Saving Our Nectarine Tree 3/24/19 Lent 3C

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Saving Our Nectarine Tree

March 24, 2019  Lent 3C

When my young kids and I moved into our house in Norfolk, we found a rich array of flowers as well as a couple fruit trees, which had leaves like either apple or peach.  We let them grow that first season to see what they were, and it turned out they were nectarine trees. That first summer, the fruit was little more than skin on seeds, although with enough fruit in them to attract wasps.  As they fell off into the grass, they made sticky problems to step on and trip on. I was disgusted. One of the trees was just outside the back door, and the other was in the side yard, so lots of lawn was affected. They were hard to rake up, especially with the bees.  

When I found out that my older son was using the side tree as a way to escape out his 2nd floor window, I took an axe and chopped it down. Sounds like the text, doesn’t it?  But when, in my anger at the seeds and bees and hard lumps in the grass I turned to chop down the tree in the backyard also, my daughter begged for its life, again rather like this story of the fig tree Jesus told in today’s Scripture.  “It would be cool to have nectarines,” she declared. “We can prune it and fertilize it, can’t we? You’ve done that to other plants. Give it another year.” I was smart enough to know she meant I could prune it and fertilize it... Of course I’ve preached this passage in Luke every time it rolls around in Luke in year C, and I’d even written some about God as a gardener.  So she got to me. I bought a guide to pruning fruit trees, some good pruning tools, and some fruit tree fertilizer spikes. I learned what a ‘drip line’ is, and pounded in the Job’s Spikes.  I pulled out my ladder and pruned. My daughter promised to help…..she kind of did. Nobody did a good job raking those nectarine pits up, though.

The next summer, our nectarines had a little more heft to them, not a lot, but enough to see that the plan was working.  My daughter begged for another year of effort. So we did it again, and this time also pinched off some little nectarines when the blossoms started to set fruit, so that the plant’s energy would be more focused. That third year, then, we got nectarines with enough flesh on them to be able to cut them up on our cereal, and even make some jelly, although they still didn’t look like nectarines from the store.  And it was pretty cool to be growing nectarines in our backyard.

So now I think of that nectarine tree when I read Jesus’ story about the fig tree.  (Actually, we had a fig tree at our Va Beach house, which never had any trouble setting and growing figs - we enjoyed that a lot, too.)

I guess I played both parts of the story, both the one ready to chop down a troublesome tree, and the one who fertilized and pruned to get better fruit - although my daughter was the one who begged for its life.  And I guess all those roles are actually roles of God, according to the verses in the passage earlier. God desires for us as Christ-followers to show it, live it, in other words, “bear fruit” of our salvation, yet God is also willing to work with us - pruning or fertilizing or composting events of our lives in hopes that we will respond. Jesus’ point, in the way Luke linked these 2 disaster stories and the fig tree parable, is that the time to live according to God is now - and if we’re not, its time to repent, because time is precious, and time is fleeting, and more time is not guaranteed.  

So it seems pretty obvious what the message is here, although I’ve also learned that the obvious message is not always the only message.  Jesus speaks often about we believers as meant to grow and meant to bear spiritual “fruit” ie a life of compassion, hope, faithfulness, kindness, following God’s guidelines for life, prayer and worship - what the apostle Paul calls the fruit of the Holy Spirit evidenced by our lives. The point of us being called by God, forgiven and given a new life, is that we become God’s ambassadors, God’s visible acting, God’s compassion for the world fleshed out. We become Jesus’ sisters and brothers, so-workers.  Actually, according to the apostle Paul, we become Christ’s extant body. We are each called to this, not just leaders and pastors, or missionaries or Christian educators or youth group leaders. EACH of us here are called to this life of following Christ.

Our hearts and minds, through the indwelling Spirit of God, are being transformed into a likeness with Jesus’ heart and mind, our Scriptures say. That is, if we listen, if we respond, if we stay open to Christ’s presence and the Spirit’s work. If we are seeking to be the called ones that we truly are, we will bear the fruit - our actions will show that the mind of Christ is guiding us and shaping us as we interact with neighbors, strangers, and each other.  

It sounds easy and automatic - its actually more difficult than it sounds.  Because our attentions gets drawn to other things, like making a living, finding a mate, trying to be what our culture calls a success, trying to fit in, please people, keep up our relationships, get an education, have great vacations, exercise, and so many other things that are a part of being alive.  The call of God to follow Christ is a lifelong, encompassing task - it is the Great Work of our lifetime, the Big Picture of Life and its meaning. It takes developing a wisdom about people, including our own self; it takes the strength to face things about ourselves that aren’t lovely, although we are loved by God; it takes the ego strength to order our behavior and the humility to not look down on those who slip; it takes the time and attention to reflect on the events of our days and years, and listen for what the Spirit says.  There are enough tasks to challenge us through all the stages of human development. It is never completed in this life - we trust that it is completed in whatever comes next when we go to God.

Being in a church is an integral part of being formed in the image of Christ.  I once compared the ups and downs of staying with a church to those rock polishing kits - you know, you throw stones in that cylinder and then start turning it and shaking it.  Its the rocks grinding against each other that polishes the stones and reveals their beauty. Sometimes church communities can feel like rocks grinding against each other, with all our differing personalities and styles and ways of doing things and what we consider important… Somehow, it is the sometimes painful and prayerful need to be together that forms us and eventually polishes us.  Its the ups and downs of living day by day that throws us back on God to try and understand. ALL of life is grist for our prayer and our formation, or transformation, into the likeness of Christ.

God’s people have always lived in communities, whether its families, tribes or  church gatherings. Worship together is important. I know it has its difficulties - it also has its joys.  I know that events in our lives have moved into Sundays and challenge our participation in this particular community.  We have to deal with that. I know its difficult to see our friends hanging out with their coffees while we drive to church. My kids had the problem, as we walked from the car to the Sunday School building in our church clothes, of having to pass the backyard fence of some friends, and hearing their shouts of glee as they slid down the slide into their pool.  The truth is, we will find the time for things that are important to us and things we value.

While following Christ is so much more than the ability to win Bible Trivia contests and quote verses, having that familiarity with our Holy scriptures, our faith ancestors and the stories that have been preserved for us, is also important.  It is the worldview in which we live and breathe. It is the common story that we share. It is part of what the Spirit uses in our souls and minds to speak to us, challenge us, invite us, nudge us, and shape us. I’d be glad if more folks read the Scriptures, even if its only as literature - because it is compelling and thought-provoking to encounter.  I’d like for us to have a Bible reading plan together, details to come.

Jesus’ illustrations in this passage are about the brevity and uncertainty of life.  Sudden and unexpected deaths happen. They are not judgments on those killed, Jesus says - take that blame game thing out of the equation.  Things happen to people. One illustration is a deliberate, ugly killing by the government, graphically described as the blood of the people being mingled with the blood of the sacrifices they brought - this was evidently in worship, like the slaughter in New Zealand in the past week.  The other is a total accident when a tower collapses - whether its old infrastructure or poor materials or shoddy workmanship it doesn’t say - these folks were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Jesus disagrees with the televangelists that this happened to them because of wrong living. Jesus just reminds us that life is just uncertain, and we live with risks - we can’t ignore that or deny that.  One day you’re fine, the next day you’re in chemotherapy; we may be driving along with our good driving record when the other driver is texting. The time to serve God is always right now.

Being pruned or having manure spread on us as ways to improve our fruitfulness isn’t always fun, either.  Pruning could be a way of being asked to hone our energy and attention to what it vital; something happens to us that forces us to make choices and weigh what matters. (The manure that is suggested in the story is a cleaned-up word for the actual Greek or Aramaic. Jesus can evidently be rather earthy in his language.) “Manure” happens.  Dealing with painful events is a kind of spiritual ‘compost.’ Without sounding like a Pollyanna here, in my experience God can help us break it down, look at our responses, and often learn something. I know things happen that can hurt us deeply and wound us. When my second daughter died, people came up and told me that God was making me a better pastor - telling someone that, is, like, totally inappropriate when they are grieving a huge loss. At some point, as they work through it, they will change in some deep and significant ways - and maybe even be a better pastor, or maybe not - but right at first is not the time to glibly say something like that.  Pruning and manure dressings ultimately form us, with God’s help, and with our inner work. Just about anything that happens to us can be used by God in our formation, as it becomes a part of our story. I’m fearful of saying ‘everything’ - in my life up until now, God has used most anything to work on me. That’s all I can say.

The challenge of this gospel story is to realize that the time we have is right now, the time to bear fruit is right now, the time to repent of those things God is convicting us about is today; this is the time we have.  Don’t put God off, don’t say we’ll get to it down the road. The time of decisions is here. AMEN.

Uniquely Blind 3/3/19 Epiphany 8C (not Transfiguration)

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Uniquely Blind

3/3/2019      Epiphany 8C  Luke 6:39-49 1 Cor 15:51-58

The Gospel lesson this week seems to be a collection of Jesus’ sayings, very short parables in fact, grouped together. Not that they have any less thoughtfulness or meaningfulness for being briefer in words.  In pithy ways, they all seem to talk about how we need to be following God ourselves, be practicing the wisdom of the Spirit ourselves, and letting that Spirit work on the integrity of our own self - before we try to tell anyone else how to get their life together. Let the one without sin cast the first stone, in other words.

I had a wonderful time some years back when I decided to do some spiritual studying with one of my favorite writers, Matthew Fox.  I found a life-filling and soul-filling delight in exploring spirituality, and eagerly called each one of our Presbyterian seminaries about the possibility of doing a Doctor of Ministry degree in a further exploration of Christian spirituality. Not one of our seminaries had a program in Christian Spirituality at that time - they all have, since.  At that time, however, I had to go outside our Presbyterian institutions. To me, that spoke of what I found life-stultifying and what I found life-affirming in the way we were prepared for living the Christian life, especially as clergy.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved and still love the Presbyterian church:  I love the depth of what I read in our historical documents and confessions - there was nothing shallow about how faith was understood; there was fine-tuning in the eloquent words of our forebears as they carefully searched for how to speak both love and justice; there was a wise parsing of what the gospel says to living in faith.  I took joy in it all -- no fly-by-night shells, no acceptance of careless thinking. Of course they were persons of their time and culture, and assumed some things that the Spirit has revealed more light on as time has gone on. Of course, they knew that was how the Spirit worked: reforming and still always being reformed.

Many of us at seminary in the 80s were hungry for more than an academic knowledge of the Bible - not that it wasn’t a rich and important way to learn...yet there was a hunger that this kind of study wasn’t filling.  Several of my colleagues there turned towards a more liturgical way of worship, taken from the practices of the earlier Christian church forebears. Several others explored more new-composed music and styles. Some were charismatic.  Some were intent on sowing their wild oats before becoming a traditional pastor. All of us were in transitions of seeking and learning. Overall, I was more like those who wanted more than doctrine and history and methods of training -- rather, a more personal way of living with integrity and following God with my whole self -- it seemed too much all in the mind, and I wanted it in my inner self as well. That’s not to say there was not deep and sincere commitment and passion in the professors of that generation - in the writings of these folks, you can sense the fire of dedication and love of God - only it seemed to come through and be satisfied by academic study of scripture.  My generation seemed to want to learn in different ways.

Now that I am in the older generation of pastors, the younger Christ-followers coming up will probably seek their expression of Christianity in unique ways, too.  It will be interesting to watch the Spirit working in the coming decades.

What drew me to Matthew Fox’s program was his insistence that the process be a joining of academic learning, “head learning” he called it, and what he called “heart learning.”  For the heart learning, we explored ways to access what formed our deeper self, our unconscious, through experiential classes in art, movement, music, writing, dream work, ritual, and drumming.  Only about ⅓ of the people there were professional religious folks, and were all seekers. The title of my sermon comes from Jeremy Taylor, who wrote on and led groups in dream work. (There are all kinds of references to significant dreams in our Scripture, even in Jesus’ birth stories.)  As we shared certain dreams that had stood out in our memories, we were invited to let others help us hear the dream by saying, “If it were my dream, I’d wonder about….” We couldn’t tell the other person what it ‘meant’ so to speak - Jeremy’s point was that we were each “uniquely blind” to what our own dreams were saying, because we were caught up already in the conscious working through of our own problems.  

He would ask, does a fish know what water is?  Are people aware of the air? Its all around us, we breathe it, it blows on us - do we ever think much about the fact that we walk constantly through this gaseous mix and move painlessly though its atoms?  So are the customs, habits, inherited ways of behavior, neuroses, and assumptions that seemingly guide the ways we act and react - not only do we not stop and think much about them, we are also unable to see ourselves and our troubles with objectivity.  Its much easier to see what someone else is struggling with and tell them what they oughta do, whether they want out opinion or not….its difficult to see ourselves and our own problems in that way, because we’re caught up in it..  

So Jesus pithily says, “Take the log out of your own eye before you try and do the delicate removal of a speck from someone else’s.”   We usually don’t even know our log is there! Again Jesus says, "When we’re blind, how can we lead other blind people No one can see! You will all fall off a cliff!"

 

This is an admonition to know ourselves, to know and address our own faults; to let the Spirit show us where we’re too caught up in stuff to see straight. I am a great fan of counseling - its perhaps a way of what our spiritual forebears called ‘the examen,’ that is, examining our own motives, actions and feelings in prayer - and perhaps a bit of confession thrown in, too.  Good counselors don’t set themselves up so much as knowing the answers - they help us look at ourselves in a more conscious way, we get an outside voice looking at our functioning...or non-functioning. And we don’t have to wait until we’ve gotten ourselves into a big crisis to go - check it out when it begins to pinch! We do it for physical pains - My daughter has been having a significant pain in her side, and her GP  has ruled out appendicitis and other infections because she doesn’t have the signs of infection in her bloodwork or anything bad on the X-ray. But she still has the pain. She called me the other day in frustration, because she’s been referred on, and feels like she’s being stupid and that they’ll say its all in her head, and she’s just being a hypochondriac. So she doesn’t want to make any more appointments - but she still has the pain, but its probably nothing she says….  I encouraged her to make the appointment, as she still had the pain. Better to check it out as a bearable pain that let it become something that’s a bigger pain. Just because its not obvious at first glance, the pain is a symptom for a reason.

Mental health is the same way.  Ever since I’ve been a pastor, I’ve had a counselor I go to for my own self-discovery, for my own mental health - and as a safeguard for unconsciously working out things on you all, my congregation. Kind of like a supervisor, where I can let off steam and learn why something bothers me so much.  It keeps me humble; and it supports me in my work. Hopefully it keeps me out of trouble. And if there is trouble, I have a place to look at it in a less-involved way. I’ve considered it part of my spiritual practice. Getting the log out of my own eye, which I’ve become uniquely blind to.

Do you remember back a bit when we all wore huge glasses with our initials in the corner?  After a couple days, you no longer noticed it - our brains filtered it out. We became blind to it because it seemed normal. And I still remember the first pair of glasses I got that had a bifocal adjustment - until my brain got used to it, it made me nauseous.  Then I didn’t notice it anymore - I acclimated. Lots of the “logs” in our eyes are like that - we’ve acclimated to them, and forget that our seeing is actually impaired. Its true emotionally and mentally as well.

So these brief parables are yet another way of telling as Christ-followers that how we live is important - not just what we believe, but how we live.  Following Christ isn’t just a mental assent to some propositions or good ideas - following Christ, being a disciple, changes our behavior. Changes our inner self.  Transform us into a person who bears the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, kindness, long-suffering, forbearance, patience, compassion. Makes us the person who has built their ‘house’ on the rock of Christ, where it is still standing after the storms are over.

I think the same things are true of the church.  We can be uniquely blind to the habits and ways we’ve gotten into that are no longer serving us, if they ever did serve us.  We can’t see it because we’re in it; we need the Spirit of God to show us, and we need to respond and be transformed. There are parts of a church’s culture and habits that make it distinct, yes; there are also parts of the culture and habits that may actually be holding that church back. It takes courage to look at our ways, things that we’ve taken for granted, and be willing to remove those logs in our eyes.  We here at Indiantown endured a major trauma time a few years back - a tearing of friendships and even families - over an interpretation of Scripture, no less. We have persevered through the storm, and are beginning to turn our eyes to the future. We hunkered down and kept the church going, and now are ready to look outside our walls again, ready for mission. Its a good time to take stock of things, look at our traditions and our church culture, and see how we’re doing as a church in God’s eyes, and how the Spirit wants to move us forward.  I know we’d like things to be as they were before; I think we’ve healed, not without grief and regret, but are ready now to turn our eyes to serving now, as we are.

In our sad wisdom, we might pray earnestly for our United Methodist friends, who are entering a similar testing time themselves right now.  If you’ve been following the news of their General Council this past week, you know that they took the opposite road from we Presbyterians in dealing with the persons in their congregations and leadership that have a differing sexual orientation than the majority.  We grieve over the furor sure to effect their churches in the coming years, and the pain they will know. Evidently some United Methodist leadership has approached the Presbyterian and Episcopalian leadership to get some benefit of our experiences….Its hard - even those of us who have sought to follow Christ for years still don’t always control our tongues, and still let out angers carry us away; and our living of faith is always at different levels of understanding and maturity.  And as we know, sometimes the stated issue is more a beard to disguise latent power struggles and control issues which we are still fall victim to, and to which we humans are also prone. I hope our Methodist friends evidence more grace with each other than we did. There is so much fallout, so many people hurt. There are always differences among people, and strong feelings about those differences - I wish the lessons of living as the church were easier to learn.

Continue to pray for our Ruling Elders, as we sit in session this afternoon and consider some ways of moving forward.  I hope many of us have continued to pray diligently for Indiantown church and our ministry to the people in this area. I was greatly encouraged by the visit of our co-moderator, the Rev. Cindy Kohlmann, and the message of hope she is bringing to the denomination church by church.  And I am also encouraged by our presbytery leadership, and their openness to seeking ways forward as well. I am able to see the hand of God gently leading and healing us, renewing our hope and faith after times of trouble. May it be so. AMEN.