Fruitless fig tree – Lent III, 26 February 2016

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)

Here is a very intriguing thing.  If you read in Mark or Matthew about Jesus’s encounter with the fig tree, it’s much briefer and somewhat more startling, and it is not a parable at all but an actual alleged event.  It happens when Jesus is on his way into the Temple.  Life has become very fraught by this time.  He would have liked some fresh figs, but there are none to be had, so he curses the fig tree – and on their return it is withered and dead.  In Luke it is all quite different.  It’s a parable.  The owner of a vineyard (generally a metaphor for God) loses patience with his barren fig tree.  Dig it up, he orders, it’s cumbering the ground.  But the assistant pleads, give it another year; I will dig around it and give it manure.  If it still doesn’t bear fruit, we’ll dig it up. 

You remember last week’s word… teleios, fit for purpose…?  The tree is pointless if it’s not producing fruit.  Now, this could be a very harsh lesson indeed, but I instinctively want to avoid treating it that way.  It may indeed be true that there are some Christian churches and some Christian believers who are, as we say, a waste of space.  There are also some who appear to be producing poisonous fruit.  I think however, as a metaphor, the fruit we have to produce is a rather more subtle thing than shining good works and visible, measurable, quantifiable results.  You don’t assess Jesus’s kingdom in the way a secular culture wants to measure success.  It does not have annual performance reviews or a Budget or declare a dividend.  Every now and then someone says, I give to the Salvation Army because they roll up their sleeves and get things done.  And what they do is admirable.  Much the same gets done also by non-religious organisations and secular aid agencies. 

In Jesus’s kingdom we certainly care for the widow, the stranger and the orphan; we certainly care about justice.  But Jesus equally insisted, the kingdom is within.  The fruit is in real inner change, what the Greek scriptures call µετανοια, metanoia, daily conversion to the way of Christ, which is not the way of the world, turning back to him, turning away from ways and attitudes, opinions and actions, that are not of him.  It is what St Paul calls the fruits of the Spirit, and he lists them:  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22).  These are the fruits that ripen, by the work of the Spirit, in us, as we learn how to be still and silent and consenting to be changed.