Cottondale Christian Church

January 3, 2010 

Luke 13: 6-9: Patience and Manure            

They say that vegetable gardening’s not for the impatient.  I know because in a very minor way, I tried my hand at it behind the church last year.  I had a really attractive squash vine going, when all of a sudden, it started wilting.  Just when I started to get some fruit in early September, the once attractive leaves began to droop, and the fruit withered on the vine.  You might imagine my reaction.  All that work, watering it, taking care of it, only to find it all ruined at the last minute.  I was disappointed and just a little frustrated.           

But lest you think I’m the only one in that category, I talked to some of you in the church last year.  Brown Herron told me that he hadn’t had a good tomato crop in two years.  Some of Jim Harkins’ tomatoes stress fractured due to all the moisture, and lo and behold, his fig trees cracked and fell down.  And yet, the intrepid souls that we are, despite all of this, we’re going to try again this year.  And we’re even going to plant more behind the church with the children’s group.  For some reason, we have patience.  For some reason, we don’t just give up and quit.

In our text this morning, we see another man trying to do some gardening.  This guy had a vineyard with a fig tree in it.  One day, the man went to see if there was any fruit on it, but there was none there.  Now, this guy was more than frustrated.  If I was disappointed after one bad year, and Brown was disappointed after two, this guy had to deal with three.  He said: “See here!  For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none.”  And in a blaze of anger, he said: “Cut it down!  Why should [this tree] be wasting the soil?”  “Let’s just get rid of the whole thing,” he might say today.           

When things get frustrating, this is the way people have been tempted to go throughout the centuries:  “I don’t like the way my church is going,” some say.  “I’m gonna go start a new one.”  Last year, Texas Governor Rick Perry talked loosely about seceding from the Union because he didn’t like the direction Obama was taking us.  Even the apostle Paul got this way once.  In his letter to the Galatians, Paul was more than pretty fed up with some false Christians there.   These false believers were saying that men had to be circumcised in order to be saved.  They said that trusting Jesus wasn’t enough; you had to have Jewish circumcision too.  Paul got so mad at these false believers that he said: “I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves (Galatians 5: 12)!”  In other words, forgive me ladies, “if you’re going to get circumcised, why not just go ahead and cut the whole thing off!”              

When we get ticked off enough, it’s easy to jump off the deep end.  And after catching himself going a little too far, Paul goes back to say: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”  But how hard that is to do that sometimes when the going gets tough!  It’s easier to go in with fists flying and open up a can of whup-tail than it is to be patient and love our enemies.  We often just want to get rid of them.  We often just want to remove the source of the trouble than to nurse it back lovingly to health.            In Isaiah 30, the people of Israel were being invaded by the Assyrians.  Their enemy was virtually standing on the horizon, and the people were fearful and frustrated.  And yet God came to them and said this: “In repentance and in rest is your salvation.  In quietness and in trust is your strength. . . . Blessed are those who wait for [Me]” (Isaiah 30: 15, 18).  Repentance here means “to turn.”  In other words, the Israelites were to turn to God, to rest in Him and wait on Him, and God would take care of the Assyrians Himself.             

And yet in verse 16, we see that the Israelites didn’t rest.  They didn’t wait on God, . . . and they instead did the very opposite!  They decided to flee on swift horses.  Isaiah 31 says that they sought Egypt for help.  They decided to get Egyptian horses and chariots to fight the Assyrians rather than let God give them the victory.  Rather than rest and let God crush the Assyrian army, they “fought fire with fire.”  And what did it get them?  The Assyrians conquered them and sent most of them into exile.  So, you can see, to “fight fire with fire,” to see a threat and try to cut the whole thing off, is a dangerous thing.  We’d be better off if we waited patiently for God, rather than letting frustration get the better of us.           

And you know; this advice would really help the fig tree guy in this morning’s parable.  The fig tree guy wanted to fight his bad tree.  And so he says, “Cut it down!  Why should it be wasting the soil?”  But it just so happens that his servant is standing by, his trusted gardener.  And this servant gardener is much wiser than his master.  The gardener says, “Sir, let [the tree] alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.  If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”[1]             

Jesus is trying to send us a message here.  And that is that being patient and merciful should be our first action rather than jumping off the deep end.[2]  We stand a greater chance of having figs the next year if we dig around the tree and fertilize it with manure, than if we cut it down.           

And this is because many things and people need nurture and a second chance, rather than judgment, that is, if humans are even supposed to judge anyway (Matthew 7: 1-2).  You may know of students in school who struggled over the years, who no matter how much the teacher tried to help them, they still didn’t get it.  And so the teachers kept plowing forward with plenty of nurture.  They brought in special education specialists, school psychologists, and finally discovered that some struggling students in their classrooms had a learning disability.  For some students with dyslexia, for instance, all they must learn to do is to retrain their minds, the way they see things, and with enough nurture from parents and teachers, they can become good students.  Think of how much these students would have missed if their teachers had just given up on them and gone off the deep end.           

Think of how much we as a human race would have missed if God had gone off the deep end.  Throughout human history, God was getting increasingly frustrated with us.  God loved us so much that He sent prophet after prophet, trying to get us to reform our ways and rest in Him, to come to His arms of love rather than to go astray.  However, after all His efforts, we still didn’t quite get it.  God could have given up.  God could have thrown up His hands, smote us with lightning, and sent us another great flood as He did in the days of Noah.  But what did God do instead?  God sent us His only Son Jesus Christ to show us His love in the flesh.  If we could see God’s love walking around, then perhaps we would love God back.  In Jesus, God gave us another chance; He dug around us and placed nurturing manure at our base.             

And God did this not only so that we would love Him back but so that we would give others a second chance too.  While Jesus walked this earth, His message exuded peace and grace to even the worst of sinners.  One day, He came upon a woman caught in adultery.  The Jewish scribes and Pharisees had seized her and had large rocks in their hands.  They were ready to condemn her and stone her to death.  But rather than joining the other Jewish leaders, Jesus did something different.  He looked up at the scribes and Pharisees and said: “Let anyone who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And amazingly, the Jewish leaders couldn’t throw a single stone after that.  They merely walked away, and in the end, Jesus was left with alone with the woman.  And he said to her: “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She said: “No one, sir.”  And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go your way, and from now on do not sin again” (John 8: 2-11).               

We all need second chances, and most of us actually need many more.  And throughout our Christian walk, we see our need of this grace all the clearer.  And as we see our need more clearly, we become more willing to show that grace to others. . .  Not only to others, though, but also to the things and to the situations in life.             

On my first Sunday with you, I said that we may encounter difficulties as we try to reach out and grow the church.  We may see very little fruit to our labors at first.  We may get exasperated, frustrated, and may be tempted to say, “Enough!  I’m through with this!”  But here I’ll remind you of the fig tree.  One year, two years, three years, and the vineyard owner still didn’t see very much fruit.  But the patience and the grace of God, shown through his gardener was the key.  Nurture it, give it a little more TLC (tender loving care), and then see if it bears more fruit.             

It really hit me Friday night just what 2010 will be for our congregation.  Two-thousand nine was a year of praying, of waiting patiently, of talking with the Holy Spirit about what we were going to do.  But 2010 sounds like a year of action.  It’s a year when we’ll be reaching out to the lost of Cottondale by doing a lot things.  We’re going to have a revival, and the community is going to be invited.  We’re going to have a Vacation Bible School, a series of special speakers, and lastly, a big 125^th anniversary party.  And who knows the great things that our children’s group is going to do, plus our Faith-Sharing group . . . The tree we’ve waited for seems to be budding, and it’s full of promise already.  We may get some great fruit this year.   

However, just in case we don’t, I ask us to be patient, to be grace-filled.  I ask us to be prepared just in case with an extra shovel and a sack of manure.  And this is not so we can dig a hole and wallow in filth.  This is so we can fertilize our church.  If we don’t get the fruit we want this year, all the microorganisms in our manure will be working.  The fruit will come.  Let’s all be patient, merciful gardeners.  Amen.