1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly
Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen. The message from God’s Word
on this Maundy Thursday is taken from Psalm 105:23-45, Luke 13:1-9, and Mark
11:12-25. It’s entitled, “Fig Trees,”
dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
In our part of
the world today, figs are well down the list of popular fruits. In fact, if it
weren’t for Fig Newtons, many of us would probably never have thought of
them at all. But in Bible times, in Palestine and the Near East, figs were no
novelty for an occasional cookie or jam; they were food on the table the way
apples or oranges are for us today. Fig trees are among the first plants ever
cultivated by humans, long before wheat, barley, or beans. In fact, evidence of
their use in the Jordan River Valley may be the first discovered example of
agriculture. Fig trees grow well in poor soil. They can withstand drought. And
they’re large; they can grow to a height of more than thirty feet and provide
welcome shade in hot climates.
3.
It was fig trees and their fruit, or lack of them, that
we heard about in today’s readings. On this Maundy Thursday, as we think especially
of the fruit of the grape vine, we prepare to receive that blessed gift by
continuing our special Lenten sermon series, “Living among the Bible’s Trees.”
Today we consider fig trees. Considering
fig trees, we realize that, although we don’t always bear the fruits of faith
as we should, God brings forth from us fruits in keeping with repentance.
4.
In the readings, we heard both St. Luke’s inspired
report of Jesus’ parable that used a fig tree and also St. Mark’s report of
Jesus’ later experience with a fig tree (cf Mt 21:12–13, 18–22). In the First
Reading, the parable using the fig tree illustrates the time for repentance
that tragedies should bring about. In the Second Reading, Jesus enacts a
living parable or takes prophetic action related to the judgment that comes
when the time for repentance is over. In that case, the repentance and judgment
seem to relate to God’s people being full of activity but unfruitful.
5.
People sometimes have a hard time with Jesus’ experience
with the fig tree on the road from Bethany to Jerusalem. Some say the miracle
is unworthy of the Lord, or that an innocent tree was unjustly the target of
his anger. But, Jesus is the Creator in human flesh, with the right to do with
his creation as he knows best, and that fig tree, as it was by the road, may
not have been anyone in particular’s tree. What’s more, with the leaves, there
should’ve been early figs, indicators of the later figs to come; apparently, a
tree without figs early on also won’t have figs later. The Old Testament is
also full of references to figs in related figures of speech. For example,
through Hosea, the Lord says that he saw the people’s forefathers “like the
first fruit on the fig tree in its first season” (Hos 9:10). And yet, as he
says through Jeremiah, when the Lord would gather the people, there were no
figs on the fig tree, even its leaves were withered, and what he had given them
had passed away from them (Jer 8:13), as the figs and other fruit were taken
away from the Egyptians and Canaanites in our Psalm.
6.
Are we like the unfruitful people God addressed through
Hosea and Jeremiah and like the Jews of Jesus’ day, claiming to be religious
but without any fruits of faith? Certainly, we’re like them according to our
sinful nature, but God calls and enables us to bear fruit. Do we bear fruit as
we should? If not, apart from repentance, we deserve the same kind of judgment
they deserved. Like the fig tree on the road looked the next time the disciples
saw it, God’s righteous anger could dry us up to our roots because we don’t
listen to him as we should (Hos 9:16–17). We face consequences, including
death, and eternal torment in hell if we don’t first turn away from our sin,
trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better. Although our time for our
self-examination and repentance will come to an end one way or another, yet in
this Lenten season—today, right now—God is enabling and giving us every
opportunity to produce fruits in keeping with repentance (e.g., Mt 3:10). And
so, we each must ask ourselves this question as we prepare to come to the
Lord’s Table: Do I repent of my sins, truly intend to amend my sinful ways,
and desire to receive Christ’s forgiveness?
7.
Today’s Psalm celebrated God delivering his people from
slavery in Egypt, which pointed forward to his delivering his people both from
exile in Babylon and, most important for us, from our slavery to sin and its
eternal punishment. After his three-year ministry, Jesus took upon himself the
punishment that we deserve and experienced that punishment on the cross for us,
in our place. Out of his great love for us, Jesus lived the perfect life we
fail to live and paid the penalty for our failure to live it. When we repent,
God forgives our sin—our sinful nature, our failures to bear fruit as we
should, and all our other sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives it all
by grace through faith for the sake of Jesus’ death on the cross. As we know
from today’s Second Reading and related passages, “the largest promise
applies even to the smallest faith.”21 By faith in Jesus, we
have the forgiveness of sins, what might otherwise seem absurd or impossible,22
and we have that free forgiveness in what some might regard as absurd or
impossible ways.
8.
Through the means of grace today, God calls pastors to
serve him by serving his people, as God once directly called the prophet Amos,
who had been a dresser of sycamore fig trees (Amos 7:14). Such workers in the
vineyard dig around the trees and put on manure, as it were, and wait another
year before cutting down any unfruitful trees.
9.
That is to say, such workers in the vineyard read and
proclaim God’s Word to all those gathered in his house of prayer. And, as
appropriate, such workers in the vineyard apply that Word to individuals in
Holy Baptism, in Holy Absolution, and in the Lord’s Supper we celebrate tonight.
For on the night when when he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread
and wine, and when he had given thanks he broke the bread, he passed the cup,
and gave to them, gave to us, his very body and blood for the forgiveness of
sins, life, and salvation. In each of these means, God brings forth from us
fruit in keeping with repentance according to our various callings in life. As such
“good figs,” the Lord plants us by giving us a heart to know that he is
the Lord, and so we are his people and he is our God, as we return to him with
our whole hearts (Jer 24:6–7).
10.
God’s people are often blessed with literal good figs
from literal trees by those who grow them to eat and enjoy. But figurative good
figs, if you’ll pardon the play on words—figurative good figs produced by
repentance—are more wide ranging. The Second Reading might have us think of the
figurative figs of forgiving our brothers and sisters in Christ, even as our
Father in heaven forgives our sins: “And whenever you stand praying,
forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is
in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mk 11:25; cf also Col 3:13). All
such prayer in keeping with God’s will and nature is answered.
11.
Figurative figs are also service to God and one another
through our volunteering in our congregation. A hymn by Martin Luther entitled,
“May God Bestow on Us His Grace,” refers to praising God’s worth “in
all good works increasing.” Those are good figs, too, and the hymn connects
our good works with the land itself bringing forth abundant literal fruit (LSB
823:3). Whether or not the literal fig trees should blossom, however else we
might be afflicted, but we rejoice in the Lord and take joy in the God of our
salvation (Hab 3:17–18).
12.
As we are “Living among the Bible’s Trees,”
God calls and enables us to repent of our sin and freely forgives us of our sin
for the sake of his Son, Jesus Christ. Considering the fig trees, we realize
that, although we don’t always bear the fruits of faith as we should, God
brings forth from us fruits in keeping with repentance.
13.
With such repentance, we live each day in God’s
forgiveness of sins, forgiving one another, for we have learned another lesson
from the fig trees: to see the signs and know that our Lord’s final coming
is very near (Mt 24:32–35; Mk 13:28–31; Lk 21:29–33). By God’s grace, we are
prepared and watching for it! Amen. Now
the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus until life everlasting.
Amen.
Notes
21.
Claus-Hunno Hunzinger, “sinapi,” Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 7
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1971), 290. Used by permission. See also Mt 17:20.
22. Vincent
Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark, 2nd ed. (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1966), 467.
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