I love figs.
I didn’t care for them as a child.
But I love them now, and I love the crazy branchy trees that they grow on, dropping sticky sap and fruit all over everything that wanders too close.
I had a jar of fig preserves that a friend made and gave to me. I opened it and it was like summer time distilled, reduced, rendered and crammed into a jar that suddenly escaped, running loose.
Summer is near! Isn’t it obvious?
What does Jesus mean with the parable of the fig tree when it and all trees sprout their leaves? Fear, foreboding, the heavens shake, the Son of Man in a cloud with power and great glory: when this happens we know summer is near.
When your world is shaken and falls apart, when everything dies back in winter, when there is less and less light, learn this parable, the leaves are soon to sprout.
When everything wears out, when the light dies, when it grows dark, this is like a fig tree putting forth its leaves, and not just the fig tree, all the trees, life is about to go green all around, it means that summer is near, that it is not all over, that the best is yet to come. Learn this parable.
When it is darkest let hope sprout green leaves everywhere.
The darkness at the cross, when even Jesus dies, it means summer is near, the resurrection is almost upon us. The Cross sprouts leaves.
We begin the Christian year today with the Season of Advent and the parable of the fig tree, we are bidden to hope, to be expectant, to watch, to pray and to endure as God’s kingdom draws ever nearer.
We also begin Luke’s Gospel today. We will be keeping company with Luke most Sundays over the next year.
We begin with an expectant hope that prays for endurance.
Luke in some ways is the happiest of the four Gospels, joy is a frequent theme and people have a habit of breaking into song.
But it is a stubborn joy in the face insurmountable barriers.
It is a Gospel where all barriers and boundaries are crossed over by stubborn persistence, surprising generosity and costly hospitality.
These themes play out over and over again.
Luke has all the great parables that cut our hearts so deeply.
It is a gospel of longing for what should be but is not yet, a longing that pulls us forward into a journey with the Holy Spirit moving through the world.