Loading...If you want to know what life after death looks like, look at a gardner. Maybe you ARE a gardner and you think I am nuts because your back aches and your knees creak and your hands are rough and calloused, and your fingernails are filled with dirt.
You probably have a pair of muddy shoes by the back door and a big goofy hat hanging there waiting for the mulch delivery. I see the mulch trucks out, do you? They are coming! So is Jesus. And you will know him when you see him because he will make you think you are looking at a gardner --- someone who spends time in dirty places. At least that is what happens to Mary Magdalene when she stands crying outside his tomb. (Read John chapter 20) She supposes body snatchers have stolen Jesus’ body and when she sees a person through her tears he looks just like a gardner to her. She doesn’t recognize Jesus until he speaks her name.
There’s a lot of speculation about what happens when God raises a person from the dead. Honestly, who can say exactly what the metaphysical experience is. It’s fair to say that someone who has been laid in the earth for three days can easily be mistaken for someone very close to the earth, like a gardner.
Somehow, Jesus knows something about gardening because he understands the use of mulch. I remember when Terry Quinlan was serving as the Sr. Warden for St James. Ellen Von Nagel had concerns about the tree in the prayer garden --- where the statue of St Francis stands (and where the curious might go to find a prayer rock painted by Carolyn Heyman).
Terry inspected the tree, consulted some experts and determined that it could use some extra t.l.c. One of those treatments of course is mulch.
If two season go by and improvement is shown the tree stays. If not, it’s time to say a prayer over the departure of the tree.
Bearing fruit is the sign of a healthy tree. Without fruit, the gardener in Luke’s gospel considers a tree a waste of soil. Yes --- here is where you make the connection with living a gospel-life and growing or not living a gospel-life and being punished. This is called judgement.
Most sermons in the Episcopal tradition skillfully avoid the topic of judgement. I prefer to dive into the final judgement as depicted in the book of Revelation. But for this passage from Luke I found a Lutheran to help us take home the lesson of the mulched fig tree.
His name is Matt Skinner and he is the Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St Paul Minnesota. When reflecting on the terrorism of Pilate’s brutality and the random tragedy of the falling tower he writes:
If life's fragility demands urgency, that urgency shows that life itself has carved out opportunity for us to seize God's graciousness, as the parable of the fig tree suggests. Unless it begins to bear fruit (an image of repentance, according to Luke 3:8), the result will be its just and swift destruction.
The parable's power comes through the suspense it generates. Will fruit emerge in time to thwart the ax? How will this season of second chances play itself out? How do the gardener's efforts make the tree's existence a state of grace and opportunity?
Tragedy and hardship have their ways of nudging people toward God, but these verses suggest that tragedy and hardship come so suddenly that they often mark the end, not the beginning, of our opportunities to live lives inclined toward God. Don't let the introspective and pensive nature of Lent divert attention from the exigency of our condition.
Jesus' words about judgment and repentance are scary, yet they depict human life as a gift, albeit a fragile one. Vulnerable creatures that we are, we can presume little and do little to preserve ourselves. Too many Lenten observances assume that taking our humanity seriously requires morose expressions of piety. But the Christian outlook on repentance arcs toward joy. And it finds grace experienced within the awful precariousness and strange beauty of our fleeting existence.
I like Lutheran theologians. I find I need to swallow them down with a little poetry. Like this from my friend Anne Grizzle.
Breaking Ground by Anne Grizzle 2006
When we break ground and disturb this earth
let it be to draw friends and family
whose hearts will break open
by the beauty of this land
whose weary souls will feed
amidst cattle on green pastures,
whose eyes will wonder at the Builder
who laid the earth's foundation
whose voices will join with the morning stars
to sing the angels' songs of joy.
My very mixed experiences of gardening have led me to believe that even the most amount of work doesn’t guarantee results --- yet the work itself is joy, albeit, dirty, sweat-staining joy. The soil does the work of actual growing. Most of the human labor is about giving the soil it’s best life - removing weeds, breaking up the ground, watering, checking for pests (why to beetles like certain flowers, why do squirrels only eat one bite out of the entire tomato? Why would someone plant a fig tree in a vineyard? etc)
Jesus’ resurrected body breaks open the tomb, disturbs the natural order, surprises Mary when she least expects for her bitterly broken heart to break open again with joy. But gardners understand the connection between the one who makes heaven and earth and gives us the chance to eat the fruits of His glorious and dirty labors.
https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=530
