Mi sermon - Lucas 13:6-9

6 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. 7 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?” 8 He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’

I believe this parable has significance for all of us, but I have discovered new meaning behind it as we have journeyed through this wonderful country of Mexico. Before getting to that, I first want to share a story with you. My mother has this Thanksgiving cactus that has been a part of our family for a longer time than even I. In fact, it´s over 30 years old. A couple of years ago, I noticed the cactus had bloomed the most beautiful orange and pink colored blossoms. It was a joy just to see. The following year, however, there were no blossoms. I asked Mom why there were no blooms since the plant had been so magnificant the year before and she told me that it typically bloomed once in many years. In fact, the cactus had been barren most of its life. Yet, she continued to tend its soil and nurture it, hoping that the next year would bring those beautiful blossoms we longed to see. After hearing this, it was pretty evident that the blooms were God´s gift to us for Mom´s patience in waiting for it to grow.

Are you being patient to see the gift that God has in store for you? For the church? For the people within the community?

Let´s go back to the parable. Here we understand the situation to be one of frustration for the landowner. He has waited 3 years for fruit, but none has grown. Instead of waiting longer, he tells his gardener to cut it down. ¨Why should it waste more soil?¨ he says.

In this parable, the gardener reminds me of Jesus - he is patient and begs the landowner to offer the tree one more year before cutting it down. The gardener also agrees to tend and fertilize the soil around it in a final effort to help the fruit grow.

There are many times in my life when I hear and feel Jesus calling out to me, ¨Wait, don´t give up yet. Your time is my time and it´s not now. Wait, be patient. Things will happen in the right time. Let me work within you to ¨tend the soil of your life¨ so that you can flourish and be prosperous.¨ I´m certain we´ve all heard Jesus calling that same message to us. And sometimes that message calls us to help tend our own soil or the soil of our Christian brothers and sisters.

In our culture, in the U.S., our expectation for observing growth and development is that it happens very rapidly - that there is minimal wait time before we see or experience significant progress. We can be a very impatient group of people. We like things to happen on our timetable, often disregarding what God may have in store for us. Often, we are less inclined than other cultures to tend the soil of our plants. In other words, we want more for less. We also can be lazy, not wanting to work hard to help make this growth happen.

As I mentioned earlier, we are experiencing a Mexican way of life this summer - as we traveled with the Encuentro group around several parts of Mexico to learn about the people and culture. Through these experiences I have witnessed a different and better way of acting patiently and obediently in accordance with God´s timetable.

Specifically, in La Joya (just outside Cuernavaca), we visited the Dispensario (health clinic) that had been built by the church and the people in the community. We heard about the services they provide for those living nearby - medical, dental, and physical therapy. The niños (children) of the community are also served desayuno (breakfast) on Sunday mornings, so spiritual needs are met too. All these services are necessary and wonderful, but what amazed me most was the recognized need and reaction by the community in building this facility. We were told that the sanctuary for the church was to be built first, but because the people reacted to their more immediate medical needs, the clinic was built first instead. To me, this was an act of tending the soil and waiting to see growth on God´s timetable. It would have been easy to move forward as a community with the plan that was in place. It seems that because the people of La Joya waited a little longer and tended the soil around them, they were able to more fully experience God´s goodness blossoming around them through the development of both facilities - the Dispensario and the sanctuary.

A few days after our trip to La Joya, we traveled to a very remote community in the mountains of Guerrero called Huitzapula. There were many striking things about this place and its people - stories about how the soil has been and continues to be tended by Jesus. I want to share two.

Our first night there, Pastor Manuel spoke to us about the barrenness of this place. The people of Huitzapula have experienced great pain and suffering recently, particularly in the loss of their sanctuary a couple years ago. Since the worship space of this mission site of the Methodist Church was destroyed by the flooding river, the community - and especially the men - have been eager, almost anxious, about beginning the process of rebuilding. Yet even in their desperation to grow and nurture the tree, they wait. In this waiting, they continue to tend the soil until God is ready to show them the fruitful blossoms they desire.

Another meaningful experience for us in Huitzapula was eating our evening meal with a man from the community and his family. This man, Diego, had been injured in an accident a few years ago, leaving him almost paralyzed from the waist down. Before the accident, Diego had been a very active man working hard to support his family. The accident left Diego in this temporary state of barrenness - without knowing when he may experience the joy and fulfillment of God´s blossoming fruit again. Yet even in Diego´s waiting, he continues to be faithful, knowing that in God´s time he will be able to walk again.

I would be willing to guess that most of us have experienced periods of barrenness in our lives. It´s possible that those times have been as significant to us as what the congregation in Huitzapula and our brother Diego have experienced. My question to us all is, ¨How have you responded to those periods of drought, of pain and suffering, of challenges that test us to our inner core?¨

Have we looked to Jesus - our gardener - to tend the soil in our lives and in the lives of our congregations and communities? Or have we given up prematurely because we are frustrated or even angry that God isn´t working on our schedule? Unfortunately, we don´t always know or understand what God has in store for us and we don´t know when growth will begin to happen. God works on God´s timetable - sometimes we wait days; sometimes we wait years; things we expect to happen or that we expect should happen take longer. We don´t know why. Out of our frustration and anger, often we want to cut down the fig tree before we have a chance to see how God´s hand will touch us and cause us to grow.

So, my challenge for us all is to consider how our gardener, Jesus, is trying to guide the growth in our lives. But, maybe we don´t have the answer of how that growth will transpire - like the church in Huitzapula, like Diego. Within that waiting process, what if...instead of giving up prematurely on what´s to come in God´s time...what if we, just like the people of La Joya, focus on being faithful and patient and allow the work of the gardener to prepare us for all of God´s goodness to come, even if that goodness is a beautiful colored cactus blossom.

En el nombre del Padre, de Hijo, y el Espiritu Santo. (In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.) Amen