There is something so rich about this parable.  When you find manure in the bible you can’t just let it sit there in a steaming pile, you have to dig into it.  I am after all the pastor in the cowboy boots.  When people comment on my boots I remind them that pastors often have to walk through a lot of “stuff” so we need big boots.

The manure story, as Luke tells it, doesn’t start in the dirt. It starts with that question that we still ask: “Does God make bad things happen?”

In Luke, Jesus is told this horrendous story (which cannot be historically verified, by the way) of people in the temple making their offerings and being mowed down by Pilate’s men. The blood of the faithful is intermingled with the blood of their sacrificial offerings. What can one say when presented with a tragic story like this?

Jesus responds, like all good rabbis, with a question. “Does the slaughter of these faithful mean that they were worse sinners than other Galileans?” Jesus doesn’t wait for an answer.  He answers his own question with a resounding NO. “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

If that doesn’t make his point clearly enough he recites his own horror story where a watchtower falls and kills 18 people, (again historically unverifiable.) Jesus asks a second time, “So, were these people more sinful than other people of Jerusalem?” 

He answers his question with the same answer. NO. “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Jesus is often cryptic but in this case there seems to be no mystery about the answer.  Yes, people died in these tragic events but no, they were not any more sinful than the rest of us.  God didn’t kill them because they were bad. They were not killed to prove a point or to show God’s justice.

As clear as Jesus is, we still hear Christians twist this around, determined to wield God as a weapon. Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, almost any tragedy that horrifies us, is a sign of God’s justice. (Is that manure I smell?)

Jesus says bad things happen but not because God willed it. Yes, sin exists; Jesus says twice that repentance is necessary. But it is the onlookers, those who are tempted to stand in judgment, who already have things figured out, they are who need to repent.

And then he tells a simple manure story that makes us stop and think, even 2000 years later.

There is a farmer/landowner who has a fig tree planted in her vineyard. She looks for fruit on the tree but there is none.

So she says to her gardener, “Look at this! I come looking for figs on this tree every year, for three years now. Every year nothing! Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?”

The gardener says, “With all due respect, let it alone for one more year. Let me dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, great; if not, then you can cut it down.”

If this was Sunday School we would start asking questions – who is the landowner/farmer? Who is the gardener? Who/what is the fig tree? What about that manure? And what does this have to do with the first part of the passage, with tragedy, towers falling and people dying?

And what kind of farmer plants a fig tree in a vineyard anyway? Isn’t that where grapes are supposed to grow? Maybe it is a volunteer fig tree that just started growing in the vineyard and the farmer decided to leave it and see what would happen. After 3 years she is tired of watching it take up space in the vineyard, tired of this invasive taking nutrients out of the soil. She is ready to cut it down.

Or maybe the farmer did plant the fig tree. She had heard that planting different plants together could be complementary, that they nourished each other. And she thought that was all that was needed. Now, three years later, she is impatient and wants that space back for a sure thing, for a cash crop.  She doesn’t have time for something that just takes up space and doesn’t produce. Better to get rid of the dead weight and give more room to what does bear fruit.

The gardener in our story is not only willing to get her hands dirty, she knows more about fig trees than the landowner/famer. She knows that it is not unusual for fig trees to take 4-5 years until they are mature enough to bear fruit. This tree has had only three years. The gardener asks for one more year, hoping that the manure and a shovel can jump start the process and the tree can be saved.

No matter how the tree got in a vineyard, there it is, not bearing figs. The gardener has compassion. She looks at the poor tree and doesn’t see an invasive without rights. The gardener sees a young plant that needs some loving care, some good old fashioned manure and a shovel.

I can’t rightfully call myself a gardener; I am certainly not a farmer, but one thing I know about manure: it is strong. You can’t just throw it on your strawberries or fig tree and expect it to work.  You have to get in there and mix it up with other good stuff. Otherwise it can be deadly. The farmer knows this; shovel in hand, she is ready to get dirty.

Our theme this season of Lent is “Ashamed no more.” The temptation is to leave shame in a pile in the garden, like the manure, and run straight to repentance and forgiveness. But this parable asks us to wait, to look down at the manure – that we may be standing in – and take the time to put it to good use. Not all of us are called to be gardeners, to literally dig in the dirt and grow our food or flowers. But this parable seems to tell us that if we do take the risk to get our hands dirty there might be a reward, there may be figs in the future.

 

 

 

We might ask again: What is the manure? Who/what is the tree? Who is the gardener? The landowner/farmer?

The landowner/farmer seems almost ashamed that this tree won’t grow. She wants fruit without working for it, without the stink and stickiness of manure. But the gardener sees the potential of the tree. The gardener is willing to be vulnerable to the smell, to get dirty in the dip. The gardener is willing to risk getting connected to that tree, even though the farmer/landowner wants to cut it down. The gardener chooses courage in caring for the tree; she stands up to her boss – then gets down in the dirt and manure to dig and save a life.

In contrast to getting vulnerable in the shameful manure, we get this invitation from Isaiah.

Ho, if you are thirsty come this way to the water. No money? No problem? Come, buy and eat – wine and milk, no money, no price.

Sounds like an infomercial – too good to be true.

But wait, there’s more: Forget that junk food, eat the real thing for free. Eat the best good, the rich food and enjoy it.

We try to eat nutritionally; we like a good wine and some contraband non-homogenized, non-pasteurized milk straight off the Amish farm. But do we even know how to respond to this kind of invitation?

The people of Israel, who have been in Babylon, eating the bread of tears for so many years, an invitation like this is music to their ears.

The whole thing is like an “It gets better” video. Isaiah paints what seems like an impossible vision for the future. Can you see it? Israel, small and hated by everyone, will call nations that it doesn’t even know to come join it. And though it makes no sense, unbelievably, these nations that don’t know Israel will come running to it because of Israel’s God. In this way, even the unspeakably wicked have a chance for forgiveness – if they are willing to come to God, to come to the free waters.

If this vision of the future leaves Israel shaking its head in disbelief, Isaiah says, it’s okay. Don’t even try to understand this kind of mercy, it is beyond human comprehension.

If we are hoping for condemnation of the wicked, of Babylon or even Pilate because of the atrocious killing of Galileans as they make their sacrifice in the Luke story, we have these words of Isaiah to deal with. God’s ways are not the ways of this world. Free food, free drink, free forgiveness, when you come to the waters.

What is the connection between free food, healing waters and manure?  How can these two texts possibly be reconciled to reach other?

I think the key is the gardener. We so often, I so often, want a nice neat justice that I can understand, that can be wrapped up or written down. Yet here we have this gardener, willing to stand in the manure, digging around for a year to give a tree one more chance. God says clearly through Isaiah: My thoughts are not your thoughts, your ways are not my ways.

Clean, tidy, orderly, predictable? This year we are invited to try another way, to dig in the manure, to experience that grace is free, to ponder that this great love is beyond our comprehension, even when we humble ourselves to it. May it be so.