The Three Trees

This sermon is based on the parable of the fig tree in Luke 13:6-9

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

March 23, 2025

“The Three Trees”

Luke 13: 6-9 – Common English Bible

A Jesus told this parable: “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ 8 The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertilizer. 9 Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’” 

“For years I’ve tried to find an angle on the fig tree story that made sense.  Give it time; yes.  Give it attention; uh huh.  Give it nutrients; yeah good.  Except, by the way, if it doesn’t produce in a year, chop it down.  So, let’s try another approach.  Who are the characters in the parable?  There’s the vineyard owner and the gardener.  In addition, we always consider the crowd listening in.  Almost always, there were those who could relate to his teaching, who heard messages of mercy and grace.  And in the same crowd, there were almost always those Jesus offended.  

In the verses immediately before, the message could be applied to everyone.  Jesus made the point that everyone needs to change their heart and lives before something bad happens.  You never know the day you will die, so be ready.  But then in the next verses, regarding the fig tree, Jesus said, give it another year.  So, which is it?  You must today!  Or you can wait a year.  

You may have heard the joke, all you need to do is repent the day before you die.  What a great strategy.  But it’s kind of like what my dentist once told me.  I hate to floss so I asked him, which of my teeth should I concentrate on.  He said, “the ones you want to keep.”  So, yeah, simply repent the day before you die – but, of course, no one knows that day or time.  Still searching for an angle that works, maybe this story will help.[1]

Once upon a time, in a lush and tranquil valley, there were three little trees.  They shared with each other their big dreams of what they would be when they grew up.

The first tree, let’s call her Lucy.  Lucy dreamed of being a treasure chest.  She said, “one day, people will fill me with gold and jewels and they will treasure me because I’ll be filled with riches and the most beautiful things in the world!”

The second tree, let’s call him Lawrence, dreamed of being a big ship.  "One day, I’ll sail the seas and carry kings and queens across vast oceans.  I will be magnificent!"  

The third tree, let’s call them Luis.  Luis was the smallest and also had big dreams, but not to be rich, beautiful, or powerful.  “I want to stay right here and keep growing taller so I can point toward the heavens and inspire people to know that the power of God is great.”  

As the years passed, one by one the trees in the forest were cut down for different purposes.  When it was her time, Lucy was chopped down and taken to a carpenter’s shop.  Imagine all the possibilities – maybe even a treasure chest filled with gold and jewels.  Instead, she was carved into a trough for animal feed.  Great, she thought, I get to endure a lifetime of animal saliva.  

When it was his time, Lawrence was cut down and taken to a shipyard, maybe fulfilling his dream to carry kings and sail the ocean.  Instead, he was cut up and made into a small fishing boat.  Great, he thought, now I’m going to permanently smell like fish.  Day after day he was put out on the water and came back loaded with guts and blood.  

Maybe Luis would have better luck with their dreams.  For many years, they stood alone and maybe they would indeed be left in the valley to grow tall and point to the heavens and inspire people to believe God is great.  But one day a woodcutter finally came and Luis was delivered to a small lumberyard and cut into beams.  The possibilities were endless.  “Maybe I’ll be used to build a small cozy house for a family.”  But it appeared the owner forgot they were even there.  Years passed and their exterior weathered to the point that one day when some soldiers came looking for old useless-looking wood, they chose Luis.  The dreams each tree imagined for itself ended up disappointing all three.  Or so it would seem.

One night after another day of animals slobbering on her, something very unusual happened to Lucy.  A baby was placed inside wrapped in swaddling clothes.  You can figure out the story.  Lucy held the new-born Son of God, the richest of treasures more beautiful than jewels.  Soon, magi showed up to honor the child with such treasures as gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  But they were warned to go home a different way because the local cruel, paranoid king was afraid of that baby.

One night, Lawrence floated empty on the sea.  No fish all night.  Back on shore, the owners cleaned their nets.  A man walked by and asked them to let him get in and push out a little way so he could talk to a crowd gathered around.  Lawrence got the sense that the man standing in the boat may be more powerful than a king or even an emperor.  He was proclaiming the kingdom of God.  When the man finished speaking, Lawrence was sent back out into deeper water and nearly drowned from the load of fish that miraculously jumped into the boat.

And then there’s Luis.  The soldiers immediately took two weathered old beams and began nailing them into the same shape as the Roman Empire used to murder people considered threats to their authority.  One of these men was forced to drag his instrument of death through the streets to the jeering of crowds and then, you know the story, he was nailed to it.  Luis thought, what a sad way to end my dreams.  Until the third day.

Lucy held the treasure of a baby whose birth frightened a cruel, paranoid king.  Lawrence carried the man who provoked the authorities with all his talk of religion as love, not rules.  And Luis stood tall, ultimately inspiring people to know that God is great.  That God can overturn even the worst that can happen to us.  That God can conquer the plans of even the most cruel and paranoid rulers and the most hard-hearted, stiff-necked, smallest-minded religious leaders.  Lucy, Lawrence, and Luis each played their part and in unexpected ways, all fulfilled their dreams.  

I love that story.  But other than being about Jesus and trees, what does it have to do with the fig tree in a vineyard from the gospel of Luke today?  Well, the story made me consider viewing the parable from the perspective of the fig tree.  Think about what this tree must have felt as it stood there while people discussed its lack of worth and future destruction if it doesn’t produce value.  How would that make you feel?  

The story said the tree had been planted three years ago.  A quick Google search will show that fig trees don’t begin to produce fruit for at least three years from when they’re planted.  How could it have been expected to?  Even without Google, the crowd would have known this.  But it’s also the case that the fig tree had been completely ignored.  Now all of a sudden, it’s a crisis?  Only now they’re going to give it the nutrients it needs?  And, wait a minute, chop it down if it doesn’t produce in a year?  

Imagine that kind of pressure.  Or maybe some of you don’t have to imagine the pressure to produce on someone else’s schedule, their crisis about you, not given the resources to fulfill your purpose and responsibilities.  Or maybe you can relate to standing by as others debate your fate, perhaps as a patient listening to doctors talk about you but not with you.  And perhaps you can see how we might relate to the fig tree.

And if so, is Jesus pointing his finger at if to pronounce shame?  “You didn’t produce fruit.  Off to hell you go!”  Jesus never shamed the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.  But he absolutely did shame those who took advantage of the poor and vulnerable.  He called them hypocrites and broods of vipers for perverting their religion from the centrality of its teaching on justice and compassion for widows, orphans, strangers, and immigrants – that’s a big part of why he hung from a cross.  But for the fig tree, Jesus had mercy.  And mercy makes the powerful angry.

Was it the tree’s fault for not producing fruit?  It wasn’t yet time.  If you feel at all like the fig tree, maybe this profoundly confounding parable is simply about patience and rest and soaking up nutrients.  But, ah… not forever.  

I mourn that many of our dreams for a diverse, equitable, and inclusive world are being shredded.  And with the dismantling of the social safety net, our neighbors are soon to be at more risk than at any time in our collective memory.  With the destruction of laws and norms and civic obligations to one another, with world peace at more risk now than it has been for half a century, this is not so much a time to rest as for action, and yet we can’t constantly be in action, depriving ourselves of the nutrients necessary for life.  As Cole Arthur Riley said, “exhaustion will not save the world.”  Therefore, “we must breathe slow and rest that we might dream.”  

Dream, maybe not for a chest full of gold but, more importantly, a humble manger full of treasures like empathy and kindness; not the imagined fast and powerful ship but a small boat that can rescue people in open water; maybe not a tall steeple that points to God in heaven above but the example of how the power of God turned what happened to you on your worst day into a testimony to a love we can’t help but share.

It can be difficult to rest and not feel guilty for resting, but just like the fig tree, let us accept that we too need more time and care, attention and patience, and pray:  

Dear God, “We want more than a life lived exhausted.  That you have woven the healing rhythms of rest in our minds and bodies reminds us we are worthy of habitual restoration.  We grow weary of societies who view us as more machine than human, more product than soul.  The fear that we won’t survive without overworking stalks our days.  Remind us that the beauty and paradox of our humanness is that we were made to close our eyes, that we might see.”  That prayer is in the book Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human [2]

Maybe the parable’s not so profoundly confounding after all but a simple acknowledgement of Christ’s mercy upon the tree.  And upon you.  Mercy and a call to action.

[1] Significantly adapted from a folktale called The Three Trees
[2] Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies, Convergent Books, 2024