One more year

St John in The Wilderness Episcopal Cathedral circa. 1915

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 man working the vineyard, ‘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

(As always, I strongly suggest listening if you can…sermons are spoken events. Just click above - sermon starts at 30:25)

One More Year

Preached June 11th, 2023 at Montview Presbyterian in Denver

¹In the Year of Our Lord 1990, I lived in a studio apartment in an old building at 14^th & Pearl just feet away from St John’s Cathedral. Having left the fundamentalist church I was raised in, I lived with a deep antipathy towards church. In fact, for an entire decade of my life, I wanted nothing to do with Christianity. I had not yet gotten clean and sober which means on any given Sunday at 8a I was likely to be unspeakably hungover or still intoxicated from the night before – so  you understand why, when at 8a when the bells of the cathedral rang to welcome in worshippers for their early service, I was not thrilled. They often played hymns I was familiar with from that aforementioned church I left. I cannot adequately describe the full body rage I felt with each toll.

All I knew at the time was what it felt like to be me at 21.

There was no way to imagine then – absolutely no way to predict how often I would find myself preaching from the pulpit of that very same cathedral 30 years later.

I did not know at the time, that within 18 months I would get sober. I did not know the shape my life would take. I did not know who I would become.

In our parable for today, a Vineyard owner is frustrated that his fig tree has not produced any fruit for 3 whole years.  He is like, look, the tree had its chance and clearly will never be anything but a useless waste of soil so let’s just cut our losses and chop it down.  But then the gardener steps in and pleads to the owner to give the tree one more year – a year when he can upturn the soil, add some literal crap to it, and see what happens.

I struggled all week to find something positive to say about the fear of being destroyed for not producing what God thinks I should in the time frame God thinks I should be doing it in. Maybe because I relate to anything that, for whatever reason, cannot produce what it should in the time frame it should be doing it in.  I feel like that not infrequently, maybe you do too.  Unable to produce.  Produce writing, or results at your work, or completed job applications. Unable to produce the improvement in the relationship with your mother than you’ve been trying to accomplish.  Unable to produce whatever it is that would help your kids stop struggling in life. Maybe we are all fig trees in a way.

Not for nothing but until late last night, I myself felt entirely unable to produce a sermon on the parable of the fig tree. I lost count of how many drafts I deleted and started over.

I think the reason I couldn’t find anything positive to say about this parable is because I assumed in this parable, that God is the vineyard owner. Obviously God must be the character in the parable who is most capricious and impatient and angry and ready to judge our pathetic fruitlessness and punish us for our shortcomings.

It’s hard to always remember this, but there aren’t really assigned parts in parables, which is one reason they continue to be helpful to us. Which means that no matter what anyone else has ever said a parable means, you can always close one eye, tilt your head and look them different ways.  So isn’t it weird how we tend to assume that in Jesus’ parables God is always the wealthy one?  The king, the land owner, the vineyard owner.  It’s not like that’s wrong it’s just not the whole truth of who God is. I assumed this was a parable about how God impatiently judges our lack of spiritual productivity which is why I could not produce a sermon worth preaching.

 Now, I’m not like an arborist or anything, but I do know how to make Google work, and when I discovered yesterday that there is an average time for a fig tree to bear fruit and it is not 3 years, it is 3-5 years, I was like, hold on.  That poor tree hadn’t even been given its full chance.

That’s when it dawned on me that the vineyard owner doesn’t sound like the God I know, the God revealed in Jesus Christ.  The God who came to dwell with us full of grace and truth, the God who doles out forgiveness like candy. The one who will leave the 99 well behaved sheep to search for the rebellious one with too much black eyeliner wandering from the fold of God. No, the vineyard owner who was angry and impatient and wanting immediate results doesn’t sound like God.  The vineyard owner just sounds like me. Impatiently demanding to know why I cannot manage to produce everything in my life I think I should.  Like I’m my own defendant, prosecutor, judge and jury all at the same time.  And I’d love nothing more than to stand here and say that this only happens once in a while but the fact is it happens all the time. Impatience with myself and others.  Which is why eventually this little parable really broke my heart. Because once I realized that I felt like the tree and the vineyard owner at the same time, both the one who does not produce and the one who harshly judges the lack of production..well when I realized that it felt amazing to make the next jump – which is to realize that maybe God is the one in our lives who steps in saying “I’m gonna give this one one more year” Not one more year to produce what we are judging ourselves for not producing yet, but one more year to see who God is making us into.  

Because this parable isn’t about our productivity it’s about God’s patience.

And I am reminded of 2^nd Peter -

…with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.

God is so patient with us, beloved. The patience of a thousand days.

God has all the time in the world to accompany us into who we are becoming.

Simon Peter was just minding his business mending his fishing nets when Jesus walks by and says follow me how could he have ever known who he would become? On the day before he was walking the road to Damascus, Saul did not know he would become the promoter of Christianity and not the persecutor of it. The day before the hemorrhaging woman reached for the hem of Jesus cloak and was healed of what must have felt to her like thousands of years of suffering she did not know it would end.

When I was a near-constant intoxicated sloppy mess of a girl, there was no way for me to predict who God would make me into. But God was patient. (Because now I am just a SOBER sloppy mess of a woman).

Even 10 years ago, I did not know then what shape my heart would take today, how much it would both soften and grow, but I think God knew. It sounds weird but to be entirely known and wholly loved by our God, means that the parts of yourselves you have given up on…the parts of your heart that you have foreclosed on, the people in your lives who for reasons of self-preservation you have had to cut out – none of that is abandoned. God is like, give me a minute. I’ll loosen some soil and add some stuff you think is embarrassing and worthless and we will wait and we will see what grows.

That is not to say that if we just wait long enough our lives will produce what we think they should, just that if we wait long enough we will become people who are released from the unfulfilled desires that make us miserable. Another word for that is metanoia – repentance. A change of focus, a change of thinking, a change of what we desire. And I just don’t think God is tapping their toe being like would you hurry up? I have other places to be.  

God is so patient with us, beloved.

Another year.  Another month.  Another week.  Another day.  This is what God is offering us -  like an endless deferment of our spiritual student loans.

So, one more year, people of God.  One more year to discover the ways that God can change you. One more year to trust in God more than money.  One more year to maybe be forgiven by someone you love.  One more year to forgive yourself.  One more year to be surprised. One more year to bear witness to what God can do with our mistakes – the same ones we thought would end us.

One more year to be enchanted by the story of Jesus.  One more year.  So close your eyes and tilt your head and maybe you’ll hear God saying to us all…some things take time. And I have all the time in the world.

Amen 

1. This opening graph is (in part) a response the early comments in regards to Substack’s interview with me on their podcast, “The Active Voice”:

The Active Voice: Nadia Bolz-Weber is preaching to break your heart

released this week in which many people expressed how angry they were to get Christian content in their inbox. (One commenter said “There truly is nothing more disgusting and dishonest than filthy religitards and their nonsense. Unsubscribed.” They were seemingly fine with interviews from all the other writers over the months, but a Christian? Nope. I want them to know that I understand their reaction 100%. Been there. Still sometimes feel that. Also of interest: those who commented that I am a real live heretic and not, in fact, a Christian.

I mean, just LOOK at all these new friends I’m making.

You, my subscribers have spoiled me with your thoughtfulness in the comment section here. I must have lost my last mind reading the comment section on another Substack!