In 1987 I began my apprenticeship with my good friend Stewart, the master maple syrup boiler. I learned a lot from that man, making maple syrup was just the pretext for the life lessons he taught me. I was 7 months pregnant that spring. I tramped threw the snow, hanging buckets, making sure I balanced my big belly with a backward leaning weight with each step I took. Then came the hours in front of the arch, learning to stoke the fire and take off the sap at just the right time, so it could be transformed into syrup. But the skill I admired the most and the one I have not quite mastered, was the ability of Stewart to rise above his circumstances, his various aches and pains and signs of aging, and attune himself with the rising of the sap. Sugaring season was a time to accept the invitation of Mother Nature, to affirm that he was still alive and able to do things. It was a time to show, that despite the appearance of being a dead old fig tree, there was still life in this old fella.
There are times in all our lives when we want to give up. Life becomes very hard. The soil around our old fig tree of a soul hardens and dries up. We feel we have nothing more to offer life and life has nothing to offer us. We may enter a period of self-recrimination. “I try to do better but I keep repeating my mistakes. I’ll never change. I might as well give up and stop trying.” Or we may blame our troubles on someone else. “If only so-an-so would stop causing me grief. I don’t need this hassle. I’ll just go where I AM appreciated.” We find ourselves in a dark place and there does not look like there is any way out. If we can’t blame anyone else we may turn the blame on God. We ask “why me God? What did I do to deserve this?” This is the issue in the opening of today’s gospel passage. At this point in the gospel, Luke has Jesus alternating between speaking to the crowds of curious people and giving private teachings to his close disciples. It is not clear which of the two he is speaking to here, but the questions they pose him have to do with how we react to tragedy. Although our life experience teaches us about the unfair aspects of life, we cling to the idea that God’s justice will somehow spare those who live upright lives. The Galileans who were slaughtered by the Romans, in the temple, beside the animal sacrifices they were offering, did not deserve this horrible death. Their own blood was mingled with that of the sacrificial animals. Nor did the 18 men who were building a tower in Siloam, when the whole thing collapsed; nor did the 49 people kneeling in prayer in the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand this past week. It is at these moments, when life is cruel and heartbreaking that it is tempting to rail at God, to declare there must not be a God if these things continue to happen or to look outward to find a human target to blame for our grief or our troubles or our despair. It would be very tempting right now to focus all our hatred on the lone white supremacist gunman who slaughtered innocent people at prayer, to gather up our righteous indignation at all those we violently disagree with and try to eliminate them, bend them to our will or castigate them with damning words.
It would be easy to do that except we have to ask ourselves why this passage appears during Lent, a time when we are called not to action in the outside world so much as reflection on the state of our own inner world. Lent is the time to look inwards and admit that each of us has a kind of old fig tree sitting around in there, feeling kind of sorry for itself. We sit either blaming others for our distress or blaming ourselves. Whatever actions we have committed or thoughts we have entertained, things are looking kind of withered and pretty dismal inside. We may think we know all the answers. We may think all the others are wrong and we have the solution. Or alternately we may think we are worthless and unredeemable. Neither attitude will allow us to fully live into our human potential. We are in need of more water, more manure, more TLC. We need both humility and also hope.
In today’s passage Jesus invites us to let go of our righteous indignation as well as our self- recriminations. These attitudes cause our fig tree to wither and stop producing figs! Instead he asks us to humble ourselves, admit our own imperfections but also open our hearts to the unexpected, unmerited moments when God touches our lives, causing the sap to start rising, the birds to start chirping, and the human heart to start singing. As we drink in the sights and smells and sounds of spring, we can give thanks to the power of God to renew and resurrect. In this season of Lent we are being asked to be patient and be alert. Wait for God to do a new thing. Know that God is working even now on your withered up fig tree of a soul. Amen.