Introduction
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2009, for the New Year’s Eve Eucharist.
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Readings
Jeremiah 24:1–7
Psalm 102:24–28
1 Peter 1:22–25
Luke 13:6–9
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Prayer
Father in heaven, grant us times of quiet thoughtfulness, that we may rest in your Spirit, listen to your voice, and ponder in our hearts the good news of your Son’s birth. Amen.
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Message
The gardener in Jesus’ parable of the fig tree
might be the unnamed patron saint of farmers and Cubs’ fans alike.
Both groups combine an attitude of resignation to adversity
with a childlike trust in an optimistic future…just around the corner.
And so they all say, “Wait until next year.”
Then they lay their plans.
Finally, after 102 years of frustration,
the Cubs will win the World Series…this year.
At long last, after years beset with drought or hail or infestation,
this year—finally—will bring the bumper crop and the up market.
And truth be told, none of us is much different
from the farmers of crops and the fans of the Cubs.
This new year, 2010, will be the year
that we make good on our resolutions,
that we stick to our new, good habits,
that we lose and keep off the weight,
get the spare room in good order,
complete the projects that have lingered undone for so many months.
At least, that’s what we tell ourselves
as we prepare to turn the page on 2009,
a year we likely won’t recall together as one entry in our top ten list.
It’s been a year of job losses and goodbyes to friends and loved ones,
a time of big businesses flailing and government stimulus spending,
another year with an endless procession of scandals and tragedies,
another dozen months with wars smoldering and flaring around the world.
But then, we shouldn’t be surprised by the bad news,
because most of it is the work of our own hands,
our soiled and sinful, so human hands.
We may have good intentions, hopeful plans, well-meaning thoughts,
but somewhere, somehow, we find ways
to sabotage our own efforts,
to bring down upon ourselves much of the adversity
we would prefer to avoid and evade.
This should not surprise us.
Because while we are all God’s children
and destined for eternal life in his kingdom,
we live each day in bondage to our sin,
unable to free ourselves.
It’s like we rise each morning
and greet the day with two faces;
we are children of God
and sons and daughters of sin—
both at the same time.
And maybe during this time of the year,
these days when we take stock of the past
and look ahead with hope,
we can dare to be a little more honest with ourselves
about our two-faced nature.
It’s almost as if the calendar is designed to help us to do this.
January gets its name from Roman mythology,
where Janus was the god of doors and gates,
the one to whom the Romans prayed when beginning a new task,
the one pictured as a man with two faces,
one looking forward to the future and one looking back to the past.
It might be tempting for us
to say, “Why bother trying to change.
After all, ‘We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.’
It’ll be the same next year.”
We know the truth about ourselves:
We come to the last day of December
and we still live with chaos and turmoil,
surrounded by unfinished tasks,
dragging a great chain of regret and remorse behind us.
And when we are tempted to think this way,
to be pessimistic or realistic of whatever we want to call it,
we can maybe see ourselves
in the parable as the owner of the fig tree
at the same time we are fig trees ourselves.
As the owner 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?” (Luke 13:7, NRSV)
Again, we can find ourselves
being of two conflicting minds.
We each know that we have not borne the fruit
that fig trees and people—
all creatures of God—
will bear when they are pleasing to him.
And yet we are also the owners of our own fig trees.
And so we disappoint ourselves again and again.
Paul helps us to understand ourselves,
or maybe he helps us to understand
how beyond understanding we are to ourselves.
He writes to the Church at Rome:
“I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15, NRSV)
But thank God our Father that he has sent his son, Jesus Christ,
to serve as the gardener in our lives.
So when we are ready to give up
on one another and on ourselves,
he steps up to us,
hoe in hand, and says,
“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.” (Luke 13:8–9, NRSV)
So, that’s how we begin this New Year.
Jesus hoes around the roots of our sins with his Holy Word;
he waters us in remembrance of our Baptism,
he works in a good helping of the manure of his Holy Meal.
In all weather, in the face of pests,
he tends and cares for us
with a farmer’s springtime hope,
he roots for us with a fan’s eternal optimism,
knowing that this may be the year
when we inherit the crown of victory,
when he will reap the full and bountiful harvest of the Spirit
to the glory of God the Father. Amen.