“The Gardener’s Club”

Mar 23

Luke 13:6-9

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

David A. Shirey

The Scripture begins, “Then he told this parable...” How many times does that refrain appear in the Gospels? Depending on who’s counting, there are 46 or so parables, short, pithy stories Jesus used to teach his listeners about the whys and wherefores of the kingdom of God. From the Greek word (parabolē) that literally means “to toss alongside” (para- "beside" + ballein "to throw"), Jesus time and again tosses a story alongside our ears to see how we’ll react, what we do with it, how we understand it. So, what we do with this story Jesus has thrown alongside us of a barren fig tree, an exasperated landowner who wants to cut it down, and a gardener who asks him to leave it alone for a while so he can put some manure on it?

First, let me ask you a question about interpreting the Bible. When you read a parable, do you try to figure out who is who? I mean, do you assume each character in the story represents someone else? That person represents God. That person represents Jesus. That person represents us. I ask because some say the vineyard owner is God, the gardener is Jesus, and the fig tree is us. I agree with 2/3 of that equation.

I can see how some of us might identify with the predicament of that figless fig tree who’s being threatened by the vineyard owner to produce … or else. After all, we live in a world that rewards Type A Personality vineyard owners like the one in this parable. Bosses who hold their employees’ feet to the fire of sales quotas, production goals, monthly metrics that must be met. Likewise, there are parents who goad their kids to make the grades, make the teams, make the scores on the tests. Excel! Excel! Excel! I dare say many of us have an inner vineyard owner who barks at us to bear fruit, bear fruit, bear fruit! We live in a society in which our worth is tied to our output and income. What have you done for me lately? It’s in church circles, too. What are churches graded on? What was your average worship attendance? What was your giving? How many kids? How many youth? How many additions? How many baptisms? How many people have you served through your outreach? All the above are the measured fruit of church fig trees. I can see where some people in interpreting this parable say the fig tree is us, driven to produce by merciless vineyard owners … or else.

But here’s my question: Do you really believe God is the vineyard owner? What does the vineyard owner say? “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 soil?” Is that your perception of God? Chomping at the bit to cut down any fig tree folks who don’t produce? Better get busy or else – BUZZZZZZ – you’ll be a stump for eternity. God the barren fig tree chainsaw massacre-er.

I’m not joking. I know and you know God has been and still is taught and preached by some people that way. Shape up or else an axe to the roots for you! I know that recipe for preaching. It's been around for a long time. Begin with two cups of guilt, add in two heaping tablespoons of the wrath of God, sprinkle in several juicy references to the fires of hell and the torment awaiting the wicked and wayward, mix it all up with a few pounds of the fist on the pulpit, then pour the whole mix into a shallow baking pan, shove it into a 500 degree oven, stand back, then let everybody watch it burn for about twenty-five minutes as acrid smoke fills the kitchen. The strategy is to lead people to life by scaring them to death. And it works! Fear is a potent motivating force in religion and politics and parenting and management of employees. However, regular, prolonged exposure to a frightful depiction of God has awful side-effects. There are people who grow up being fed that kind of diet who live the rest of their lives tormented by guilt and fear, whose instinctive reaction to the word God is to tremble and run for cover. That kind of understanding of God leaves a scar this long on a person's soul, a black and blue bruise on the spirit that takes a long time to heal (if it ever does).

So back to my question: Is the vineyard owner in this parable the God you know in Jesus Christ? “Produce you fruitless fig tree or I’m going to cut you down and burn you up!” That’s not the God we know in Jesus!

The God we know whose character and purposes were revealed in Jesus is the gardener. What does the gardener do? Insists the fig tree be left alone until he can do what? “Dig around it and put some manure on it.” The gardener doesn’t want to cut. The gardener wants to cultivate. The gardener doesn’t want to burn down. The gardener God we know desires to build up.

Any gardeners here? You know that digging and mulching is hard work. Back-breaking. Arm-wearying. Knee-numbing. Sweat-producing. Hard work. Our first spring in Kentucky, Jennie sheepishly announced at breakfast on a Saturday morning she had arranged for some mulch to be delivered to our house. No sooner had she said it than a dump truck pulled into our driveway and dumped a mountain of mulch on my driveway – thoroughbred manure – the memory of which gives me a sore back just to think about it. That was my last year of “putting some manure on it.” I’ll hire it done from now on. I don’t love our landscaping enough to do that ever again.

But thank goodness we have a God who loves us enough that God is willing to get down and dirty, elbow deep in manure, so as to work deep, rich grace into our roots, our hearts, our minds. I want to suggest to you this morning that this verse is Luke’s John 3:16: “God so loved the world that God sent his only begotten son to get down on his hands and knees and spread manure around dry fig tree lives so they might not perish, but have abundant life.” The truth about God is that "God so loves fig trees that he sent his Son. Sent him not to condemn them, but to save them." God isn’t the fig tree chainsaw massacre-er. God is love. As one of my favorite theologians (Shirley Guthrie) put it, "God is not sometimes loving and sometimes unloving. God does not love some people and hate others. God is love, and everything God does, always, in God's dealings with everyone, is loving." The God we know in Jesus is the gardener who sees lives that are like that barren fig tree: dry, parched, lifeless, forsaken, given up on, cast aside, neglected. Seeing them, God says, “That isn’t life as I intend it to be! I intend blossoms, flowers, leaves, fruit. “I have come that you might have life and it abundant” (John 10:10). Far from taking action to destroy the fig tree, the gardener takes his own life and invests himself heart, mind, soul, and might, blood, sweat, and tears in helping it grow. “Let me dig around it and put some manure on it.”

Let me ask you: Has anybody ever invested in you like that? Has anybody ever invested in you the way the gardener did the fig tree? Seen possibility in you? Come alongside you and said, “I believe in you. I want to work with you.” Mentored you? Said in so many words, ‘It may break my back, give me callouses on my hands and knees, cut me, bruise me, and wear me out … but I see possibility and promise in you.’ If you have, give thanks to God.

More importantly, have you or are you investing in someone else that way? Are you, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, following his example, loving as he loved, and like that blessed gardener pouring yourself out and digging around the roots of someone else in a way that imparts life to them? Please, please, please. Before you give up on anybody would you please first invest everything you can in that person?

You see, we’re all in The Gardener’s Club. We’re disciples of the Gardener who was willing to get down and dirty even to the point of death on a cross, who got not just dirt under his fingernails but blood. You may know the name Bryan Stevenson. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative working with inmates in Alabama. His story is told in the movie Just Mercy starring Michael B. Jordan. Why does he do what he does? Says Stevenson, “I believe that each person is more than the worst thing they've ever done.” That sounds to me like someone in the Gardener’s Club who knows that who we are – precious children of Almighty God – defines us over and against anything we’ve done. As Paul put it, “God proves his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We live in a throwaway society. That goes for all the stuff we consign to burgeoning landfills – we slurp and burp and toss it away. But we throw people away, too! Turn our backs and faces to them. And to justify our callousness we craft a God in our distorted image that is our angry, judgmental, punitive selves writ large. Fruitless fig trees! Cut ‘em down. Why should they be wasting the soil? We are the vineyard owner who would write off other human beings.