What can the fig tree tell us?
First Advent Sermon by Marilyn Zehr
December 2, 2012
Texts: Psalm 25:1-10, Luke 21:25-36
Each year on the first Sunday of Advent, the gospel text for that Sunday is one of the mini-apocalypses found in either of Matthew, Mark or Luke and each year I wonder – how do we hear the apocalypse on this the first Sunday of one of the most anticipated times of year – the Advent or coming of Jesus.
This year, the Worship Committee gave me an idea for how to approach this text when they suggested that the preachers during Advent consider telling the story of this season through a character. We have been invited to try on a first person story of someone in the text or someone who exemplifies the theme for each Sunday.
Luke’s mini-apocalypse however is devoid of the usual characters we associate with Christmas – Joseph, Mary, shepherds, angels and the like,
But as I read it with this invitation and the theme of the Earth as our Shelter in my mind, all of a sudden there she was right in the middle of Jesus’ words, known in Israel and the Middle East as the source of honey and fruitfulness, known in Africa as the Queen of Trees, known in many religions as sacred – the fig tree is my character for this Sunday. I invite you to listen now to what the Fig Tree can tell us.
I am the fig tree and there are things that Jesus knew that I could tell you. Though I myself am only a few centuries old my great-grandmother told me about some of the things that she heard him tell his disciples. She’ll never forget the day he said,
“Look at the fig tree and all the trees;
21:30 as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.
21:31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the Reign of God is near.
Yes, I can tell you when the summer is near when my branches sprout leaves and my trunk sends out the shoots that begin to form the figs that will be harvested at least twice each year.
But I can tell you other things as well, for you see, my species has been standing around on this planet for 60-80 million years. In all that time we’ve observed a few things. In the last few millennia in particular we have watched humanity pass through numerous apocalyptic or crises moments. Maybe parts of my story, parts of the things I have to tell you will equip you with tools for this current moment of crises in the history of the planet. The winds that blow through my branches carry strange new warmth. Maybe the Wisdom that created me and miraculously sustains me generation after generation will reveal through me good news for your generation and beyond.
So first, let me tell you about longevity. I’ve personally stood here above this aquifer outside of the city of Jerusalem for over two hundred years now. Sometimes I’ve felt strong and fruitful. Sometimes when the winds have been harsh and dry and the autumn rains have been delayed I’ve felt like I’m just barely hanging on, but the creator has designed me to know that longevity is all about adapting to stress. When the water table drops, I push my roots deeper. When the season is too cool or harsh, I drop my leaves and preserve my strength within my trunk and wait for more hospitable weather. In this way, my inner purpose or primary task of bearing fruit has cycled through well over 200 seasons. Strangely if you see my image on the horizon, it looks like I stand here alone, minding my own business, bearing fruit in each season, weathering whatever comes my way, but if you look closely you will realize that you are mistaken. My ability to bear fruit at all is linked to a surprisingly complex web and design of life and death and renewal. I am never alone.
Let me tell you the story of my fruitfulness. Unlike other trees – you will never see flowers bloom on a fig tree, for the flowers remain inside the young figs that are the first thing to sprout from my trunk in the spring. If it weren’t for the fig wasp, these early figs would never mature, never bear seeds, and simply drop to the ground and rot. Their lack of fruitfulness would quite literally be the end of me and hence my species. Thankfully the fig wasp knows what it needs to do. The fig wasp is the only creature (besides a few parasites capable of clinging to it) that manages to get inside the fig to pollinate these internal flowers. Equally important the inside of the fig is the only place that the fig wasp can lay her eggs in order to perpetuate her species. Remarkably laying her eggs inside the fig and carefully pollinating the flowers within the fig is the wasp’s last act in her brief life. It is her work and sacrifice that ensures the future of her young and my own longevity. When the eggs of the wasp hatch and fly, the fig finishes it’s ripening and is ready for human and animal consumption. The fig wasp and I in this fascinating symbiotic relationship are completely dependent on one another for the survival of both species, and our interdependent fruitfulness has extensive implications for others. Our figs feed humans, and animals, and over 100 bird species, butterflies, ants and bats and even fish if the figs find their way into a local stream or river.
But to be honest, fruitfulness and interdependence goes way beyond the production of figs. My large leaves provide some of the best shade available in this hot dry land, my roots protect the soil from erosion, my spent leaves and uneaten figs provide fertilizer for the soil, the sugar of my sap feeds cicadas and then of course the birds who eat the cicadas, my trunk houses other insects, holes in my trunk and the vast breadth of my branches provide nesting places for birds and last but not least I absorb carbon dioxide, a noxious gas to humans and animals, and release life-preserving oxygen.
Oh Sorry, it seems I was getting a bit full of myself there for a moment, but in all this fruitfulness and interdependence there is the deep joy of being free to be all that I was created to be – and so I guess I was also trying to tell you about joy – the joy of living out the Wisdom of the Creator’s design. I think Jesus was really on to something when he pointed to the fig tree and all the trees as ways to know and understand the signs of what is and what is to come.
I know that you also know the joy of my fruitfulness. I’ve seen your fig festivals – held in all the countries in which I grow. From Brazil to Kenya to Staten Island and California your divinely endowed creativity has produced things like
baked figs topped with honey mascarpone cheese and shaved bittersweet chocolate,
fig Shortcake with Fig-Infused Fresh-Whipped Cream,
banana fig bread,
Fig strudel and
walnut-and-orange marmalade Fig Cookies.
Don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean.
If you can be this creative with my figs, I know that you can be just as creative with the current crisis or apocalyptic moment of rising global temperatures and raging seas. As I said, the wind and the changing migratory patterns of birds have been keeping me informed of what’s unfolding and even with all of my creative adaptability to stress and my 60-80 million years of generational existence, I admit that even I’ve begun to wonder what’s going to unfold next. I need Carbon Dioxide in order to breathe back into the air the oxygen you need. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of this delicate balance between us. And I’m sure you’ve heard plenty in other places about the ways in which that balance is threatened.
But speaking of this delicate ba
lance and all the ways in which I am interconnected with other parts of creation, including you, has me thinking about Jesus again. I heard someone say that he was a human so intimately linked with the Creator that he was there with the Creator from the very beginning and is an inextricable part of where this whole creation is heading. What did he say about apocalyptic moments again? Something like, “when there are signs in the sun, moon and stars and when there is great distress among nations, and we are confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves, then we will all see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” He also says that even though we’re going to be seriously afraid when we see these things happen we’re invited to stand tall, be on guard, raise our heads and pray for the strength to escape all these things – for – and this is the important part – for redemption has drawn near. A brief word about redemption: my great, great grandmother told me that the term redemption comes from the story of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. It meant for them being freed or liberated from slavery followed by deliverance into a land flowing with milk and honey. She also told me that the honey in that Promised Land was a reference to the sweet sugars of my figs (but there I go getting full of myself again)
Anyway, getting back to what Jesus said,
“If you don’t understand the signs of the crises,” he said, “look at the fig tree” – that’ s me. “Just as you know that summer is near when the leaves of the fig tree are sprouting, so you will know that redemption/liberation and the reign of God is coming when you see these disturbing signs.” But if you think about this, I don’t put my leaves out until the time is right – and that’s not ultimately disturbing, that’s actually a powerful and hopeful reality to observe. It means that the conditions are just right for fruitfulness. And fruitfulness, as we know, eventually leads to the joy of fig festivals. Maybe all 60-80 million years of this fruitfulness is leading to the biggest fig festival of all – one in which all of creation is redeemed or liberated by the creator.
Sounds fundamentally hopeful to me.
Once again I think that Jesus was on to something. I don’t pretend to know exactly what “the Son of Man coming on a cloud with power and great glory really means – other than this human Jesus who was there at the beginning with the Creator will also be part of everything that is yet to unfold. I’m not a theologian after all. I’m just a tree. But I can tell you that if the Creator created within me and within all of you the capacity for
longevity, adaptability, and intricate interdependence,
fruitfulness, joy and hope,
then this same Creator will also have designed within us
the capacity to recognize and participate in hopeful and joyful redemption when it comes.
If you ask me, when this “Son of man comes” – bring on the Fig Festival.