COMPOST HAPPENS A Sermon by Avena A. Ward St. Pauls United church of Christ March 3, 2013 Text: Isaiah 55:1-3, 7-9 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 labor 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. 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. Luke 13:1-9 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. [Jesus] 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 around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
Sermon Today s gospel introduces us to a pretty heavy theological concept -- theodicy. That s the question of whether or not God is just. The tragic incidents described in the beginning are even more problematic when you believe that God could have intervened to prevent them if God wanted to. And if God didn t intervene, then there must have been a good reason. These deaths must have been punishment for something those people did wrong. So our tendency is to try to figure out what they did wrong. And, even if we believe that all people are inherently fallen, unable to do good even if they want to, there s still hope for us if we can find someone who is more sinful than we ourselves. So we can get caught up in a whole pile of compost when we start claiming for themselves God s power to judge right from wrong. That s what s at stake here in this morning s gospel. After a slushy, mushy, snowy week, in which the news has been full of information on the impacts of the automatic spending cuts, Luke s gospel had me hooked. The word that intrigued me most, that rose up out of the pile of verses with a pungent odor, was manure. Compost. I ll leave other similar terms to your imagination. Let s look at compost. My grandmother was the queen of compost. In her world nothing was to be wasted. It would be sinful to do so. Saving scraps and composting them was part of her tithe, a way of giving thanks. Or maybe a way atoning for taking too much from the earth. In Grandma s house there was a tin can on the counter in her kitchen where all the peelings and rotten spots went. When that was full, it got tossed out to the chickens in the back yard. What they didn t eat, and also what they produced from having eaten, was all raked up once or twice a year and added to the leaves in the in a big pile. And that whole decaying mass was then applied to the garden soil, worked into the roots of the plants that produced the vegetables we would eat all summer. And, with those vegetables, the whole cycle began again.
I began composting in memory of Grandma. I don t have a yard so I do it in containers. And I don t have chickens, so instead I have worms to eat the scraps. Red worms, as in fishing bait. I keep them in a five-story condo made of plastic storage bins stacked in the basement. And boy do those guys do an efficient job. I now have five bins full of black gold. The only problem is figuring out how to separate the worms from their waste. Separating out the good news in the gospel reading from the manure is also difficult unless you really dig into the parable -- about the fig tree. This tree hasn t produced any fruit yet, even though it s been planted in the ground for three years. Among those who first heard this parable, in first century Palestine, the fig tree would have been understood as a metaphor for the nation of Israel, with its charge to be fruitful and multiply and be a blessing to the nations around it. In the realm of metaphor, the owner of that garden would have been God. And, according to the story, God would be justifiably growing impatient with that tree, threatening to cut it down because it is taking up valuable space in the garden while returning nothing. Now, in Luke s version of the parable, there is also a gardener. The gardener is an intermediary between owner and tree, an advocate for the tree. The gardener pleads to give the tree more time. He doesn t just plead, but promises to dig around and fertilize that fig tree with manure. This parable is short and sweet. And because it is, we re tempted to read it from a post Easter point of view. Coming as it does during Lent, this parable could easily be seen as a foreshadowing of Jesus death and resurrection, atoning for our sins. Jesus has often been referred to as an advocate, bargaining on our behalf, for our lack of results. The gardener who offers himself as living compost, so that the barren tree, all of humanity, might be fertilized and nourished into fruitfulness. And there s nothing wrong with that interpretation. But let s dig around a bit more. Parables have the most value for the faithful when we read ourselves and our lives into them.
Where do we find ourselves in this one? Are we the fig tree, stressed, tired, worn out, unable to produce any fruit? Are we the landowner, impatiently waiting for something to come from our investment of money and time? Are we the gardener, the one who argues for the more time? The one who commits to keep working with a barren tree? I can see myself in all of these things. But, my attention is drawn to the gardener, the advocate. The gardener knows that the tree needs nourishment and encouragement to express itself fully in fruit. The gardener knows that the most powerful nourishment for a tree like this is manure. But straight manure can be too strong. When it s composted with the cast off skins and inner rotten spots of good fruit, it becomes truly powerful fertilizer. And how about the compost? How many of us would identify with the compost? The stuff that the gardener uses to nourish the tree and produce fruit? Honestly, we all have days when we feel like compost. Beat up, rejected, not attractive enough to be served. Spoiled, useless scraps, destined for the garbage. On those days we d be lucky to be recycled into compost, to be turned by cows or chickens or worms into manure and worked into the soil. This parable invites us to look closely, even at the compost. It invites us to see our lives and all the crap that happens to us as something to be worked into the soil for growth. For me, this view from the ground level is where I had my aha moment. The ground around that fig tree is hardened, and the gardener knows that nothing good will happen until the earth is turned up and over and it is watered and amended with compost. After that, fruitfulness is at least a possibility. Turning over a new leaf and turning around are both metaphors for repentance, which is what Lent is all about, isn t it? We have been told that repentance is a choice. So is becoming fruitful a choice. Makes me think about that old light bulb joke but with a twist. How many gardeners does it take to make a fig tree fruitful? Only one. But the soil has to WANT to be turned over.
In today s gospel, Jesus is confronted by people obsessed with a view of God as punishing and judgmental. It s the soil they are planted in and that soil has become hardened around their roots. So much so that even the victims of unjust systems focus on getting even, even if it victimizes them. So that explains their anxious concern about wickedness and sin and whether God is the cause of all the horrific things that have happened. Jesus knows nothing can grow in that soil, and it needs to be turned over, opened up, watered and cultivated. We can see ourselves in that same hard place, can t we? When we busy ourselves with figuring how to get back at those who ve wronged us, in the workplace, at home, on the field, there s little room for compassion and mercy. And we don t produce anything. Think gridlock in Congress. This parable of the fig tree lifts up a different understanding of what God is up to, and what we re called to. Grace co-exists with the notion of God as ultimate arbiter of justice. Balancing God s judgment, there is grace which reveals compassion and mercy. And in that space of grace we can find forgiveness, time and the possibility of new life. We can choose to work with the gardener, turning over our hardened ideologies and punishing behaviors. And the gardener will help us flourish. Then we can help ourselves and others who have become dried out and barren turn to become fruitful again. This parable doesn t directly answer the concern about whether God is just with a yes or no. Rather it turns our attention to other aspects of God. And to other ways in which we are made in the image of God. It affirms that, even though God knows our worst, she isn t out to cut us off. He doesn t step in to destroy us the moment we fail. Rather, God works with us. And -- here s the good news -- God can take even our most rotten spots, and use them to bring about something good. Something that makes a dried up tree bloom and produce something beautiful. Although compost itself is dark and smelly, it can lead to a work of beauty. It can lead to works of justice, extending time into another season. Ultimately we get to
choose what we do with the compost of our lives, whether we turn it over to be put to use in service of God s garden. Jesus doesn t deny that God, the is creator of all this fierce and wonderful beauty, is powerful and righteous. So if the tree doesn t produce, God may choose to cut down the tree. But when and whether God chooses is not ours to know. In the reading from Isaiah 55 we hear: my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. But when you repent, turn over and open up, God will surely pardon. That s really good news. In the tragedies of our lives and times God can use even the compost that happens to us and around us, to do good, to produce sweet fruit. But it s a choice whether we will take up the offer. I find the words of Rumi, the Sufi mystic and poet, from the front cover of your bulletin so inviting. They invite us to claim this grace that only God can see: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,there is a field. I ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn t make any sense. (Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi 13th century) In that field God offers to meet us. In that field our identities melt away. And in that field we no longer need to compare our compost with that of others in order to figure out who will be saved and who will perish. We will perish, for this season reminds us: we are dust and we return to dust. So perhaps I should say, when we perish. When we perish we can let go, knowing that our lives have produced fruit for ourselves that can be used by the ones we leave behind, and that that cycle will go on as long as the God blesses earth with life. Amen.