Faith...and Fertilizer: T'shuvah Part 2 on the 3rd Sunday in Lent, Year C
10 years ago, we bought our home from Dot Santini Renner –
Dot was a member at the nearby United Methodist Church – she was the last of
the Santini family to live on Santini Road, also related to the Burtons, of
Burtonsville. She was 92 at the time –
and she was preparing to move to Riderwood, a retirement community not too far
away. She’d occupied the house we were
buying since it was built in the 50s, but she’d grown up in 2 other houses on
the street – because at one point in time, the street was the farm lane that ran
back to a couple of family farms, the kind where houses just kept getting added
for the next generation.
She was a founding member of the Burtonsville Garden Club,
and the yard had been lovingly planted with perennials over many years. She’d cultivated her own hybrid lilies, and we
are still known as the place where the “Burtonsville Blush” lily was
hybridized.
As she’d aged though, she’d planted lots of invasive ground
cover – so we have spent LOTS of time clearing vinca and monkey grass and
violas and bamboo. But also in the yard
are a few really OLD lilac bushes.
I love lilacs. I love the way they smell and I love the color. There is a lilac right outside the picture window in our living room. I identified it right away, even though we moved in February. I waited that first spring…waited and waited.
Alas. Green leaves. No blooms.
We did some strategic pruning.
And I waited that second spring…waited and waited.
Alas. Green leaves.
No blooms.
More pruning.
And I waited that third spring…
And a fourth…
And a fifth…
And a sixth….
Some years it would set one cluster of blooms. One. On a ten foot shrub. A little glimmer of
hope.
Then I came outside one fall to my husband strategically
eye-balling its prime location. “I’m thinking about digging this out and
planting a magnolia in its place.”
I’m from Chicago – a northern city. Magnolias are not my thing.
Lilacs are my spring thing.
In northern cities, lilacs line the highways with that gorgeous purple
in the early warm days of May.
So I made a deal…let’s just keep it one more year. We’ll cut it way back. We’ll clear some of
the growth underneath it. We’ll amend
the soil. C’mon…this lilac is the one
thing in the yard I don’t want taken out right now.
And guess what…it bloomed that next Spring. Not just one
lonely bloom stalk…it really bloomed.
I like to joke that it knew it was being threatened. It
changed its ways.
Today’s scripture touches on a fig tree similarly
threatened, right? And the gardener who
cares for it wants to give that fig tree one more chance to bear fruit – one
more chance to be well and good.
I’m grateful for all the times I’ve not been “cut down” for
seasons of dryness, for seasons of less than stellar behavior, for seasons of
fruitlessness.
Here in the season of Lent, we’ve been talking about this
word, t’shuvah – rooted in repentance, it is an ancient Hebrew word rooted in
how we “turn toward Good,” as in turning back to right relationship with God. Sometimes we want to focus on turning away
from whatever bad behavior, whatever sin, whatever distraction is keeping us
from right relationship with God – keeping us in sin. And t’shuvah helps us accomplish that turning
away by turning toward the good.
T’shuvah recalls that we are created in God’s good image,
for relationships with God. We are created in goodness. We are not ultimately bad or evil. But
sometimes we wander (some more than others) and we have to find our way back to
the path toward God with God.
Each week of Lent we’re looking for clues that help us to
turn. Maybe clues that help us know when we’re not on the path, maybe clues
that help us find our way back.
Our first reading today is from the prophet Isaiah. It captures the essence of the role of
prophet. In our culture, we tend to
understand prophets as those who have the ability to predict the future. But if you really read the prophets – if you
spend time studying the prophets – their real role is to call it like they see
it. Sometimes that is a critique. And their role is to remind us of who God has
been time and time again.
And so Isaiah is speaking into the exile in Babylon, into a
time and a place where life is really hard, where everything seems off and
hopeless. And he’s casting a vision of food and wine without price –
nourishment in a season of dryness.
He’s reminding the exiled who God has been to them and their
anscestors time and time again. The God
who delivered the Hebrews from the wilderness, the God who made manna and quail
show up each day as needed, the God who promised David victory – this God is
able and willing and will.
If you are thirsty, come.
Come buy and eat. Wine and milk
without money and without price.
It’s not so much future telling as it is seeding hope. Hope rooted in who God has been, what God is
doing, and who God will continue to be.
The prophet is encouraging those who are beaten down and
hopeless. And the prophet knows from
experience that the wicked and unrighteous will receive pardon – they will
receive bread and milk and wine without price because God’s done that before and
will surely do it again and again. Just
turn…just come back to the path.
And in the gospel reading for today, we have Jesus receiving
some questions about justified punishment it would seem…. He’s asked about some Galileans who are
rumored to have been somehow tortured or punished by Pilate, their blood
mingled with other sacrifices. Those
questioning Jesus seem to want assurance that this violence is not for them,
but that it is for people who are somehow worse than them.
They want to do an accounting and find out that they are
safe somehow. They want an explanation
for hardship that has befallen others around them. (It’s that list that we’ve talked about –
they want to look at what someone else has done and see that surely that is a
sin that deserves torture. And I don’t
do that thing…)
And Jesus doesn’t really provide reassurance – but he
reminds them that they are all subject to hard things. And he suggests that they need to
repent. The word repent here is a greek
word, metanoiae…that comes from two parts – meta which means with, after or
behind (a multi-purpose preposition of sorts) and Noeo which has to do with
having understanding… And so Jesus is
suggesting that they need to understand in their context what they might need
to change about themselves. Turn back.
And then he goes on to something else it would seem, but of
course the teaching is related. He goes
on to tell them a parable about an unproductive fig tree. The person who planted the fig tree is
frustrated because the tree hasn’t been producing fruit.
But the gardener charged with tending the tree suggests it
not be cut down quite yet…instead, let’s give it some extra care. Let’s dig around its roots, and apply some
manure…
I love that. I could
preach a whole sermon series on how we become fruitful through manure. C’mon, that’ll preach! We don’t actually know how the experiment
goes – and the gardener suggests that if this doesn’t work, the fig might still
need to be cut down.
But I know how I feel about my lilac. It was back for a year. If it doesn’t bloom for a couple more, I’ll
keep fighting for it.
I certainly like to think that God is fighting for me, and
that if I am willing to let my roots be cultivated and fertilized, I might be
more fruitful year by year.
T’shuvah…how is it that we find our way back to the path to
God with God?
We are probably being called back by prophetic voices –
voices that are naming what is unrighteous or unjust right in front of us and
around us, voices that are also reminding us that God is good again and again.
God has handled our human wanderings time and time again. With love.
As we turn back, we might need to amend our soil, examine
our strategic location in the Sun or with the Son, we might need to heed that
prophetic voice and prune some behaviors or distractions, some idols. We may need to let someone else tend our
rehabilitation, helping us and watching us with hope for the next season.
…At our Methodist roots, this is the work of sanctification
– the work of becoming more holy in this life.
The constant work of tending the vine or the bush or the tomato plant of
our lives so that we bear fruit.
T’shuvah…
In the season of Lent as we explore how we return to the
path God has created and Jesus has called us to and walked alongside us, we are
reminded to have faith in the God who is, was and will be. While we attend to the necessary work of
becoming more fruitful.
Can we hear that call and find our way back?
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