for three whole years (some Biblical scholars believe “three years” is an expression meaning “a very long time”) he takes it as a bad omen, maybe even God’s displeasure with him. So his first instinct is to remove it. He tells the gardener to chop it down. But his reasons for wanting to destroy it go far beyond its barrenness. For he also asks, “Why should it be wasting the soil?” In other words, this tree is using up the nutrients from the soil to no avail. Removing the tree from the vineyard would not only rid the vineyard of a fruitless inhabitant; it would also make it possible for the soil to be used by other more appreciative plants that would make better use of it.

The gardener, however, had a Plan B, which he ran by his master. He suggests that they let the tree alone for a year. In the meantime, he would dig around it and fill the ditch with manure. This would hopefully result in a more fruitful tree the following year. If so, well and good; but if the manure didn’t do its job, the tree would then be cut down. We shouldn’t be surprised that this is Luke’s version of the fig tree story. In Matthew [21:18-19] and in Mark [12:12-14] when Jesus, hungry, comes across a barren fruit tree, he shows no mercy whatsoever. Instead, he curses the tree, saying “May no fruit ever come from you again!” But this is the Gospel of Luke the Physician whose favorite hymn is “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.” This is the Gospel of penitence, the Gospel that brought us the story of the prodigal son [15:11ff]. This is the Gospel of grace that brought us the story of Dives and Lazarus, in which Lazarus’ five brothers were given time to repent [16:19ff].

Now, Jesus always tells a parable to illustrate a point. What’s the point here? It’s found in the beginning of Chapter 13. The questions the crowds ask fall into the branch of theology known as theodicy, which is defined as “the study of the problem of evil in the world in relation to the proposition that there is an all-powerful good God.” The crowds wanted to know if the Galileans who were executed by Pilate or the eighteen people killed when the tower fell on them at Siloam met their untimely deaths because they were particularly evil. It’s like our asking today if the earthquake victims in Haiti were punished for their misdeeds (didn’t one television evangelist go so far as to suggest that Haiti was being punished for having made a deal with the devil to get rid of the French?) or that the people of Chile were killed in the tsunami because of some evil deeds they had done. Somehow in the core of our being, there is a little voice that makes us want to find a cause-and-effect between our evil deeds and bad stuff that happens to us --- which, I suppose, is why Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book some years ago entitled When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

And I daresay that this could be a full-time job nowadays. Is it just me, or has there been a spate of evil deeds recently --- a man flying his airplane into an IRS building in Texas; another opening fire on guards at the Pentagon; still another trying to replicate Columbine by shooting schoolchildren in Colorado; a teenage girl murdered when she went jogging in California; and here in Pittsburgh a high school student brutally beaten by the police in what now appears to have been an unprovoked attack? Jesus tells the crowds a) that the victims are not more evil than other people, and b) that instead of getting overly concerned about those tragedies, they should look at their own lives and repent for what they have done. And P.S.: There will be time for repentance. And unlike the fig tree which the owner of the vineyard would have cut down for its first offense, we, thanks to the Gardener Jesus Christ, have been given a second chance.

Making parables absolutely allegorical can be dangerous, but I think it safe to say that the fig tree in the parable represents each and every one of us. The fig tree is placed in a garden and expected to bear fruit, just as each one of us is placed in this world and expected to bear fruit. The fig tree is any of us who profess and call ourselves Christians but who all too often don’t measure up, don’t bear fruit. Like us, the barren fig tree may look healthy and yet be diseased. Like the Pharisees, we may have all the outward and visible signs, but lack the inward and spiritual grace. Some of us may confine our piety to Sunday, and “revert to type” on Monday. George Egan, late of this parish, and the one responsible for being the force behind starting the (then) Men’s Bible Study group, tells a story about his work which included working on mergers and acquisitions, buying and selling companies. If he thought that a party in one of these transactions was getting a raw deal, and said so, his colleagues would counter, “George, don’t go church on us!” --- in other words, “Forget that Sunday School stuff; this is the real, dog-eat-dog world!” Today’s parable is an invitation to repent, turn our lives around, get rid of old bad habits and produce the genuine fruits of repentance. It is no coincidence, therefore, that this lesson is appointed to be read in Lent, a season we begin with an invitation to self-examination, prayer, fasting and self denial, a season in which we receive ashes “as a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature.”

The fig tree can be restored to fruitfulness through the use of manure. Now, as I have said, city boy that I am, I know nothing about manure, so I had to look it up. (What did we do before Wikipedia?) This is the definition I found: “Manure (also known as “dung”) “is organic matter (read bodily waste of animals) used as organic fertilizer in agriculture. It contributes to the fertility of the soil by adding organic matter and nutrients such as nitrogen that is trapped by bacteria in the soil. Higher organisms then feed on the fungi and bacteria in a chain of life that comprises the soil food web.” What struck me about this definition is that even the bacteria contained in something we call “waste” is actually quite useful, made up of stuff like nutrients which are necessary for the well-being of so-called higher organisms to flourish and bear fruit.

One commentator even went so far as to say that manure is the stuff of resurrection. “This apparently dead and despised waste is actually teeming with life,” says the theologian, “and if we’re patient enough to let it do its work, it can do amazing things.” God, you see, is not in a hurry, as we are. We live in a “cut it down” culture. I read an article in the Times yesterday about the Central Michigan Station, the train station in Detroit that hasn’t seen a train for twenty years. It is a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts era, and a small group of folk want to preserve it. But they find themselves up against a chorus of developers who want to raze it. We are part of a church in which anything old, much less ancient and venerable, is suspect. Old liturgies, old traditions, old rules --- old hymns, are dispensable. “Cut it down!” seems to be our cry. But our God, who wants everyone to come to repentance, is a God who fertilizes, who spreads manure, a God who like every good gardener, is patient. Ours is a God who says, “Leave it alone” which really means “forgive.” It is the same word we will hear from the Cross on Good Friday when Jesus says, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

How is manure applied? Tree roots, like everything else, need air in the soil, they need to breathe. The gardener must dig around the roots and loosen the soil so that air can get in. Room must be made for the manure, however unpleasant, to be spread around to give nourishment. So it is with people. We have to dig down to our roots, let some air in, and fertilize ourselves with study and reflection. And just as good stuff like nitrogen and nutrients are trapped in the bacteria and are released through fertilization, so must our manure contain the dirty stuff --- temptation struggles we’ve endured. What are they? Just pick a few from the Ash Wednesday litany --- like hypocrisy, unfaithfulness and dishonesty --- those things that will make way for God to give us grace to amend our lives.

There is a connection between this morning’s lessons about the burning bush and the barren fig tree. Both shake us out of our complacency; make us think outside the box. In Exodus, Moses becomes what he thought he could not, although he was afraid. In Luke, Jesus assures his listeners --- and us --- that we are not doomed to judgment by a vengeful God, but that we are given another chance. I hope that during this season of Lent, we will accept God’s gift of manure, and seize the opportunity, like that hapless fig tree in the middle of the vineyard, to bear fruit.

Let us pray:
Come, labor on. Claim the high calling angels cannot share---
To young and old the gospel gladness bear;
Redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly,
The night draws nigh. [The Hymnal 1982, 541]