We’ve just heard
Jesus speak about the fig tree that hadn’t produced fruit for three
years and, not wanting to invest more into the fig tree, how the owner
of the orchard told his gardener to cut the tree down. And, lest we
forget, after the tree would be chopped down, it would be thrown into
the all-consuming fire until nothing was left but ashes. Evaluating the
same tree using different criteria, however, the gardener sees things
quite differently. “Let me cultivate the ground and fertilize it; the
tree may bear fruit next year,” the gardener told the owner of the
orchard. “If not, then you can cut it down.”
“Ah,” we breathe a
sigh of relief, “the fig tree gets a reprieve. It won’t be cut down and
burned until nothing but ashes remain.”
And the moral of the
story?
“God is merciful and
always will give us some extra time to bear good fruit,” we tell
ourselves.
Well, maybe so.
But, then, maybe not!
I don’t believe that
interpretation is what Jesus had in mind at all when he told the parable
of the barren fig tree. After all, Jesus had just said: “…I tell you,
if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did” (Luke 13:3).
There’s not a whole lot of extra time suggested there.
So, what does it
mean to repent so as to avoid perishing?
Most importantly, to
repent doesn’t mean sitting around and “feeling sorry” for our sins.
While sorrow certainly is one aspect of repentance—and yes, we should
feel very sorry for our sins—the real point of repentance, as Jesus
describes it in the parable of the unproductive fig tree, is changing
how we view other people. Repentance requires looking at all of what we
evaluate as being all of those “unproductive fig trees” in our lives
just like the gardener did. Instead of taking the easy way out by
cutting them down, incinerating them, and tossing what’s left into the
ash heap of our lives—as the orchard’s owner suggests—repentance means
considering instead what God wants us to do to help all of those
unproductive people become more productive in terms of bearing good
fruit by their lives. And, of course, once we know what that is, to
assist them to bear good fruit in their lives.
Viewed in this way,
Jesus’ call to repentance isn’t a threat or a scare tactic. No, this
call is a challenge to muster up the courage it takes to change
ourselves in deeply profound way that will make it possible for us to
see others as God sees them and, then, to do what is needed for them to
become the person God has created them to be. In this sense,
repentance teaches us what it means to love God and neighbor as we love
ourselves. And, failure to repent in this way means death, not just
physical death but something of greater consequence, spiritual death.
God call us to tend to those unproductive fig trees so they might turn
away from sin and fulfill the purpose for which God has created them.
The failure to do so—to repent and aid others to love God and neighbor
as they love themselves—means physical and spiritual death for both!
Yikes!
We dupe ourselves,
then, when we think of ourselves as those barren fig trees because we
know we haven’t been as productive as we should have been. And, because
Jesus is the gardener who has won a “stay of execution” for us—after
all, we’ve had another year of life since last Lent—we lull ourselves
into thinking that we can put off until tomorrow the repentance we need
to do today.
Consider this
fiction:
Satan’s accountant
came to him with some distressing news. “The number of souls entering
Hell is way down,” the accountant said.
“What should I do?”
Satan asked in a somewhat worried tone.
“You might call your
minions together for a brainstorming session about some clever ways to
lure new souls into Hell,” the accountant replied.
Taking his
accountant’s advice, Satan called all of his minions together and
gathered them in Hell’s main conference room. Satan then addressed
them: “We’re here today to brainstorm about how we might lure new souls
into Hell. What do you have to suggest?”
Devil after devil
offered clever suggestions about how to attract more people to Hell.
And, although some of the ideas were very clever, it struck Satan that
most of these ideals appealed only to certain target groups. Growing
increasingly bored and frustrated, Satan thought to himself, “I need
something really, really novel and exciting. I need something that’s
going to attract human beings from every race and tongue, of every
people and nation, for every time and place.”
That’s when Satan
notice his oldest, most faithful, and most successful servant rising
from his chair.
“Well, my most
faithful servant, what do you suggest we do?” Satan asked.
“If you want more
people in Hell,” the servant said, “just tell them they have plenty of
time.”
The delusion that
“there’ll always be a tomorrow” is just that…a delusion introduced into
our minds by the Great Deluder, Satan. None of us has ever been given
any guarantee there will be a tomorrow. As youngsters, we were all
told: “Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today.” But, the
reason not to put off to tomorrow what we can do today is not so that we
won’t have extra work to do tomorrow, but because there may not be a
tomorrow to do what needs to be done today.
And what we need to
do today, Jesus tells his disciples in today’s gospel, is to repent. We
need to change how we look upon and judge others just as the owner of
the orchard needed to change how he looked upon and judged that
unproductive fig tree.
A good place to
begin the hard work of repentance is to ask: “Who are those unproductive
fig trees I have decided should be cut down and removed from my life so
that I don’t have to pour any more of my limited resources into them?”
Just who are those people? Can you list them? Envision them in your
mind’s eye. Do they include an in-law? an adult child? a co-worker? Do
they include a former spouse? someone who used to be a friend? someone
in the past who hurt me or perpetrated an injustice against me? Now,
think of one thing you could for each of those people that, if you did
it, could make them bear better fruit. Match the name of the person
with the action you could do. Now, the big question: Are you willing to
do that...today?
That’s what
repentance is all about if our goal is not to perish but to experience
eternal life. And repentance is what the season of Lent is all about.
By examining our lives and living the life of repentance, we don’t
constantly confess our sins and beat ourselves up, but we convert—we
change how we think about others and assist them to bear better fruit in
their lives—in order that our behavior reveals the depth of our love of
God and neighbor present in our hearts.
The word Jesus uses
is “repent.” It’s not something his disciples put off until tomorrow.
No, if we are to be disciples who assist others to become fruitful once
again, then repentance is our duty...today.
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