Fig Trees Must Produce Figs

I begin this Blog by asking my readers to consider these words from Scripture:

"Come to me all who are thirsty, and I will give you living water to drink. The water you think you need, like the bread you eat and the work you labor on, will never truly satisfy you. Come unto me, and I will give you life-giving water."

Many colleges still have what are called comprehensive exams, culminating assessments in a student’s major area of study. If she or he can pass these tests, often taking several hours or even days to complete, the student is assured of his or her degree.

For someone majoring in liberal arts, the exams might include a short answer section where students are asked to identify the source and context of a number of brief quotations from important historical works.

So I ask you, again, to consider these words:

Come to me all who are thirsty, and I will give you living water to drink

If you said “Isaiah 55,” you would be correct, but if you said, “that sounds like something Jesus said,” you would also be right. That’s because Jesus knew his Scriptures very well, so well, in fact, that they permeated his every thought and action. Isaiah must have been a favorite of his because we hear strains of Isaiah in many of Jesus’ best stories.

Continuing our survey, how should we identify the passage about drinking from the rock?

“all passed through the sea, … and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank … from the spiritual rock.”

Did you guess Exodus 14: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘lift up your staff, …’” or did you think, “that sounds more like chapter 17, when: ‘The Lord said, …”take the staff, strike the rock, and water will come out.”’” Perhaps you recalled that in Numbers 20, Moses arrived at Meribah with all Israel complaining about the lack of water for themselves and their livestock. God tells Moses to command the water to flow from the rock that it might provide for the people and animals. And the people assent to this. But what does Moses do? He raises the staff and strikes the rock twice. And the water gushed out.

“and the rock,” said Paul, “was Christ.”

What is this new teaching? Is it some sort of hybrid? Is Jesus in the rock. Is he the bread of life? What about the life-giving water?

Imagine, if you will, Scripture as a spiritual root system for the abundant life that God intends for all creation. The system requires sunlight, water and nutrients. Given these and time, the healthy foundation will feed the tree, and the tree will produce good fruit.

Likewise, imagine a similar foundation feeding the work of the Church, a foundation built on a way of life modeled by a man named Jesus. A man who, by at least four important accounts, knew the Scriptures, was a respected teacher and healer, and who lived and acted as if he were the Son of God.

I, for one, believe that he was. Not a meek and mild person, but a lion, a man full of courage and wisdom—a rock, said Paul.

So what, you may ask, was Jesus doing when he told this parable about the fig tree? From the very opening we notice something unusual. Who plants a fig tree in a vineyard? Aren’t vineyards places to cultivate grapes? And what sort of vineyard is this anyway? Could it be that this is not a real vineyard but a metaphor for something else, an unusual garden that has been taken over by foreigners?

And because the tree is a not at home in this place, it does not bear fruit.

The fig tree is threatened, presumably by the owner of the vineyard who had it planted there to begin with,but whose eyes clearly see the changing way of things.

So why, I asked myself, did he plant this tree in the first place?

To bear fruit, that’s why. That’s what fig trees do—they bear fruit. It is their nature, and they know, instinctively, what they are meant for—bearing fruit. In particular, figs.

I imagine that Jesus wants us to look within and identify that for which we too were created, and then to bear fruit suited to the unique gifts we have inside, not the kind of fruit that the world chases after—wealth, fame, recognition, power—but fruit that sustains us in an eternal way. A fig tree must produce figs, not grapes or olives or pistachio nuts.

Perhaps you sympathize with the fig tree, that it fears the contempt it might receive from grape vines when its fruit looks and tastes different. It is the Ugly Duckling before Hans Christian Andersen. It does not belong. It is not one of us. Therefore, it does not deserve the space it occupies. Cut it down.

Jesus knows, as you and I know, that the fig tree will never produce grapes because that is not its purpose. And trees sometimes fail when they are in isolation. But given time, a community, and a sense of urgency and purpose, it can thrive and find its true calling.

Even in an uncomfortable place, surrounded by what is very different, we have a choice. We can give up. That is the easy way. We can pretend to be what we are not. That is the fruitless way. Or we can step back and reclaim that for which we were created, pursuing it with renewed vigor and courage, the kind that comes from a the refreshing and nourishing waters that spring from the rock, the rock that is Christ Jesus.

The tree symbolizes the tension we live in. A tree is more than just its roots. It is a living thing and it grows and provides fruit in surprising ways. So we must stay connected, continue to seek God who is mystery, be active today, follow Jesus as our example. It is life that matters, not a life of judgment about past faults, but about hope and expectation of a vibrant and meaningful future.

A few weeks ago we looked at a passage that warns that connection with God does not mean that we can do anything we want whenever we want. That is not the freedom from judgment that Jesus preached. Nor are we God. We are of God, like God in our forgiveness and compassion. We are like the fig tree, full of possibility and potential for goodness.

I took comps back in the day. I was uncomfortable because of the randomness of the quotations, and the breadth of knowledge expected of me. Today’s lessons, at first struck me this way, but as I studied, more and more connections were revealed.

I liken this parable to all little churches or groups who read and study in order to learn more about God and Jesus. What are we doing in this vineyard where we stick out like the threatened fig tree? Was this the garden imagined by the founders of IU? I mean the world has changed over the past 100 years. But we must remain firm, grounded in who we are in this place and at this time. It is the only way to honor the God who created us and to live up to our full potential.

God Is With Us

As I read the Bible, I see a long and rich history of Judeo-Christian tradition whose main thrust is about understanding God’s relationship with humanity. From our reading of Genesis to Luke’s references about Jerusalem, we hear of the many ways that people have chosen to understand and worship God.

First, we understand that God creates. Not only did God create the universe, but God also chose to be present in that universe. The story of Abram talking with God about being childless and grieving over not having an heir, tells us that our religious ancestors understood God as one who interacts with human beings, makes promises and covenants, and visits often to ensure that those promises are kept.

As time passed, and Jesus came onto the scene, there was less emphasis on God’s conversations with human beings, and more attention to the nature of God’s relationship with us, that God loved all creation, and God loved human beings in ways that we cannot even imagine.

The poetry of Psalm 27, is about having confidence in and being encouraged by God’s active participation in the world. Just listen to the words, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh-- my adversaries and foes-- they shall stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.”

The God depicted in Psalm 27 is not a distant God, but an ever present and compassionate God, One who knows our hopes and dreams and fears, and One who instills in us a sense of trust that all shall be well if we will keep faithful.

But there is a turning point in the psalm. Suddenly, at verse 9, the psalmist is not so confident. “Do not hide your face from me…Do not cast me off, do not forsake me.”

What has happened that the psalmist has lost courage and is no longer confident in God’s protection?

Paul writes that we understand one another when we share in each other’s sufferings. The psalmist cries out in sure confidence that God wants to know our sufferings.

Why do people suffer? We do not always suffer from physical pain, but emotional pain, loss, loneliness and uncertainty as well. People are afraid, just as the psalmist says:

Afraid of failing at what we love and care about—our place in the family, our job, our community. We fear being taken over by others. For the psalmist. it may have been an invading army, but for us it can be the invasion of age, the invasion of financial stress, the invasion of failing health. We fear that we can be petty and jealous of others, and that God may hold this against us in some way.

Paul reminds us that no one fully understands Christ, but we press on (3:12) towards the goal of being with Christ when he comes again. This is the goal of all “mature” (3:15) Christians: to center our lives on Jesus, not on his popularity and power, but on his sufferings and his choice to share the suffering of others.

Paul says that our bodies, now mortal, will enter eternal life in a changed form. And not just our bodies, but that God will also “transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

We cannot fully understand the source of that power, except that it comes from God, and we live in the hope that it will transform us so that we will be present with one another to share each others’ sufferings as Jesus did.

When Jesus is warned that Herod was out to kill him, he responded, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.”

In other words, no secular power is strong enough to deter Jesus from his chosen mission to serve and to empower the poor, the friendless and the needy.

And so we come full circle to meet, again, the God who keeps promises and loves us. Theologian Rudolf Bultmann wrote that Jesus’ teaching of God seems no different from that which Jesus himself had been taught: to need and depend on God, even though we are not sure that we can totally trust that God will take care of us. Jesus made it his goal to bring this distant God close to us.. We see this clearly in the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer. God is “our” God, not a distant God. God is a parent, not a remote, fearsome and unpredictable God. And so we have those words that Luke uses to explain God’s relationship to the world, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

I do not see Jesus speaking that to any particular Pharisee, but to the whole of creation. It is as a mother who, when speaking to God about her kids, opens her hands and says, “Where did I go wrong? All I ever wanted was to give them what I never had.” All I want is to love them. That is the God that Jesus preached. Not a God who wishes to command and who demands that we obey, but a God who beckons us to be in relationship with God and with one another. To be in this kind of relationship is everything. To see a model of this, we look to Jesus, how we talked, how he lived and how he died. This is the story we tell during Lent, and the story we hope to make our own.