Years ago I had the
opportunity to visit a park in Israel - Ne'ot Kedumim - that claims to have one
of every plant mentioned in the Bible. I have to admit to being a little
skeptical about that claim - I doubt that they have a burning bush!
Nevertheless, the Bible
abounds in plant life. It begins, of course, with the Garden of Eden, which,
according to Genesis, contained "every tree that is pleasant to the sight
and good for food", including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil.
And the Bible ends with the
vision of the New Jerusalem that contains the tree whose "leaves are for
the healing of the nations."
Trees figure prominently in
today's Old Testament and gospel reading.
First, in Exodus we have the
bush that burned but was not consumed. And then in Luke, there is the strange
and ominous story of the fig tree that did not bear fruit.
Let's look first at the story
of the fig tree. At first glance the story seems straightforward: bear fruit or
be destroyed.
Isn't that the message of the
Bible, the message of the Christian faith? God has put us here for a reason -
to refrain from evil and do good. And God is watching, measuring, weighing
everything we do. If we do the wrong thing or fail to do the right thing, then
- BANG! - God will let us have it. Right?
I'm not so sure about that.
Consider the context of the story of the fig tree. Someone asked Jesus about
two catastrophes that had recently happened. First, Pilate, the Roman governor,
had killed some pilgrims from Galilee who had come to offer sacrifices at the
Temple in Jerusalem, and second, a tower had fallen and killed 18 people.
Surely, people reasoned, the victims of these catastrophes must have done
something to merit their terrible fates, because that's how God works. Bad
things happen to bad people; good things happen to good pideople.
But Jesus said, "Wait
just a minute. Do you believe that God let Pilate kill those pilgrims because
they were bad people or that that tower fell on those folks because they had
led wicked lives?" Jesus rejected that kind of thinking. "No,"
he says. "No."
We so desperately want to
believe in a world that is fair, a world in which people receive exactly what
they deserve - no more, no less. A world in which good and decent people
flourish and the evil are punished.
Many years ago, when his son
died of a terrible disease, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote the book When Bad
Things Happen to Good People. It's a good title, because we all know that
bad things DO happen to good people. But I've often wondered if there would be
a market for a book entitled When Good Things Happen to Bad People. We
don't seem to be as bothered by that, and that also happens a lot. We are
troubled when we think that we haven't gotten what we deserve; when things
happen to us that seem unfair. But we are not bothered at all when we receive
far more than we deserve.
We may be angry, even bitter,
when a raise or a promotion that we believe that we deserve goes instead to Bob
or Mary who don't have a tenth as much ability as us and who take frequent
"mental health" days. But do we ever stop to ask what we have ever
done to deserve the clear blue sky? Or the sun glinting off the snow atop Mt.
Charleston? or the love of our husband, wife, partner, or children?
God is always showering us
with gifts we do not deserve and instead of receiving them with gratitude, we
focus on the disappointment and sorrow that come our way.
Jesus invites us to give up
trying to figure out what we and others deserve or do not deserve. But then, no
sooner than Jesus has told his listeners that Pilate did not kill the Galileans
because they were bad and the tower did not fall down to punish those who were
killed, he says "unless you repent, you will perish just as they
did."
Abraham Lincoln liked to tell
the story of the man who owned a parrot who could say only one thing, "The
end of the world is at hand as foretold in scripture." And the parrot said
this constantly. One day the parrot's owner couldn't stand it any more and shot
the parrot, thus fulfilling, for the parrot at least, the truth of his
statement!
Listen again to what Jesus
says: "Unless YOU repent, YOU will perish, just as they did." Jesus
invites us to turn our attention from others to ourselves, to stop trying to
figure out whether or not God is playing fair with someone else's life and
instead to get our own house in order.
And that's when he tells the
story of the fig tree. A farmer had a fig tree that had not borne fruit in
three years. He was frustrated and decided that the tree would be more useful
as fire wood. But the man in charge of his orchard said, "Let the tree
have one more year."
The point of the story of the
fig tree is not that God has an itchy trigger finger, that God is just waiting
for us to slip up so that he can hurl thunderbolts at us. The point of the
story is that God is patient, that God wants to give us a second chance and a
third chance, another whole year in which to bear fruit.
Now, the story of the burning
bush in Exodus is quite different. Here we have to do not with a conventional
tree but with a miraculous one. The story in Exodus takes place in a desert, in
other words, it is a place much like Las Vegas! And Moses is not yet the great
leader who leads his people out of bondage. In fact, Moses is a defeated man.
He has lost everything.
Exodus tells us that Moses
had been brought up in the very household of Pharaoh, the god-king who ruled
Egypt with absolute power. But Moses was a Hebrew, an Israelite, and one day he
saw an Egyptian strike one of his countrymen. In anger, Moses struck and killed
the Egyptian, so Moses had to leave. He fled to a place of desolation where he
could hide and not be found. And it is in this place of hiding, of desolation,
of defeat that Moses encountered God in the bush that burned but was not
consumed.
We often think of religion as
a quest, a search for God. But is that really the case? The great Jewish
thinker Abraham Heschel wrote a book entitled, God in Search of Man. The
Bible tells us at least as much about God's quest for us as about our quest for
God. In fact, I would say that the Bible has more to say about our desperate
attempts to flee from God and hide from the divine gaze.
Moses wasn't looking for God
when he saw the burning bush. Moses was running away. He did not want to be
found by anyone. But God found him.
The Bible is full of stories
like that. David was tending his family's sheep when the prophet Samuel found
him and anointed him king of Israel. Mary was minding her own business when the
angel Gabriel told her that she would be the mother of Jesus. Paul was on his
way to Damascus when the Risen Christ appeared to him.
The Bible is the story of
God's quest for us. It is the story of God's infinite patience. God calls us,
summons us, pursues us. And we turn away, refuse to listen, sometimes we even
run and hide. But God will not let us alone.
The story of human life
occupies not even a fraction of a second in the history of the universe.
Scientists tell us that the universe is 14 billion years old, give or take 60
million years. What's 60 million years, right?
Scientists also say that homo
sapiens, that is, the human race, is about 5 million years old.
What do you suppose God was
doing in the 13.95 billion years between the creation of the universe and the emergence
of the human race? Could it be that God spent all that time building this
beautiful universe for us? Putting every star in just the right place? Heating
the oceans to the perfect temperature? Testing different shades of blue for the
sky? Could it be that God was lonely, that God longed for the day when you and
I would exist? How long do you suppose God was waiting in that burning bush
before Moses came along?
Is it possible that God
longed to talk to us and listen to what we had to say? And what a
disappointment we must be to God so much of the time? Instead of listening to
God, we turn up the radio or television, instead of talking to God, we update
our Facebook pages, instead of loving one another we kill our brothers and
sisters, instead of caring for the garden in which God has set us, we dump our
garbage in the land, sea, and air.
And the miracle is that God
still listens, still pursues, still loves.
God will wait for us and
search for us with infinite patience because God loves us with an infinite
love.
But sometimes, maybe most of
the time, we have to be at the end of the rope before we can see and hear God.
Like Moses, we have to be in the wilderness before we can see the bush that
burns with the fire of God's presence.
All of us know about the
wilderness. We've all been there or will be there one day. We have been through
the wilderness of unemployment or grief or a broken heart. I believe that this
church knows something about going through the wilderness. But I absolutely
assure you of this: God is in the wilderness with us.
And this is where the stories
of the burning bush and the fig tree come together. While we are running away
and hiding from God, God is like a patient farmer tilling the soil of our
hearts, preparing us to bear fruit - the fruit of love and kindness and
patience and faith.
Because there is one other
Biblical tree to consider: the cross. The cross is the eternal sign of God's
presence in the wilderness, in the midst of suffering. And the fruit of the
cross is life abundant and eternal.
