Sermon 3/11/07
Nourished - Isaiah 55:1-9, Psalm 63:1-8, Luke 13:1-9
(view lectionary notes for this text)
As I told you last week, I’ve given up soda for Lent, brave soul that I am. So far, so good. I’ve been a Diet Coke drinker since high school at least. I switched to mostly caffeine free Diet Coke somewhere in there, but I still couldn’t give it up altogether. When I travel places where I know there won’t be Diet Coke available, I usually make sure to bring my own stash with me, or I just end up making a “Diet Coke run” mid-meeting. So, it’s been an interesting week and a half without Diet Coke so far. I’ve successfully passed through the headache phase, that painful process where your body doesn’t respond well to missing out on caffeine. I still want Diet Coke when I see it, but as I said, so far, so good.
Of course, without having soda, I’ve needed to replace my soda with something else to keep hydrated. Soda actually isn’t a good hydrating beverage. Between the sodium and the caffeine, soda can actually make you thirstier than otherwise. So I’ve been drinking a lot of water. I’ve actually been getting my recommended eight cups of water a day, which is a rarity for me. The thing is, I don’t actually like water, the taste of it. I’ve never been a water-drinker. I’m still learning to enjoy it. But I’m finding that the more I drink of it, the thirstier I am for it. It quenches my thirst, yes, but it also creates in me a need for it – it satisfies my thirst, and so I actually thirst even more for it. When I am the most thirsty, and the most in true need of something to quench my thirst, I would never or rarely reach for a soda. After a hard workout, or after going for a run, or being active on a hot day, it is cold, thirst-quenching water that I would reach for. So why am I so reluctant to give up the soda? Why am I so reluctant to make a change that can only be for my benefit? For my health? For good things for me?
This is the conundrum that Isaiah addresses in our Old Testament lesson. Why, when one choice will benefit us, bring us good things, fill us, nourish us, help us grow, and the other choice will either harm us outright, or at least not do anything for us, why do we also choose the latter? Isaiah writes, “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” He continues on, and in Isaiah’s words you can hear almost a sense of bafflement over our human predicament. What is good is available to us. What is satisfying is free to us. Why, then, do we still chase after other things? Isaiah asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”
Well, we must answer Isaiah’s question. Why aren’t we choosing that which satisfies? That which offers life? Why aren’t we choosing this ‘good food’ that Isaiah talks about? I have my suspicions. One of our church members has told me that she’s struggling with what she gave up for Lent this year. She’s not struggling because she’s failing to keep her promise, finding it too hard. She’s struggling because she’s finding it too easy, too doable, or at least, too possible. And she’s also finding it a bit rewarding. She’s feeling good about the choice she’s making every day. And if this habit she’s cultivating during Lent is actually rewarding and doable and livable, and not hard and terrible and difficult, what excuse will she have when Lent is done to return to her old ways? Not having that excuse scares her a little bit.
We all love to cling to our excuses. I recently ran across a passage from the 19th century theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, the same passage quoted in two different books I’ve been reading, and so it has really struck me as timely. Kierkegaard wrote, “The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand it we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.” (1)
So why aren’t we ‘spending our money’ on only the good food of life that Isaiah describes? Why do work for that which doesn’t satisfy? The answer can only be, as Kierkegaard suspects, that we fear and dread that our experience of God will ruin our lives – ruin our plans, ruin our plan of coasting along without much effort, without giving too much of ourselves, without committing in any significant, full way to the gospel, to the path of discipleship the Jesus lays out for us. We fear that when we come to the waters our thirst will indeed be quenched, just as promised, just as Isaiah describes, just as God covenants with us. We fear that it is all true! And this truth will leave us with no choice but to act and respond to God’s call with our whole selves.
So what do we do? If we look at our gospel lesson, we encounter this strange gospel lesson about the Galileans who Pilate had killed, and Galileans who were killed when a tower collapsed. Jesus is making a point to them that God wasn’t punishing those who died in these incidents. But it is the second part of our gospel lesson that draws my attention. Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree. The owner of the vineyard checks the fig tree for fruit, and keeps finding none. He wants the gardener to tear up the tree, but the gardener intercedes, asking for more time, saying he will show the tree extra care, and try one more year to help the tree bear fruit. What’s interesting about this parable is that fig trees like Jesus used in this story were supposedly easy-growing trees. Figs were easy to produce. In fact, it would have been more unusual for a tree to not produce fruit, particularly for three years. This fig tree that Jesus describes is unusual. Why is it not bearing fruit? Fig trees wouldn’t normally need fertilizer, or the intervention of a gardener. (2)
I think we are sometimes like these fig trees. All the conditions are in place for us to be able to grow and bear fruit. We have everything we need to be healthy. We are nourished and ready to bear fruit. And yet, when God comes looking, how often does God find that still we have no fruit to show? So what do we do? First, we rely on God’s grace. We see grace in the gardener who still tends to the wayward fig tree despite the fact that it just seems to be taking up space and soil and time. The gardener still has hope, and still sees what might be. This is what God sees in us through loving us. And then, we repent. Both passages we read today call us to repent – to turn back to God. Isaiah tells us that God abundantly pardons, offering still and again to quench our thirst and satisfy our hungry hearts. And then, we act.
This afternoon, following worship, we will be engaging in a time of visioning for our congregation. We’ll gather over a meal to talk about St. Paul’s – about who we are, and who we want to be – who God wants us to be. As a community of faith, are we sometimes in danger of being like the fig tree? We certainly have at our disposal all the things we need to be a growing, thriving, living community of disciples. We have people, and gifts and talents. We have space and resources. We have a community who are longing for a word of good news. Everything is in place. Are we bearing fruit? Or are we still working for that which does not satisfy?
Let me share with you another passage – this one from Marianne Williamson. She wrote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.” (3)
In all of us, in us individually, in this congregation – in all of us is the potential and the promise – everything we need to bear fruit. To all of us, individually, and as a congregation, God offers unconditional love and grace, calling us to come to the waters, calling us to eat and be satisfied. For all of us, responding means accepting the gift, and the responsibility of full life and abundant love that comes with it.
Amen.
(1) Søren Kierkegaard, not sure of source.
(2) www.gbod.org/worship - Safiyah Fosua
(3) Marianne Williamson, from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles.