Sermon: Third Sunday of Lent - Refocus

Refocus
Third Sunday of Lent
Isaiah 55: 1-9; Luke 13: 1-9 by Rev. Carson Overstreet
Van Wyck Presbyterian Church
February 28, 2016


Ho, 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.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.


Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55: 1-9

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’

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 round 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: 1-9


Time – It is something we mark with the seconds, hours, days and weeks. We keep track of how we spend it and what types of progress it yields. And with all our sense of time we get antsy when we have to wait. You and I, we are all in places of waiting for something…something to shift, something to change, something to shake out. It might be waiting for the political tides to shift. It might be waiting for the right job opportunity to come along. It might be waiting for family dynamics to become less stressed. It might be waiting for one chapter to end and the next to begin.

It is hard to wait for time to move in an anticipated direction. We are brought to places where we stand still and we grow impatient. Like the man with the fig tree – if we have waited for what seems to be three days or three years – if we have not seen some sense of growth or movement – then we decide this is certainly wasted space. It is time to cut our losses and move on.

And yet the gardener offers a different perspective. Give me one more year – let me take the time to get my hands in the dirt and till around the base of the tree and dig out the things that don’t belong. Let me take the time to loosen the dirt and prepare it. Let me make some room to throw down some manure to offer the good stuff that this plant needs to grow. Let me take the time to cultivate an opportunity for growth and let’s see what happens over the course of the next year. Let’s wait and see what springs up.

Jesus knew a lot about the timing of God’s opportunities. Jesus knew that humankind’s way of understanding time was very different from God’s. He said in the earlier text from Luke: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It’s going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Luke 12: 54-56).

Jesus refers to two different types of time. You and I live our lives according to ‘chronos’ or chronological time. It is the time we mark according to our watches and calendars. It is corollary as Jesus talks about the ways we interpret the earth and sky with a sense of cause and effect. Chronos time gives us the reason and logic to sum things up and decide what happens next.

But Jesus wants us to consider a different time. He calls it the present time. The Greek names it ‘karios’ time and it is all about God’s time and God’s opportunity. This is the opportunistic time that the gardener is talking about in Jesus’ parable of the fig tree. Jesus says we need to pay attention to this kind of time in our lives. We don’t measure this kind of time chronologically. Rather we are called to respond to it in a particular way. And that is to be turned back to God. Another word Jesus uses to describe our response to God’s time is repentance.

MaryAnn Dana McKibben is a colleague in ministry. She writes about faith musings and considers herself a free-range pastor of sorts as she writes and speaks at conferences and churches in Presbyterian circles. She recently offered these words which I find helpful:

Repentance is really about deepening our understanding of ourselves and our relationship with God, who can be trusted to make us new, again and again.

Isn’t that what the gardener is wanting for the man with the fig tree? The gardener is asking the man with the fig tree to be open to God’s opportunity to be made new again.

In our times of waiting it might seem like we are standing in wasted space. We have a human tendency to cut our losses and move on to the next thing. But Jesus wants us to pay attention to what God might be doing behind the scenes. God wants you and me to consider this space of time that we claim as unproductive. God wants us to claim this space as an opportunity for growth.

The very hands of God want to dig around in dirt of our lives and faith. The hands of our Creator have long been in the dirt of humanity shaping and molding us. God remembers the bane that marked the Garden of Eden and continues tilling the roots of humanity to bring about a new creation. God wants to purge our spiritual soil of things that get in the way for our faith to bear good fruit. It might be pride, complacency, resentment, fear of the unknown, worry.

Consider the soil of your life…what are the rocks and thistles and weeds that need to be tossed out? Some things need to be pruned back and tossed that threaten new life. God wants to make room for the good stuff to move us in the right direction. God wants for us to grow vertically in the steadfast love of God and horizontally in the relationship grace of Jesus Christ.

Any farmer or gardener knows the value of spreading manure for plants to grow. It’s old school fertilizer. You can count on it to bring a richness that plants need to grow. I remember growing up and hearing my dad talk about manure as fertilizer. I would just turn my nose up. At that time I didn’t really understand why manure was so important to the soil. I could not get past the smell of it because my childhood home was surrounded by three dairy farms. Manure was everywhere to sustain crops.

Saint Augustine was a fourth century theologian from Algeria in North Africa and he said that the manure in Jesus’ parable was a symbol of humility.* It makes me wonder what things God has placed in your life and mine that we might turn up our noses to. What are the things in our lives that we might quickly think are not so pleasant but they change our posture to be more repentant and humble?

The prophet Isaiah says that God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8). God knows what is needed in every season of our lives. God has a way of taking uncomfortable and humbling situations to engage us as individuals and as a community. God moves us to bring about a richer depth of our understanding about God and ourselves.

There have been many times in my adult life where I have been in places of waiting. It is humbling and I truly mean humbling to sense that God is asking you to remain planted right here and right now. When we standing in that “in-between” space we continue to ask God, “What are doing, Lord? Where is the next right step for me to take?” I have even asked and prayed to receive a Fed-Ex envelope to know what God is doing and what God wanted me to do.

But I have discovered that this transitional space is not always about discerning what the next right step is. God has a reason for keeping us planted. It may be for a few days, months, or even beyond. The “chronos” time can be frustrating in our seasons of waiting. But it is not supposed to be our sole focus or measure.

We are to pay attention to the present time – God’s time of preparing us for God’s next opportunity to grow. There is something to be unlearned. There is something to be reconciled. There is something to gain because that is how Jesus’ ministry works. That is how the cross works – we die to sin and rise to new life in Christ.

If we are to pay attention to the present time there is one thing that is needed. That one thing is to lean into a deeper trust of God. It is to let God clear away the distractions and the frustrations that serve us no purpose. Refocus on what God wants you and me to shake loose. Be open to the richness God is shoveling around the base of our faith.

Try not to turn up your nose to it because you and I – we need this time and a space of Lent to be humbled. Let humility find us and surprise us to see beyond ourselves into God’s possibility. God can be trusted to lead us to the next step at just the right time. This Lenten season we each need to lose something of ourselves in order to find the new thing God is bringing about.

Refocus in this time of waiting and trust the hands of the Creator.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sources:

*Daniel Deffenbaugh, Feasting on the Word: Year C Volume II (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 96.