Living Fruitfully

Pastor Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church

Luke 13:1-9

Tragedies we hear about in the news often cause people to think theologically – we can wonder why something happened or seek to find meaning or a reason that helps us understand or cope with what has taken place. This is an ancient human response which is reflected in today’s Gospel which begins with people telling Jesus about the murder by the Romans of a number of Galilean worshipers who were offering sacrifices when they were struck down.

[powerpress]“At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.  He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way that they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?

No I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.

Or those 18 who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?

No I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told them this parable:

“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.  So he 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 also be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘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 13:1-9

If we were to paraphrase the beginning of this scripture in a contemporary way we might say: “Some present told Jesus about the people who were victims of violence this past week. Jesus asked them, “Do you think that because these people suffered in this way that they were worse sinners than everyone else?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.

Or those twenty-nine miners who died in West Virginia last month – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in West Virginia?

No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

If people die violently like the Galileans at worship in Jerusalem who were killed by the Romans or if they die by accident like the 18 people in Jesus’ day who died when a tower collapsed or in a car or plane accident or an oil rig explosion, or if we die by a natural disaster, Jesus says it is not because God has chosen to arbitrarily punish those people for their sins while sparing others. Sometimes, evil people prosper; and sometimes the saints suffer. Those who suffer are not necessarily the worst sinners. The fact that Jesus suffered on a cross at the hands of sinful people should make that plain. Folks are asking Jesus these questions and he basically says, “Don’t worry about that or them, focus on turning your life over to God, and bearing the fruit the Lord is looking for in your own life.”

Jesus implies that a sudden event that claims human lives can serve as a warning of judgment. We wonder if life is more precarious than in supposedly simpler times, yet our life span is decades longer and so much more is available to us. Yet none of us can protect ourselves, or those we love from every danger, disease, accident, crime, or act of violence. Jesus says these calamities are not God’s doing to punish sinners. However, we are reminded every day how fragile life is and that any of us could stand before our Maker at a moment’s notice.

Jesus then tells a parable about a fig tree. Trees are often used in the Bible (Psalm 1:3, John 15, Romans 7:4) as an image for human life. This parable is found only in Luke, and it is typically Lukan in that it deals with repentance, turning our lives around and turning them over to God, a theme more frequent in Luke than in any other New Testament writer. For Luke the gospel consists of the offer of repentance and the forgiveness of sins leading to transformed living.  We cannot undersell or understate the importance of repentance. I don’t want to be like the old time pastor of an educated and well-off congregation who in order to keep his comfortable position and yet remain at least partially true to the faith proclaimed:  “Unless you repent in a measure and be saved to some degree, I regret to inform you that you will be damned to some extent.”[1] 2 Peter 3:8-9 tells us that God has delayed the Day of Judgment in order to give more people the opportunity to repent and turn their lives around. God’s judgment is delayed so a message can be shared and responded to.

The good news is the parable reveals that God would give even an unfruitful fig tree another chance. We all are given the chance to be fruitful and we are also given at least a second chance. The parable is about God’s patience and speaks of the necessity of repentance and bearing fruit. God is the judge of our behavior and yet God offers to all the opportunity to turn things around, to change our thinking.  Settling our relationship with God is of the utmost importance and yet God will still show patience for a time, but not forever. There comes a time when we receive a final chance.

“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.” The fig tree is one of the most familiar and useful trees in Palestine. The first three years of a fig tree’s growth were allowed to elapse before its fruit became clean so six years had passed since it was planted so it was hopelessly barren. Clearly God is far more patient with us than we would be with such a tree in our yard.  How many of us would even wait six years to cut down a barren tree, much less exert extra efforts to try and salvage it?  God has already given it three more years than one would expect.

“Why should it also be wasting the soil?” the vineyard owner asks in the parable. A fig tree absorbs a large amount of nourishment, and so takes away sustenance needed by surrounding vines. “Wasting the soil” implies more than the tree occupied a place that might be more profitably filled; the barren tree injured the land around. The same question may be asked of us. As Christians are we producing fruit worthy of the ground and nourishment we use? Are we leading more people to Jesus, sharing Christian truth more effectively, living more compassionately, giving more to spread the gospel and relieve human suffering and working for justice – or are we just “wasting the soil”?  If we are not producing the fruit God is looking for we shouldn’t be shocked if God eventually cuts us down as those who were unproductive were “cut down” in past generations.

The gardener in the story, who in a sense is Jesus, displays God’s grace and patience with us. There are three expressions of grace extended to the unfruitful tree: digging around it, putting manure on it, and receiving one more year to produce fruit. The offer to dig around the roots illustrates that if we are not living fruitfully as followers of Jesus the problem may be out of sight and beneath the surface.  Maybe there are some things going on inside us, below ground, which are preventing us from living fruitfully. Maybe our spiritual roots are tangled up or being choked by some unseen or un-confronted problem. Exposing our roots, going deep, even cutting some of those old roots may be necessary to produce new life and fruitful growth and to free us from an unhealthy past. It is also might make us feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, but at times it is necessary.

Putting manure on a vineyard is not mentioned in any passage of the Old Testament; and ordinarily fig trees don’t need that extra help or attention either.  The gardener is proposing to do something unusual, to take the last possible measure to save the tree showing that God will take unusual steps to save us also. Sometimes stuff happens in life that stinks, that to uninformed observation appears just to smell and be bad. However, within the manure is fertilizer that may produce growth. Sometimes things that stink in life can become the means for spiritual growth in our lives.

There is a bumper sticker,  “**it happens.” Sometimes when you’re feeling that way about life, perhaps it might help to change our perspective and think of it as, “Hey, this is like what the gardener did to the fig tree to help it bear fruit and grow.” We can complain about it when it happens or we can look at it as God’s way of helping us grow.

We have a number of plants downstairs at our house that I try to water appropriately – all of them are bending toward the sun which they recognize as vital to life. That may be a helpful image for us to consider too, what am I bending toward?  Am I bending toward Jesus?  Is my life leaning toward the Lord or something else?

The parable also teaches us that patience is needed as we wait to see results. We have so many people going through surgeries and involved in rehabilitation right now and it is important to remember patience brings results…impatience, not so much. There was a famous, cynical comedian in the 1930s named W.C. Fields who had a problem with alcohol. One day he was walking through a flower shop and a tag on one of the plants caught his eye. The plant was called a Century Plant. The dishonest florist told Mr. Fields that this plant only flowered once per century and that within 24 hours it would bloom. In a drunken state, Fields bought the over-priced plant, brought it home and invited many of his Hollywood pals over for the 24-hour wait for this Century Plant to flower. And wait they did. Two days of heavy drinking passed and still the flower failed to bloom. Fields, fed up with waiting, opened a drawer and grabbed his pistol. He went into the living room where the Century Plant lay at rest and said to the plant: “For the last time, bloom! Bloom!!! Do you hear me, you fool?” Mysteriously, the plant remained silent and the flower failed to appear. Bang! He shot the plant and soil into a thousand directions and walked back into the kitchen for another shot of whiskey. W.C. Fields is not so different than some people who want quick results or want something for nothing. He got impatient and never gave his flower a chance to bloom. Have you ever wondered what could have happened for the better, if you had been a bit more patient with someone or with some project or with yourself? Sometimes we can shoot the plant before it has a chance to flower; we can cut down the fig tree prematurely.

The pattern of fruitful Christian living presented in this scripture is repentance – turning around and turning to God – followed by careful cultivation and fertilization leads to spiritual fruit. The parable of the fig tree invites us to consider the gift of another year of life as an act of God’s mercy. The gardener pleads for and is granted one more year. The year of the Lord’s favor Jesus proclaimed in Luke 4:16-21 would be a time of forgiveness, restoration, and second chances.  “If it bears fruit next year, well and good” – repentance is the alternative that is available to all. There is no joy in cutting down fruitless trees – just disappointment and regret. Through Jesus, God gives us a second chance, but we are to produce fruit.

The lesson of the fig tree is a challenge to live each day fruitfully as a gift from God. Live in such a way that when the owner of the vineyard checks you out there will be fruit as a result of your change of mind and heart and living.

The Bible makes it clear we will be judged not only on what we do, but on what we don’t do. The fig tree in Luke 13 wasn’t producing poisonous or bad fruit; it was bearing no fruit. It was what it didn’t do that was its undoing.

One of Jill’s favorite verses is James 4:17, “Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.”

This is the point of many of Jesus’ parables.

All of us probably prefer the joy of eternal life to the hard work of repentance and change, but repentance is necessary preparation for eternal life. It is a lot more fun building a new addition than it is replacing a whole bunch of rotten wood underneath an existing building. It is more fun applying a new coat of paint than it is sanding and scraping off an old one.

Before we can start bearing fruit, we have to prune off the fruitless parts of our life. In John 15:4-6 Jesus speaks to the cause of fruitlessness in the Christian life: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

Producing fruit is an inside job. It develops from the inside out. Pastor and author Stuart Briscoe tells a story from his childhood of a friend who often used an old fruit tree to escape from his second-story bedroom window, especially when his father was about to punish him. One day the father announced that he was going to cut down the old tree because it had not borne fruit in many years. That night the boy and his friends purchased a bushel of apples and in the cover of darkness tied fruit to the unproductive branches.

The next morning the father shouted to his wife loud enough for his son to hear, “Mary, I can’t believe my eyes. The old fruit tree that was barren for ten years is covered with apples. It’s a miracle, because it’s a pear tree!” Some times in our lives as Christians we go about it all wrong. We try to produce fruit from the outside. We try to tie the fruit of the Spirit onto our lives. We try to tie a little patience here – a little goodness there – and a little self-control over here – but it can’t be done. Fruit doesn’t grow from the outside. Our patience, our goodness, our self-control, are short lived, because they’re like us trying to hang an apple on a pear tree with a string, but there’s no nourishment from the inside to keep the fruit vibrant and alive. Real fruit is an inside job.

Just as bearing fruit is natural for a healthy tree, so bearing the fruit of the Spirit is natural for those who have the Holy Spirit within us through our faith in Jesus. And “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.”

The cause of fruitlessness is not being united with and abiding in Christ.

The cost of fruitlessness is being cut down.

We all have a chance to be fruitful.

We have another chance to be fruitful.

We have a last chance to be fruitful. Make the most of it.


[1] Hillyer H. Stratton, A Guide to the Parables of Jesus, Eerdmans Pub., 1959, p. 150.

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