“So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?”
Some people seem to always want to help in any way they can. And I don’t mean for money, or even for the recognition. I’m talking about people who just feel it’s important to give of themselves in order to make things better for someone else. We all know people who fit this description. They’re the ones who always say yes to someone’s request for a favor. They’re the ones helping out at parish functions. They’re the ones volunteering in the community.
We could ask ourselves if we are one of those people or if we are one of the people attending and benefitting from the selfless service of others. Are we rarely (if ever) the guy standing on the other side of the table, or manning the booth, or driving the person to the airport, or handing out water to runners as they go by. If we examine our lives and conclude that we rarely put our faith into action, rarely sign up to volunteer, then our Gospel today is a call and challenge to adjust our priorities.
“So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?”
So says the owner of the fig tree to his gardener in the parable we just heard from the mouth of Jesus in the passage from Luke.
Just prior to that, some people who approached Jesus had evidently been speculating as to the moral culpability of people who suffered greatly at the hands of Pilate. Jesus answers them by also mentioning another similar situation in which a tower fell on a bunch of people, killing them. He assures them that in neither case was it because they were somehow greater sinners than anybody else. But what he seemed to be more concerned with was the fact that they were clearly judging others, while being unaware of their own faults, their own shortcomings, their own sin. And so he tells them this parable about the fig tree.
“So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?”
This powerful and profound story makes us wonder --- makes us wonder if we are falling into the same kind of trap the people questioning Jesus fell into. We might be starting to wonder if we are more like that barren fig tree than we are willing to admit. It might be true that we don’t do anything to bad, that causes great harm to others.
But might our branches be barren anyway?
Are they without fruit?
Am I a giver or a taker --- someone who adds life and goodness and joy and faithful action to the world, or do I simply deplete its soil, take and take and take without ever adding anything back in?
This is a harder question to answer, because it takes a great deal of self-awareness and self-reflection. It takes honesty and humility. It takes a letting go of one’s ego. And it takes a willing heart --- one that truly wants to be open to the changes God desires to make within each of us --- changes that flow from knowing that God has loved us first, and wanting to pour out those same good things on others without counting the cost.
And these changes have little to do with the past or the future, have little to do with who we were before or who we will maybe get around to being eventually. It doesn’t matter if we did something good in the past, bore some fruit six months or a year ago. And it doesn’t matter if we pledge to start bearing fruit (that is, being the person God wants us to be) in a year or two or three.
Rather, our loving God wants our best right now. He wants us to stop taking and start giving now. He wants us to bear fruit now, stop exhausting the soil and start putting some life and love into the world now. That’s the God we have.
The God of the present, the moment, the eternal now.
“I am who am.”
But I’m a good person?
If by “good person” I mean not doing really terrible things, then yes. But maybe not if being a good person is so much more than that. Maybe not if it’s really about bearing fruit, about helping out, signing up, reaching out, about pouring out every good thing we have to offer. Looking the other way, or expecting others to do the work, that seems to be what Jesus has a problem with.
Let’s make sure we have a problem with it too.