Life Between The Trees: The Fig Tree - Luke 13:6-9


How many of you use coupons?  Anita and I do, though I’m not as faithful at keeping up with them and and shopping store to store to get all the deals that help you get $200 worth of groceries for $12.  You know what the most frustrating thing about not keeping up with it coupons like we’re supposed to is?  It is standing in line after gathering those items that you would normally only purchase one of, having everything rung up and bagged, pulling the coupons out of the book, and handing them over to the cashier, watching her scan them, and then look at it, and say, “sorry sir, this coupon expired last week.”

There are also all those saved emails.  I receive emails all the time that offer good deals on places we like to shop or places we like to eat.  I’ll save the email figuring we will go soon.  As daily emails come in and the saved emails get pushed down, they become forgotten, like Anita’s free birthday ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery.  We thought about it Friday, and when I pulled it up yesterday it had already expired.

Time runs out.  We cut the coupons, we save the emails, we have an opportunity to save, we know they have an expiration date, and then we don’t pay attention.

This becomes part of our “Life Between The Trees.”  Before we get going too, I have to see if we’ve made progress.  How many tree huggers are there to be found at St. Paul’s this morning?  We found free will with the dual trees of Eden…we’ve explored the olive tree’s hope of God’s sustaining and rescuing grace…we’ve experienced the assurance that nothing voids the promises of God at the top of the cedar tree…under the Oaks we have heard the call to radical hospitality…the palm tree calls us to trust in God for the victory…and the broom tree assures us that God comes alongside those struggling with depression…

Today we have made the transition from some of the trees in the Old Testament to explore a few of the trees of the New Testament.  We begin by standing before the fig tree as we hear the parable of Jesus.  Hear the parable again:

“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it 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.’”

So what does this parable have to do with couponing and remembering emails deals?  It’s all about the opportunity and the expiration dates.  The opportunity is the savings that the coupons and the emails afford.  Those expiration dates on the coupons and the emails are reminders that at some point it will be too late to make use of those deals.  Jesus tells us this parable let us know that we have an opportunity and to warn us that there is also an expiration date.

There is an opportunity.  The farmer came back and found the fig tree barren.  He was ready to have it cut down.  In his opinion there had been time for the tree to start producing fruit.  He was ready to be done with that tree.  The gardener asks for another year.  He asks for the opportunity to clean up the ground and fertilize the soil.  The farmer grants his request.  The farmer has mercy for the tree and grants it one last opportunity to bear fruit after the gardener heavily invests himself in caring for and encouraging the tree.

There is an expiration date.  Jesus leaves no question as to that…there will be a point at which it is too late.  The farmer will sit in judgment—He will come back and a year and if the tree is bearing fruit, then all is well and good, if the tree is not bearing fruit then the axe won’t just be laid to the tree, the axe will be swinging to cut it down.

Opportunity and expiration date…mercy and judgment.  Some of us want to breathe a sigh of relief.  We are under the impression that we don’t have to worry about judgment.  Judgment is for those folks who don’t have a relationship with Jesus.  It is for those folks who have turned their back on His love and forgiveness.  We are here because we have given our lives to Christ, we have escaped judgment.  We have the get out of jail for free card and skip the judgment throne and move straight into the banquet.  Don’t get me wrong, there will be judgment on whether or not we will accept the love of Christ and embrace Him as Savior and Lord.  That is a given. 

This is something different.  The story of the fig tree is not about judgement on non-believers.  This is about God’s judgment on believers—God’s judgment on God’s own people.  Consider it, my brothers and sisters, the fig tree is a tree that the farmer has planted—it is one that the farmer has brought to life.  What tree has God planted, what people has God formed…first the people of Israel and then the Church.  This is the story of God coming to examine His people to see if they are bearing fruit…to see if we are bearing fruit.  This story would have called to mind the preaching of John the Baptizer to those who had heard him:

Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”[i]

In Jesus’ parable, the time has come to cut down the tree…God has come to examine His people and has found His people barren…no fruit spring forth from its branches.  Yet, at the request of the gardener, an opportunity is given, mercy is shown—time is given in order to see if the tree will begin to bear fruit.

Salvation comes as a free gift from God, there is nothing we do to earn it.  God pours His grace into our lives and frees us from sin.  God loves us and accepts us where we are, but then calls us to grow into His likeness, and then continually pours His grace into our lives to give us the strength to do so.  We are called, in the strength of God to live different lives.  Lives that bear fruit.

It means that God is looking to see if we, as individuals, and as His Church, have left the dead barren lives marked by death behind us.  Have we left behind us what Paul would call the “works of the flesh”: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing,” and things of that sort?[ii] These things infect our lives and our church in much the same way fig rust, blights, and nematodes infect and can leave the fig tree barren.

God, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, has given us the opportunity to live lives that have left those “works of the flesh” behind.  He has dug around and fertilized our soil, filling us with His grace—grace that we find in worship, in small group studies, in the reading of Scripture, in Christian fellowship, in service to those around us. 

God has offered us this grace…He has given us opportunity.  Will we make a u-turn with our lives and live completely different?  Will we turn from the diseases of this world, as individuals and as a church, that leave us barren and rotting and soak in the nutrients God puts in our soil that we may live truly fruitful lives.  Paul offers an image of what the fruit looks like that God’s tree should bear.  Living, healthy, fruitful trees are marked by “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”[iii] When these things pour out of us, we know that we are truly bearing the fruit of God—fruit that is not for ourselves, but fruit that those around us feed off of and come to know our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  It is through bearing fruit that we fulfill the commission of Christ to go into the world to make disciples—and it is through more and more disciples of Christ bearing this fruit that we will see the world transformed.

My brothers and sisters we have been given an opportunity…we have been shown mercy…we have been nourished by grace…we don’t know the expiration date, only that there is one…may we be found to be fruit bearing trees.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.


[i] Luke 3:8-9
[ii] Galatians 5:18-20
[iii] Galatians 5:22-23

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