Unrecognized Worthiness

Rev. Debbie Cato
Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9
Fairfield Community Church
March 20, 2022

Let us Pray:  God of fig trees and foxes, of today and tomorrow, we would like to ask that you scoop us up. Pick us up like a great gust of wind. Startle us awake like a first love. Light a fire in us like tomorrow depends on today. Do all of this to get our attention and then turn us toward you. We are a scattered people, God. The world is moving faster than we can keep up. So we pray—scoop us up. Catch our eye. Open our ears. Capture our attention. We are here. We long to be close to you. Amen.   ( Rev. Sara Speed santifiedart.org)

Unrecognized Worthiness

 

I love to garden and at this time of year, I get the itch to start planting SO I have this mantra I repeat to myself over and over again.  It’s too early to plant.  It’s too early to plant. It’s too early to plant.

My rheumatoid arthritis has put a real damper on my gardening.  I can’t kneel anymore or bend over very easily so my gardening has been relegated to gardening in pots and raised beds.  My health has changed how I can garden but it has not stopped me.  Gardening is therapeutic for me.  It puts me in touch with God.  Something about my hands in dirt.

Before I moved here, I lived in a mother-in-law apartment at my daughter’s house.  They had raised beds waist high in their backyard.  There  were 4 very large raised beds, and I could garden without having to bend over.  I planted strawberries, tomatoes, onions, carrots, herbs, peas, and lots of flowers. 

The first year, Clara was 1 ½ and she would pick and eat the strawberries as fast as she could!  The rest of us barely got any berries!  She loved them.  She did the same thing with the cherry tomatoes.  She would pop those things in her mouth so fast, it would crack us up.  It left only the larger tomatoes for our salads and eating.  The cherry tomatoes were Clara’s! 

So last spring, Clara was 2 ½ and I decided she could help me plant.  We planted more strawberries in the hopes the grown-ups would get some too.  She helped me plant the strawberry plants and she said, “Grammy, when can I eat them?”  She wasn’t real pleased when I explained that we had to wait for them to grow and it would take quite a long time.  She wanted them now.

She helped me plant 8 tomato plants.  We dug the holes, carefully took the plants out of the pots, loosened the roots, placed them in the holes, covered them up with dirt, and watered them.  “When can I pick the tomatoes and eat them, Grammy?” she asked.  I told her it would take a long time for the tomatoes to grow and get ripe so that we could pick them and eat them.  “I want tomatoes now, Grammy.” she said.

We planted peas and carrots and onions, and we had similar conversations.  Clara did not like the idea of waiting.

I don’t like waiting either!  So, I can understand the landowner who after 3 years, is tired of waiting for his fig tree to bear fruit.  Cut it down!  It’s worthless!  It is wasting good soil.

The landowner is not the one who cares for the garden.  He doesn’t seem to spend any time in his vineyard.  He has a gardener for that.  Someone who gets down on his hands and knees and tends the soil.  Pulls the weeds.  Someone who cares about the tree.  “Sir!” He cries out.  “Let it alone for one more year.  Let me dig around it.  Loosen the soil.  Put manure around it.  Give it a chance to bear fruit one more year.”  Give it one more year, the gardener begs.  I will nurse it and do everything I can so that it will bear fruit. 

The gardener sees the tree with different eyes than the landowner does.  The landowner is only interested in production.  The tree is wasting soil.  Valuable land.  It is rather odd that in the midst of a vineyard, there is a fig tree.  You wouldn’t expect to find a fig tree in the middle of a vineyard.  Perhaps the landowner just wants to plant more vines.  Produce more wine.  Make more money.  Regardless, he doesn’t care about a fig tree.  Certainly not one that doesn’t bear figs.

But the gardener sees the fig tree with different eyes.    It has value.  It’s worth goes beyond what it produces. It doesn’t deserve to be dug up and thrown away. Let me save it, he says .  The gardener has a heart for gardening.  He cares about the plants.  He knows what they need to grow.  He knows the worth of the tree, even though it has yet to produce.  Don’t give up on it.  It needs more care.  It needs fertilizer.  It needs to have the dirt around its roots softened.  Give it time.  It needs another year. 

The season of Lent offers us yet another chance to repent and return to God.  God’s mercy in our lives is like the gardener who never gives up on his garden.  God tends to us.  He continually pours his mercy on his, nurturing us and feeding us his love and forgiveness and mercy and giving us every opportunity to return to him.  Unlike the landowner, God never gives up.  God’s love is unconditional.  It  is not based on what we produce, who the world says we are, or should be, what we do, or think we should do.  God loves us because we are.  It’s that simple.

Like the fig tree, you are worthy. You are not a lost cause. You are not a waste of resources. You deserve audacious hope. You deserve to be nurtured. Your fruit will come. Whatever that may be; whatever that may look like.  God knows that.  He continually pursues you.  His mercy never ends.[1]

And like the gardener, you are invited to see others with audacious hope and budding potential. In fact, we must see others with audacious hope and budding potential because that’s how God sees us and that’s how God sees others.  We owe it to each other. 

God sees the worth of everyone.  The powerful, successful leaders of countries and large corporations and the homeless person living on the street and those of us in between.  Perhaps we ought to as well.  Perhaps we ought to learn to look beyond the obvious, look beyond our judgments and see the worthiness of the humanity of the individual.  See the child of God.  See the beauty of the soul.  See what God sees.  I’m sure thankful that’s what God sees in me.  

Rev. Larissa Kwong  Abazia says, “The story of the fig tree reminds us that the world’s expectations do not need to be ours. The gardener puts their faith in that which they have no control. Digging a bigger hole and filling it with manure, they tend to the tree with everything it needs to grow into its purpose. Perhaps this means bearing figs. Or maybe it provides shade for the laborers during the harvest, an opportunity for the gardener to tend to the fields in a new way, or transformation of the owner’s ability to see beyond the commodification of the land.”

 Those of us living a fig tree existence are invited to be nourished and tended to so that, in time, we grow into our purpose. People with power are reminded to disrupt their knowledge of how the world works and their complicity in earthly systems and measurements so that everyone has an opportunity to thrive. And still others provide nurture in solidarity, trusting that intentional care will lead to new life.”[2]

The lesson of the fig tree invites us to unpack the source of our worth in a system and society that often measures worthiness by production, output, success, status, achievement, ethnicity, and/or gender identity.[3] That is  not how God measures us.  It is not how God sees us.  Samuel 16:7 says, ^{7 ”}People judge others by what they look like, but I judge people by what is in their hearts.”  God sees our worthiness even when it is unrecognized by others.  Each one of  you is worthy, simply because you are a beloved child of God.

I saw something once that said, “You will never look into any face that is not a face of someone that is not loved by God.”  You will never look into a face that is not a face of someone that is not loved by God.  A face of someone that God does not see as worthy of his love and mercy and forgiveness.  That is a powerful statement.  Powerful because it includes people that we do not like.  People that we strongly disagree with.  People that we find disgusting.  

Powerful because it includes us.  You and me who continue to sin and disappoint God and yet God continues to pursue us and forgive us and love us.  That my friends, is good news.  You are worthy because you are a beloved child of God.  Loved beyond measure.  Pursued without end.  Worthy just because.  Live into this good news.  Amen.

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[1] Sanctified Art.org.  Full to the Brim.  Third Sunday of Lent..  Theme Connections
[2] Sanctified Art.org.  Full to the Brim.  Third Sunday of Lent..  Rev. Larissa Kwong Abazia.
[3] Sanctified Art.org.  Full to the Brim.  Third Sunday of Lent..  Theme Connections.