In Time, The Reverend David R. Williams, Lent III--Year C--March 11, 2007
 
God of infinite mercy, grant that we who know your pity may rejoice in your forgiveness and gladly forgive others for the sake of Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen.
 
Speaking for the Lord, Isaiah reminds us, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.”  In other words we still learn. We have not yet reached the Promised Land, and God has much more to say. 
 
Jesus draws a picture for us. A vineyard owner has a fig tree.  He looks for fruit from the tree and finds none.  For three years, the vineyard owner looks for fruit. 
 
“Cut it down,” the owner finally says to the gardener.  “It is a waste.” The gardener pleads for one more year of grace. “I’ll dig around it and put manure on it.  If by next year it does not bear fruit then I’ll cut it down,” says the gardener.
 
“My thoughts are not your thoughts,” the Lord of the garden says, “Nor your ways my ways.”
 
Jesus’ fig tree reminds me of a tree in our own garden at home.  About three years ago, I planted a Gala apple tree, and, for two years, we’ve enjoyed a modest harvest.  Sarah made some wonderful apple tarts last year from our yield.   
 
During one of the fall windstorms this past year, the apple tree took a beating – enough so that it is now tethered with lines to prevent further damage.  Possibly a major feeder root was severed, but maybe not.
 
My apple tree may be useless, but I am not yet ready to take the tree out.  I tend to the tree, place fertilizer around it, and shall be watching for blooms this spring.  The fate of my tree will be in a matter of weeks – not a year. 
 
My thoughts are not your thoughts,” our Lord says.  “My ways are not your ways.”
 
“Cut it down,” one voice says, “Why should it be wasting the soil?”
 
A mother of a six-year-old little girl sits outside a surgical suite awaiting some news of her daughter just diagnosed with a cancerous tumor near one of her eyes. 
 
While the little girl is in surgery the mother chain-smokes cigarettes outside the hospital.  
 
The mother confesses to the chaplain, “It’s my punishment,” she says, “for smoking these darn cigarettes.  God couldn’t get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick.  Now I’m supposed to stop,” she said through her tears, “but I can’t stop.  I’m going to kill my own child.”
 
“I don’t believe in a God like that,” the chaplain says reassuringly, “The God I know wouldn’t do something like that.”
 
“But I should be punished,” the mother says. 
 
At that moment in time this worried mother preferred a punishing God to an absent or a capricious God.  For this mother to come to grips with her daughter’s dire situation along with her own sense of guilt, the mother grasped for a reason.  She was even willing to be the reason for her daughter’s cancer.  That was her way of getting a grip on the catastrophe. 
 
The useless tree – her smoking - would remain a little longer.  But it was one step closer to being cut down.  She was about to turn her own life around.  A very sick daughter would become a new tree of life – for this distraught Mom as the daughter recovered from her surgery.
 
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” the Lord says
 
In another situation, ten years after a woman lost a child due to an automobile accident, she talks to a professional counselor about the long years of unrelenting anguish.  Even with constant support from her husband and friends from her parish family, she holds tightly to her pain.   As one psychologist says, “We can become accustomed to our wounds and become captives of our despair.”
 
In counseling, the woman eventually writes a note to a former pastor of hers, “My insistent yearning and questioning is based not only in the unexplainable death of my son but also in the deep trust I have always placed in God’s grace.  I search because of my pain, my need, my protest.” 
 
A lifeless fig tree rests in this mother’s heart and soul—and how understandable that she is forever changed. How does any parent ever come to terms with the loss of a child?
 
Accepting a loss like the death of a child or a cancer in one of our children takes all of the time we have. What we cannot bear, we give over to God.
 
As one theologian says, “God is not waiting for us to figure out everything, not hesitating to act until there is evidence that we will put our questions aside.  God’s love bears even our question and protest.  God will come forward.  We ‘wait and see’ and in the meantime we take and eat, as Isaiah says – as the celebrant says at our Eucharist.  The meal is free and holds the promise of freeing us from whatever holds us captive.”
 
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways my ways.”
 
“I should be punished,” pleads the mother of the very sick little girl.
 
“Where was the grace of God when my son died?” another mother says through her bottomless grief.
 
Repent is a powerful word for turning one’s life around.  Isaiah calls the people of God to a new way of listening. Where is my happiness? What do I trust? How do I define real satisfaction? What is my true sustenance?  “Repent,” says Isaiah. Come back. 
 
If the tree in our vineyard is not producing fruit or providing nutrition to all people, stranger and loved one--if the warmth from my own heart and soul is not able to reach outward--then cut it down. Plant something new. 
 
OK, don’t cut it down today – maybe not even tomorrow.  In time – in good time, in our time, in God’s time, turn around your life and keep the vineyard growing.
 
Amen.