About ten years ago members of our specially challenged adult class for one of their class projects went around church and posted signs that said, "Someone here knows the way of God." I never knew the full story of the signs, but when I saw them I thought how neat. Of course, “someone here knows the way of God”. Were not the signs affirming that we are all like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle and together we point the way to God? Were not the signs reminding us that all of us are witnesses to the Holy Spirit refreshing our lives and showing us the way out of dead ends of despair and frustration.
Lent doesn't provide us easy and smug self-satisfaction of having knowledge that no one else has, but Lent does give us hopeful signs of God's presence in the midst of temptation, when we seem to be under siege by the beasts of culture and when we have to live in a strange and hostile territory. Yes, someone here knows the way of God. We are called to be as the angels, the messengers in the wilderness, showing each other the signs of grace.
The parable of the fig tree has an antecedent that goes back as far as five hundred years before the birth of Jesus. One of the versions is of a poor father who is trying to motivate his lazy son. The tale runs: “My son, you are like a fig tree which yielded no fruit, although it stood closest to the water of all the trees in the orchard, and its owner was about to cut it down. Yet the tree begged the owner and said, ‘Transplant me, and even then if I bear no fruit, cut me down.’ But its owner replied, ‘When you stood by the water you bore no fruit. How then will you bear fruit if you stand in another place?’” Of course after several centuries, the story probably had circulated with several versions, but it would seem that Jesus took the story and gave it another ending. In Jesus’ parable, the entreaty to spare cutting down the tree was not refused, but granted.
An orchard was a symbol of peace and prosperity, for the presence of an orchard indicated that there was a history of relative peace in the land. Normally when a fig tree was planted, it did not need any fertilizer or special care. Fig trees were, however, heavy feeders on the soil, and you could not plant the trees too close together or plant much else in the space right around them. So the decision of the owner to cut down the tree was for a double reason: not only did the tree not bear fruit, but it was taking up valuable ground, and by cutting it down, the ground could be freed for productive use instead of being exhausted by an unproductive tree. In Jesus’ story, the plea of the steward of the orchard to let him fertilize this unproductive tree, becomes an extraordinary effort to help it bear fruit. Jesus’ lesson on God’s grace is that if it was reasonable for the owner to grant a simple fig tree a reprieve, how much more would God be reasonable and merciful with the creatures he so loves.
Even so, Jesus is announcing a call for repentance and a warning. The story of the fig tree is prefaced by Jesus comparing the signs of the times to the clouds of an approaching storm. Then after telling about the fig tree, Jesus says to the faithful synagogue congregation, “Don’t think those who were killed by Pilate, or those killed by a falling tower, were more guilty or deserving of punishment than any of you. But unless you repent, unless you bear fruit of God’s harvest, God will find others to do the work that needs to be done, to harvest the seed God has planted.”
It is interesting that Mark and Matthew don’t repeat Luke’s story of the fig tree as an example of God’s grace, but use a story about the fig tree as an example of God’s judgment. During the middle of Holy Week, Jesus was walking with his disciples, and as Mark and Matthew tell it, Jesus, seeing a fig tree went over to it expecting some fruit, but found nothing on it but leaves. (Mark adds the curious statement that it wasn’t the season for figs.) For Jesus, however, it was always the season for signs of God to be revealed, And Jesus with clear anger said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.1
I doubt that any of us have ever thought of ourselves as fig trees, producing sweet and plenteous figs. I wonder though, what if all during Lent, we all wore a button on our clothing announcing “Someone around here knows the way of God?” Would it make us more aware of our calling? Would it help to remind or reveal to others the possibility of God’s grace operating in the world through us? Would it remind us that as we gather and grow together we are part of a greater whole? Poor Jesus, I wonder if he ever got as tired of eating figs as I am of eating broccoli? It’s too bad Jesus didn’t have a button machine. I think he would have liked stamping out big buttons for his all disciples to wear. “Someone around here knows the way of God.”
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
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