A Word of Grace

Luke 13:1-9; Isaiah 55:1-9

Rev. Dr. Mary Alice Mulligan

Don’t you love it when the lectionary committee gives you 2 packed and quite distinct readings for worship? We heard Angie read Isaiah 55, part of the final piece by the second writer of Isaiah, promising a people in exile that God is preparing a full life for them, which can only mean they will return home to Judah. Wonderful passage. A people in exile receiving a promise of grace.

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. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

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.

But next you’ll hear the passage from Luke when some of Jesus’ listeners tell him about people’s murders. Jesus firmly tells them their deaths were not because they were terrible sinners, just as people who die in a construction accident are not worse than anyone else. God doesn’t kill people off as punishment. How does this fit with the Isaiah passage? Jesus ends by telling a parable about a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit. From the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, listen for the word of God.

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He 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.’”

These passages don’t seem to go together, which is okay because we live divided lives. Don’t we? All sorts of demands pull our energy every which way. We have numerous tasks we try to take care of for the church. At the same time, we are committed to getting to the gym three times a week. The library book we’ve hardly started reading is due tomorrow. Some dear friend is having a birthday next week and nothing, not even a card, is in the mail yet. And please don’t even mention getting income tax forms completed. We are pulled by our own desires to get the bedroom redecorated, to lose that 12 pounds, to show up to the neighborhood meeting informed. But we are also pulled by holy demands to follow the discipline we took on for Lent as a commitment to grow stronger in our faith, and to know God better. When we feel pulled by too many interests or feel guilty for not doing enough for others, we might try to do something toward our commitment to God, who, after all, understands when we fall short. We also work to do at least part of the other demands in our lives that are pulling on us. Often the result is a feeling of inadequacy because not everything gets completed. We can get frozen by our inability to know where to throw whatever energy we have. More than merely inadequate, we feel scattered, even broken. And all too often we end up trying to fix what feels scattered or broken inside by resting, but often that break involves trying to fill the inadequacy with stuff – food or toys or some new possession which soon makes us feel more scattered and overwhelmed, still pulled in too many directions, because we didn’t fulfill the responsibilities we promised we would. And then Isaiah speaks for God, asking, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy?...Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.” And too often we suddenly remember the thing we promised to do for the church got left out completely. We meant to finish everything but our lives are scattered.

So, God gives us focus. God can be our center point, because we need God the most. Connecting to our faith matters more than anything.

Signs on trails at the Grand Canyon National Park say, “Stop. Drink water. You are thirsty whether or not you realize it.” That’s how it is with our life of faith. We are thirsty for God. Amidst all the busy-ness in our lives, at the foundation, is a thirst for God, a hunger for spiritual sustenance. All the other ways we try to fill ourselves will not satisfy, because holy bread, spiritual milk and wine, are our true nourishment which Isaiah says are granted to us freely by God. Such holy food provides the healthiest, most joyful life we can imagine. But how does life happen? Our belief in God and our commitment to Jesus Christ give us our identity, tell us who we are, so we rightly focus through those connections. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying church tasks matter most. No, who we are as children of God matters most. Our connection to the divine shapes us. Helps us know who we are and how to behave. Keeps us moving along the right path. Then all our other tasks will be shaped by our commitment to God.

Let’s think of examples. Instead of watching how hateful people can be to each other on some reality television program, as amusing as that might be to some of us, when we are shaped according to God’s purposes, shaped by compassion, generosity, and self-control, we might instead write a note to thank Jacob for the prelude that transported us into the presence of God for worship last Sunday, or to thank the media folks for running the camera Sunday after Sunday, or to let a neighbor know we enjoy her beautiful yard.

God calls us to participate in a fullness of life which comes from living according to the teachings of Jesus, which spreads abundant life. Not just buying a can of tune for the food bank, as good as that is, but abundance like when people from St. Andrew and the 180 houses cook huge pots of spaghetti sauce for 25 people. And bowls of salad and plates of brownies appear. The cooking and eating are joyous celebrations, born from our connection with God, which is what we need most.

So, here’s the big lesson. God is willing to wait for us. Regardless of all the other distractions pulling us every which way but godward, God will patiently wait for us to turn our attention there. We call what we receive from God: grace. Now I can hear you asking where do we find “grace” in the Luke passage. Certainly, we hear a word of grace through Isaiah, that our deepest thirst is quenched for free, and we have an eternal connection with God. But what about the parable Jesus tells in Luke? The landowner is calling for the fruitless fig tree, which we assume is us, to be cut down. We had three years to bear fruit. Time is up. The landowner says, chop it down. True, but the landowner does not actually seem like a God figure, does he? The humble, grace-filled gardener seems like God, who says, “Let me keep doing what I’ve been doing: giving loving care, encouraging the tree, and feeding it. I’m sure it will bear fruit soon, plenty of fruit to share all over the place. We just need to wait.”

God’s patient waiting for us to pay attention is part of Divine Grace, part of God’s infinitely generous forgiveness. In the Thursday night book group this week, we read that 16th century Reformer, Martin Luther corresponded with a friend “about the possibility that people could turn to God [even] after death..” Quite a startling idea for many of us. Could God continue waiting for our attention even after this life is through? After all our chasing after the final thing-a-ma-jig to finish off our thing-a-ma-jig collection and getting the accolades we craved, after the clinging to life as long as we could and we finally cross over from this life to something else, could God still be waiting for us to pay attention? For us to bear a little fruit to spread around? Martin Luther’s response was to ask, “Who would doubt God’s ability to do that?”[1] Of course, God is able to keep hoping for us to respond even long after this life is over, whatever the next life is.

The parable has the Gardener saying let’s see what a year brings, but scripture tells us a thousand years in God’s sight is like an overnight, and one of God’s days can be a quarter of a billion years or so. At least that’s what Genesis indicates, when it tells us that on the third day when living things were brought forth, which scientists now think happened when Earth was already about a half billion years old. What that seems to mean is God will wait for us to pay fuller attention as long as it takes. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, God will sit on the porch forever, watching for our arrival. God is always waiting for us to come home.

Get it? It’s all grace. God is waiting for us to pay attention. Yearning for us. Sending out love to draw us in. Nourishing us all along, whether we notice or not. It’s always God and God is always spreading grace, which is exactly what we so desperately need.

[1] Rob Bell, Love Wins, 106.