Jack Hardaway
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We have this fig tree. I had to move and replant it a couple of times until it found a happy place. We just forgot about it for a few years. Now it’s trying to take over the back of the house. It went from having an occasional fig to having more than we can eat. Right now, there are figs drying on the bare branches.
It is a sticky tree, with more sap than it knows what to do with, it just oozes.
The birds love it. The ants love it. I love it. We all share in it when the others aren’t looking.
It is all dry bony branches right now, but come spring and summer the sap will rise and those big leaves will unfurl like a flock of green wings, a fleet of green sails catching the wind, and then the fruit will be everywhere.
Learn the lesson of the fig tree. The parable of the fig tree.
When the world falls apart, that means summer is near, the leaves and the fruit are on the way.
It is a simple lesson in belligerent hope.
Everything and everyone wears out and dies, even the sun, even the moon, even the stars, even something as unmovable as the heavens themselves will shake.
Even Jesus dies.
When our world falls apart, learn the lesson of the fig tree, summer and sticky sap and green leaves are coming. Watch for it.
When everything is ending get ready, because that means everything is about to be fulfilled, completed. These bare bone branches are going to take flight, filling with green sappy leaves.
An impossible defiant hope.
That is how we begin the Christian year. Today we begin the year looking forward to summer.
Resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus, it breaks the thrall and power of death over the cosmos.
We think we know how the world works, the way of things.
Look at the fig tree and reconsider, summer is near, something new, not the same thing all over, but something new.
We live in fragile times, the community that keeps so many of us grounded and in touch has been disrupted, it is easy to lose perspective, to lash out, to bare false witness, to believe hurtful things. Don’t fall for the false prophets of despair.
The lesson of the fig tree offers us something more.
When we lose what keeps us together, then something amazing is about to happen. Rather than finding a target to pin frustration upon, rather than getting caught up in the thrall of poison and spreading the misery, rather than bare dry branches… love instead, love with reckless abandon, summer is coming.
The tomb is empty. Jesus is risen. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is near. Christ will come again.
The sap is rising, the body of Jesus is sprouting those big leaves, unfurling like a flock of green wings, a fleet of green sails catching the wind, and then the fruit will be everywhere.
From the body of Jesus learn its lesson.
That is Advent, the waiting, and the watching, and the wakefulness of Advent, hope beyond reason.
Don’t fall for the ideologies that try to convert us to hatred, to hate the world, to hate others, to hate the church. The despair of the tomb is all that is. The foul air and breath of dust and decay reaching for the next unsuspecting victim.
From the fig tree learn its lesson.
Hope beyond reason. Love with reckless abandon.
An empty tomb, a risen Lord, green leaves, sticky sap, summer is near.
Watch for it. Let it draw your heart and your eyes, let it fill your soul.
And so we begin.
The blessed new year of our Lord’s summer be with us all.