“Walking Through Lent with Jesus, Part 3: Producing Fruit” by the Rev. Dr. Don Wahlig, March 23, 2025, Year C / Lent 2 - Isaiah 55:1-9 · Psalm 63:1-8 · 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 · Luke 13:1-9

THEME:  All of us sin and face God’s judgment, but God gives us grace and time to repent by following Jesus.
 

One of the fascinating things about living here in Central Pennsylvania is the contrast between the different regions.  You have Perry County that feels like West Virginia, next door to Dauphin County, that feels like Philadelphia. Here in Cumberland County, what used to be cornfields now grow homes and warehouses. Further south in York County, you have the snack food capital of the world that used to be our nation’s first capital. And then there is Adams County. Outside of Gettysburg, Adams County is best known for producing fruit. It is rightly called “Apple Capital USA.” 

There is an area that runs along the slopes of South Mountain known as the Adams County fruit belt. More apples are grown there than any other region in Pennsylvania, and all but a handful of places nationwide. What makes the fruit belt so productive is a unique combination of climate and soil. But even so, it takes years and a lot of fertilizer for a new tree to bear fruit. Ever since our colonial forebears brought apple seedlings here, manure has been the fertilizer of choice. Manure adds the right nutrients to the soil to make the trees grow deeper roots and better fruit. 

And this morning’s parable of the fig tree is an illustration of how Jesus does the same thing for us. You’ve heard the old joke about Someone who asked the preaching professor how many points a sermon should have. The professor scratched his chin, then said, “At least one.” Well, Jesus preaches what amounts to a 3-point sermon. He offers a correction, an observation, and a command. He begins by correcting the popular notion that bad things only happen to people who sin badly. Just like the so-called friends in the book of Job who insist that Job’s suffering is the result of his own unacknowledged sin, the common belief in Jesus’ day was that calamity only happens to people who have committed egregious sins.

The observation that Jesus makes is that everyone has sinned. Everyone is liable to face God’s judgment.  Everyone is deserving of the punishment. There is no hierarchy of grace that differentiates between those who sin less and those who sin more. We have all sinned.  We are all on the hook for our own sin. After his correction and observation, Jesus concludes with a command, a call to repent.  His point is that life is shorter than we think, and God’s judgment is closer than we know.  As a result, repentance is an urgent matter for everyone.  To make his point he tells the parable of the fig tree. It is an echo of the warning his cousin, John the Baptist, gave to the crowds who came out to see him. “Even now,” John said, “the ax is lying at the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

In the parable, a landowner has planted a fig tree in his vineyard. The landowner, who is clearly God, has come looking for fruit.  For three years, this tree has produced none. So, he tells his gardener, who is Jesus, to cut down the tree. Instead, the gardener persuades the landowner to be patient for one more season, while he tends the tree. He says he will dig around the base to let rainwater drain toward the young sapling. Then he will fertilize it with manure. If it still does not bear fruit the next year, then it can be cut down and burned for firewood. The point of the parable is that God expects us all to bear the fruit of repentance.  That means actually changing the way we live. It means realigning our hearts, minds, and actions with the ministry of love to which Jesus calls us, especially on behalf of the least and the lost. 

Further, the mere fact that we have not yet been cut down does not mean that we are bearing fruit that is pleasing to God.  Clearly, this is a parable about judgment. It is a little scary. Jesus is not speaking to the curious crowds, like the ones who came out to see John beside the Jordan. Jesus is speaking to his disciples, which means he is talking directly to you and me. We tend to focus on what this parable says about God’s readiness to punish us. Certainly, that is one of the primary points Jesus is making. Divine judgment and punishment are a reality. But there is more to this parable than punishment. There is grace in this parable, too. To find it, we need to dig down below the surface – literally.

When a fruit tree sapling is planted, it takes at least a couple of years for the root system to develop. That is why there is no fruit for several years after a fruit tree is planted. Only after 2 or 3 years of growth is fertilizer effective. The way the fertilizer works is by transforming the soil around the base of the tree. Fertilizer like manure provides nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. These nutrients seep into the soil around the base of the sapling. The roots absorb the nutrients.  That gives the sapling the energy it needs to produce fruit.

Friends, Jesus does the same thing for you and me. He provides fertilizer for our faith. Instead of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the fertilizer Jesus provides is a combination of love, direction, and inspiration. For most of us, love permeates the soil in which we were planted, as human beings and as Christians. We first came to know God’s love in Jesus through our parents and our extended family. Then we became part of a faith family. Our faith family showed us what his love looks when it is practiced by a community.

In addition to love, Jesus also provides the direction for our lives. Our faith family teaches us about Jesus, God’s living Word, through scripture, which is God’s printed word.  Most of all, we learn his command to love God and our neighbor with our whole being. Jesus himself gives us the example of what that looks like.  That becomes the direction for our lives. In addition to love and direction, Jesus gives us inspiration. He is the source of the Holy Spirit that we all received in our baptism. The Spirit empowers and guides us to live with love as he did, to love God and neighbors, especially the least, and the lost. But, as we know, this process of spiritual growth is rarely easy or smooth. Being human, we are subject to sin. We go astray. We get busy. We forget. We get lazy. We take our faith and our faith family for granted.

Or maybe we become enamored of the shiny idols of our secular society. We give in to the allure of money, power, and position. We put our love of self above our love for others. We get sidetracked by intellectual doubts. Or we face a crisis that we cannot easily reconcile with our faith. We get angry at God for allowing the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, the progression of a disease.  And we walk away from God. That is the very definition of sin. Sin is anything we do that separate us from God. Friends, let’s be honest here. From time to time, we all do this. We all walk away from God at some point in our lives.  The real question is how will we respond when we do?

On the one hand, in this parable of the fig tree Jesus warns us not to pretend that we have not sinned, that we have not walked away from God. On the other hand, he is telling us not to despair, either. The right response – the faithful response – is to be grateful for the opportunity we have been given to repent, and then to do it by turning back to God and bearing the righteous fruit of love and justice  that he finds so pleasing. And that is exactly what this season of Lent is all about. It is the timely opportunity to repent and return to God. That is the good news of the gospel. We have been given this gift by none other than Jesus himself.  He never stops fertilizing our faith with love, direction, and inspiration.  It is up to us receive his gift, and bear the fruit of repentance that he demands.

The great Scottish Victorian writer, Thomas Carlyle, famously said, “Of all acts of man, repentance is the most divine.  The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.” Friends, now is the time to see ourselves as the sinners that we are, and to see our sins for what they are. Now is also the time to accept Jesus’ gift of the opportunity to repent. That is how we bear the tastiest fruit of all.

May it be so.