Rest & Growth
In its simplest interpretation, the parable Jesus shares about a vineyard owner, a fruitless fig tree and a gardener can suggest the need to nurture fruitfulness. And in fact, our series in this season (Everything In Between) invokes the relationship between rest and growth as a form of nurture from this text. The theme summary from our series this week reads:
“If we are always striving for more growth without taking time to rest, we will burn out. But if we are only ever resting, we won’t bear fruit or grow. The fig tree also teaches us that the “in between time”—of nurture before fruit—can be where transformation begins.” (EIB Sermon Preparation Guide, A Sanctified Art, 2025)
That ALL BY ITSELF is a fantastic takeaway from a sermon. And as modern readers of scripture, I think we can read a parable and interpret it for our modern context. I think we can sit with a text and invite the Holy Spirit to help us hear and understand a text in our here and now. In this way, the scripture is “living.”
But I also believe that thoughtful scriptural interpretation includes looking at the original context, understanding the arc of the larger storyline, and digging deep to figure out what Jesus was talking about, trying to understand the original author’s intent. And sometimes when we do that, we arrive at a minor disagreement with the folks who designed our creative seasonal themes. Or at least that is, in part, what happened for me this week.
Let’s unpack a little more and see if we might find a more nuanced reading that takes us beyond our series theme.
First, this parable appears only in Luke’s gospel. Unlike many other parables that appear with some consistency across Matthew, Mark and Luke, this story about a fig tree and a vineyard is only recorded here.
Immediately before sharing this parable (in the first 5 verses of chapter 13), Jesus is approached with this conversation, and I am reading from the same version:
At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.”
“Then he told them this parable…”
Ah. So it would seem that Jesus was using this parable to teach something about repentance, or as the Common English Bible translates that word, about changing hearts and lives – unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.
In Jesus’ ministry setting, some people would have the expectation that if something bad happened to you, if you were suffering, it must be the result of something you did – you must have somehow “earned” your suffering.
We have all sorts of bible stories and passages that deal with that kind of worry and expectation (and in truth, they don’t all deal with it consistently). Job’s friends are convinced that his suffering is because of his sinfulness. Jesus encounters a blind man, and his disciples ask whether the man sinned or his parents sinned. Folks connected suffering with bad behavior.
Maybe we even carry some of this with us today – maybe we (sometimes, unconsciously) believe we “deserve” the bad things that happen.
I believe in this text that Jesus is suggesting that bad things just happen – not because we’ve done something to deserve them. The Galileans who were murdered by Pilate while sacrificing in the Temple were not especially sinful. The people crushed in what sounds like a local disaster weren’t targeted for their behavior.
And Jesus is suggesting that all have a need to change their hearts and lives.
Seriously, we all do. I think we talked about this a few weeks ago. None of us is without sin, wherein sin is a separation from God and a failure to fully love God and one another. None of us does this perfectly. There is always room for us to change our lives.
But that change requires some reflection, some work on understanding where we are falling short, how we might turn toward God.
Jesus’ teaching is a reminder, too, that we never know when a hard thing is going to happen. We typically don’t know when our lives will end. That’s life.
Therefore paying attention to being in right relationship with God and one another prepares us to live and end our lives well.
I think that knowing all of this preceding conversation as a context for Jesus teaching this particular parable about a fig tree helps. There is a lot here. This fig tree has something to do with turning our hearts toward God.
As I have studied the parable with others over this past couple of weeks, holding onto the larger context of Jesus using it, I have been captured by the characters. Who is the vineyard owner? Who is the gardener? Might it be that both are God?
I wonder, might the vineyard owner be an expression of God’s justice? If it isn’t bearing fruit, cut it down? Replace it with something more fruitful? That aligns with the way the prophets, including John the Baptist in Luke’s gospel, talk about God’s relationship to fruitlessness.
I wonder, might the gardener be an expression of God’s mercy? Fruitfulness takes nurture. It requires work. Let’s give that fig tree another chance – because the gardener cares. That seems to be Jesus’ way of being with people, taking time to sit with those who are seen as sinners, those who are seen as broken.
Now, in fairness, if you go on to read even further in this chapter of Luke’s gospel, you might begin to pick up on an even larger context – Jesus speaking in terms of all of Jerusalem’s failure – where Jerusalem is a symbol of the larger Jewish tradition. But for today, let’s stay focused on our journey individually and maybe even as a community.
And within that context of repentance, of turing back to God, maybe we can still think about rest and growth.
First, I want to invite you to think about rest and growth both as investments…both require intention and action. Both are supported by faith and work.
(I am loving the way that prior weeks’ themes are intermingling and expanding each current week’s theme. Have you noticed that?)
When we think about our own thriving, our own fruitfulness, our own ability to contribute to the Kin-dom of God, are we in a season of growth? Or might we need to pursue rest? Some soul-tending, some fertilizing (which in Jesus’ story could not be more earthy!), some pruning.
Yes, I said pruning – our schedules, our impulses, our focus.
That might mean that rest requires some work. Which feels oxymoronic, but true!
Or are we expending energy in a season of growth? A season where the fruit is showing up and we feel both excited about what we see and maybe weary from the weight of what is showing up? Fruitfulness is an exertion. No doubt.
We need rest. We need growth. Sometimes both at the same time. In this season of Lent, as we examine the ways we are called to return to God, called to return to a commitment to love God and one another well, it is my deep prayer that we will see and embrace the necessity of both rest and growth.
It is my deep prayer that we will see how rest and growth influence one another.
It is my deep prayer that we will see how rest and growth help us to bear fruit.
May it be so.
Amen.
I invite you to join me as you feel called and able in our affirmation of faith for this week. I hope you hear the invitation in that. We can’t always affirm what others put before us, so take the space you need and sit with those ideas that are less comfortable in the week to come.
We believe in a God who loves and tends to us like a gardener.
We believe that like the trees,
some seasons are for growth,
and some seasons are for rest.
Some days require pruning,
and some require planting.
Fortunately, we believe that our green-thumbed God
sees us and cultivates the sweetest fruit.
So may we plant roots,
reach for the sky,
grow where we can,
and rest when we need,
for we believe there is holiness in the pruning and
in the planting. And we do not grow alone.
Thanks be to God,
Amen.
(EIB Words for Worship, A Sanctified Art, 2025)
Comments
Post a Comment