Crab Apples

Luke 13:1-9

My grandparents lived on a farm in Northwest Ohio. This is the upper-left corner of the state, with Indiana on the left and Michigan to the north. It’s beautifully flat around those parts, with most of the land being put to good use. There are fields as far as the eye can see, with little farm houses plopped down in between. When my grandparents were alive, we visited their farm at least once a month, if not two. Their farm was a family farm. My great-grandmother lived next to them, with a small pasture and creek separating the two houses. My grandparents were the hardest-working people I’ve ever known. My grandpa worked at a GM factory; my grandma was a nurse and worked the third shift. In their “free time” they raised four kids and farmed. In addition to their fields, they had two large gardens, which they ate from year round. When they weren’t planting, weeding, or harvesting, they were canning and stocking their freezers. And if this wasn’t enough work, they would go into the woods and pick wild berries to make jam and pies. I loved visiting them. There was so much space to run around and explore. They seemed to find use with every square inch of their land. Every nook and cranny seemed to have some connection with their livelihood. Their harvest seemed to always be plentiful. Except one part. In the front of their property was a small orchard. There were two or three rows of apple trees. My grandparents built a swing set in the orchard. It was the perfect playground. I remember trying to jump off the swing in a way that I would land in an apple tree. God only knows how I never broke a bone. Maybe the sole purpose of this orchard was to be a playground for us, because the apples that it produced were disgusting. They were crab apples. Every year, my cousins and I would dare each other to try one. They were tart and bitter at the same time. Their flesh was like a rock. My grandparents put so much intention behind farming and harvesting - why did they have an orchard with no edible fruit? In Autumn, the crab apples would fall to the ground and rot. My cousins and I would scour the ground looking for the best apple to throw on the road. The best ones were half rotten, so they would stay intact in the air, but once they hit the pavement, they would explode with a satisfying splat. The apples that weren’t thrown would continue to rot and nourish the trees for the next year’s produce. Every year, I thought that the trees would bear delicious apples; every year, the ground was littered with rotting, inedible fruit. Now, as an adult, I ask the same question I did as a kid: why so many crab apples? [Pause] I think we all have these strange crab apples in our lives. They take many different forms. Some of these crab apples are broken relationships with family members, coworkers, friends, and maybe God. Some of these crab apples are broken communities, cut-off from economic development and safety. Some of these crab apples are littered throughout society, taking the form of racism and nationalism. And yes, these crab apples are even within the church as we struggle to find our place in an every changing world, fighting and bickering with ourselves as we try our best to be the Body of Christ. In some ways, Lent is a season to ask this question: why so many crab apples? [Pause] This morning’s gospel reading has me wondering a similar question: why is the barren fig tree still around? What does the memory of my grandparent’s crab apples and this bizarre parable from Jesus have to teach us about love, sin, repentance, and forgiveness? What is God saying to us through barren fig trees and inedible fruit? What is God saying to us through the barrenness of Lent and the brokenness of our souls? In this story from Luke, followers of Jesus come to him out of self-righteous anger for a tragedy that has befallen their community. Pilate had killed Galileans in their place of worship. The message from Pilate was clear: get in line, or more people will be killed and sacrificed. Jesus’ followers were outraged at the injustice. They were outraged that their place of worship was used to spill the blood of Roman occupation. Jesus responds to their anger with a message of repentance. He reminds them that the Galilean’s sins did not cause their death. He turns their anger back onto them. He reminds them that they could’ve been the victims of Pilate’s fury. Likewise, Jesus uses a tragedy in which eighteen people died from a falling tower to make his point. It could’ve been them that died at Siloam. Jesus turns their anger back onto them. He says, “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” [repeat] It’s striking how well this passage is speaks to us today. Like the followers of Jesus, we have a host of tragedies that we can reflect back onto this passage. On October 27th, eleven of our Jewish sisters and brothers were killed while attending synagogue by a white suprematist. On March 15th another white suprematist killed 50 of our Muslim sisters and brothers while attending Friday prayers in New Zealand. Almost everyday, our African-American sisters and brothers are either shot dead or are sentenced to life and death in our mass-incarnation justice system. This includes seventeen-year-old Antwon Rose who was shot dead by police just a few miles from this sanctuary last June. We should all have the same question that human rights activist Qasim Rashid asked yesterday; He asked, “Why did Pittsburgh cops calmly arrest the heavily armed white suprematist terrorist who murdered 11 Jews, but a black unarmed teen running away made [East Pittsburgh cops] fear for their lives so they killed him?” We are strife with tragedy, injustice, and an overwhelming confusion toward the sanctity of life. As followers of Jesus, we should have self-righteous anger. We should have holy indignation. So, what does Jesus say to us in the midst of our tragedy? In the midst of our anger? What does Jesus tell us to do with the crab apples that litter our land and our souls? He tells us to repent. Jesus reminds us that anyone of us could be a victim of these heinous politically-fueled crimes. Anyone of us could’ve been in that synagogue or mosque. Anyone of us could’ve been Antwon Rose. It is only through God’s grace, our skin color, and the luck of our zip code that we’re not. Jesus reminds us that it is not because of the sins of the Tree of Life congregants, or the sins of the New Zealand Muslims, or the sins of Antwon Rose that they are all victims. Just as our lives and our stories are sacred, so too are their lives and their stories sanctified. Jesus reminds us - calls us - to repent. Jesus calls us to turn course, to change our ways, and to do better. In Greek, the word for repentance means a “change of mind”. In the midst of our tragedy, as we sort through the crab apples littered at our feet, Jesus challenges us to consider different perspectives from our entrenched beliefs. This is what it means to be a faith community. Each and every week we confess our sins and confess our beliefs together. Confession leads to repentance as we challenge each other to turn course, to change our ways, and to do better. This is more than feeling guilty or doing what’s morally right. True repentance is the change in mind, body, and soul. The Good News of Jesus’ life and death is that we are opened by the Holy Spirit to a transformed way of living. We have all been touched by the grace of God, and reminded of the sacredness of our lives. We’ve had tastes and glimpses, but our world has not yet transformed into the God’s Beloved Community. This is a deep and holy mystery. Reading with an Understanding of the OT Witness to Christ Why are peopled murdered in the streets? Why are God’s children murdered in their places of worship? Why do families go hungry? Why do we suffer from mental illness? Why do we suffer at all? Why is there tragedy? Lent is the time that we hold these holy mysteries before God. Jesus answers our questions with another question. He tells us a story of a barren fig tree. This fig tree hadn’t produced fruit for three years. The landowner wanted to chop it down so that it stopped sucking-up nutrients from the soil. The landowner was a business man, and he wanted his plot to produce the best it could. The gardener stops the landowner: “Wait!” He says, “let it alone for another year. I’ll dig around it and put manure on it.” The seemingly worthless fig tree is saved by a caregiver who sees its worth. The word that’s used for manure in this verse only appears one other time in the entire Bible. It appears in Isaiah 5 and the prophet uses it to describe corpses laying in the streets after the Assyrians take over Jerusalem. I think Luke is very intentional about using this word. The fig tree receives as nourishment all of the senseless death and suffering that has plagued the Jewish people for generations. Their suffering is sacred. Their lives are sanctified. It’s a metaphor that still works for us today. Like the rotten crab apples that nourished the apple trees for the next season, so too does the suffering and brokenness of our lives nourish us as we are transformed by the grace and love of God. Our faith forces us to reckon with all of the senseless deaths and suffering caused by racism and nationalism. Jesus is challenging us to be like the gardener. Like the gardener, we must repent and be changed in our entire being so that we may see each and every life as sacred and holy. Like the gardener, we must convince others to have a change in mind, body, and soul. I want to be careful here. I’m not saying that everything happens for a reason, or that God caused these deaths so that we can become better Christians. It’s not that easy. The tragedy and suffering of this world is too complex and mysterious to be reduced to such corny catchphrases. Jesus reminds us of that in the conclusion of the parable. We don’t know if the fig tree produces fruit in the next year. Jesus leaves us with a cliffhanger. What’s important is that the gardener is there, working with the so-called worthless fig tree that it may one day bear fruit. Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church wrote a short commentary about this parable. I like what he says about the parable’s cliffhanger. He says, “God’s Kingdom is not ours to figure out. Our task is to labor, without having all the answers, to acknowledge the deep mystery of it all.” Our task is to labor. I usually end sermons with the Good News. There is always some hope from the gospel to point to. However, today’s gospel reading resist that ending. Jesus leaves us with a barren fig tree. We don’t know if it will produce good fruit. We’re called to repent and labor together so that one day the tree may produce. We’re called to have a change in mind, body, and soul toward relationship with each other, no matter how different we may seem. We’re called to be in relationship with each other, laboring with each other, as we confess the profoundly terrifying mystery of our faith. The good news is that there is no good news - not yet. Amen.