Rector's Reflection—Lent 3 C
March 7, 2010

A number of years ago I was visiting a friend who had two small children. Her 6-year-old daughter was prissy to the max and generally liked to stick with adults because she pretty much viewed herself as a peer. The 4-year-old brother was her exact opposite... a reality that was a constant source of embarrassment, sighing, and eye-rolling on the part of the older sister. On this particular occasion the little boy had discovered how much fun it was to throw kitty litter (fresh out of the bag, thank goodness) at the ceiling fan. The first round sounded as though we were under attack, but the squeals of laughter from the kitchen assured us that this was friendly fire.

My friend had a much higher threshold for this sort of behavior than I did, but to her credit, she did yell into the kitchen for her son to "stop that now." A couple of minutes elapsed and we were once again treated to flying kitty litter. My friend leapt up, went into the kitchen, swatted her son on his tush, and dragged him screaming and hollering to his room. "It's not fair", he kept wailing. "You didn't say this was absolutely the last time you were going to tell me to stop it."

Evidently a pattern had emerged in the family where any warning NOT preceded by "this is absolutely the last time..." was simply an exercise in futility on the part of the warner.

I remembered this incident as I read over the lessons for this Sunday. The Gospel is obviously a call to repentance but it concludes with that somewhat uncomfortable parable about a fig tree that had had three years to produce figs but never did. The owner of the tree told the gardener to cut it down, but the gardener asked for one more year to "... dig around it and put manure on it..." (an interesting spin for a sermon!) "If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but
if not, you can cut it down."

Cut it down? If we assume this is a story about God/owner and tree/me... and I think that's a fair assumption... CUT IT DOWN??? What happened to divine mercy? What happened to grace?

Well, actually nothing. They are still part of the heart of God. There is no doubt about divine forbearance. But the tree has the responsibility to bear fruit... to repent of its fruitlessness, so to speak. Calling for the hewing of a fig tree is not the warmest, fuzziest image of God, but if there is anything we learn from our Lenten journey, it is the necessity to repent... to bear fruit. Jesus has told his followers that. Jesus has told the temple elite that. Repent or perish.

But there is not an unlimited amount of time. If we wait for "...this is absolutely the last time I'm going to tell you..." then we wait at our peril, for, as we are told, we do not know the day or the hour of God's return. And when that day comes, I think Jesus is suggesting here that it would be far better to be found in full fruit than just taking up space.