Some years ago, over dinner with several musician acquaintances, talk turned to music studies. I happened to mention the name of my first organ teacher in college, and this prompted one of the other musicians to make a derogatory remark about my teacher.
I found myself somewhat defensive in that moment. Although I wasn’t personally being attacked, I was defensive for the sake of my teacher. Indeed, I was actually offended. One’s identity as a musician is often bound up closely with one’s genealogy of teachers. Musical pedigree and style are quite personal.
It was true that my first teacher was eccentric, quirky even, but who ever said that was rare among musicians? It was indeed some of this eccentricity that made my first teacher such a good one. So, when I found myself confronted with a snide remark about him, my hackles were raised. And what I kept repeating internally was that the person who criticized my teacher didn’t even really know him.
But I did. I knew that my teacher, an esteemed if colorful organist, had sensed the potential in an eighteen-year-old college freshman who had never studied organ before. He had seen that I could be a professional organist based merely on a piano background and musical ability. This teacher had the patience to sit with me and other students as we labored through boring technical exercises. And contrary to some people’s views, none of us played in the same way because our teacher taught us how to bring out our own inner musicality and to make real music, not as dry technicians but as artists.
I had spent three years studying with my teacher, and the person who made a negative comment about him didn’t really know him. The best quality of my former teacher was that he offered me the gift of time, to work with me and to cultivate my inner gifts. He didn’t accept me into his studio because I was already blazing through major repertoire; he accepted me because he recognized potential. This teacher was a great one because he appreciated that often strong musical talent lies dormant, waiting to be realized.
The gift of time is vastly under-appreciated in our society. We are trained from an early age to follow a path headed towards making the most amount of money in the least amount of time. Long gone are the days when faced with an unfamiliar word in a book, we would retrieve a dictionary from across the room and hunt for a word’s meaning. Now, we have all the information we need right at our fingertips.
We are an impatient people. We have been impatient for two years to take masks off. We are impatient with the volatility of the stock market. If our internet connection is sluggish, we become angry. We demand answers and solutions, and we demand them now.
Frequently, we press forward with changes, even when quite drastic, in the name of justice or whatever cause will justify our whims. But less frequently are we willing to take the time we need to listen to God’s direction, to test the spirits, to discern what is true.
God’s time, of course, is an eternity, and it seems like such. To us, three years seems like a long time. So, a fig tree planted for three years should certainly be bearing fruit. In today’s Gospel passage, we might not be inclined to fault the owner of the vineyard for being impatient with the tree. The tree, he says, is a waste of space. It’s using up perfectly valuable earth. So, get rid of it!
Thank God for the gardener, though. The gardener reminds me of my first organ teacher. Just give the tree another year, the gardener says, and then make a judgment. Don’t be so hasty. Remember that bearing fruit takes time. This little parable ends mysteriously. We don’t know what really happened to that fig tree. It seems that we’re not meant to know.
What we also don’t know is whether the vineyard owner planted the fig tree himself. Based on the Scriptural text, I’m suspecting he didn’t. He had the tree planted. Someone else did the work for him. What we do know, though, is this: he seems to have checked in only occasionally to see how the tree was doing. He was clearly not the regular tender of this plant. That was the gardener’s job.
The owner treats the fig tree in a utilitarian way. The tree is planted, and it needs to bear fruit. The owner remains at a distance, with hands clean, infrequently checking in to find the desired-for progress. But the gardener tends the soil, watches the tree every day, and buries hands in the manure to fertilize the tree. The gardener does the dirty work and journeys patiently with the tree that requires time to bear its fruit.
And it’s the gardener, the one with dirty hands that have labored in love, who sees the potential in this tree. The gardener knows the cycles of warmth and cool, the periods of sunlight and cloudy skies, the days of rain and the days of drought. The gardener has a horticultural relationship with this tree. The gardener is invested in the tree. The gardener is the only one in this parable who understands the gift of time.
In parables, we are so often tempted to allegorize. Which character is God? Which is Jesus? Which is us? There’s no easy way to do so, and I’m not convinced that’s the most helpful way to read parables. And with this particular parable, who’s who is not clear. But if I had to guess, I’d say God is much more like the gardener than the vineyard owner. And I’d also guess that many people see God the other way around.
In their eyes, God is the impatient ruler of our lives. God sits afar off, having set creation into motion, and then God drops in from time to time to check in on how we’re doing. And when there’s no visible fruit or when the fruit is spoiled, it’s time to be cut off from the vine and thrown out. Is this possibly the root of so much spiritual fear? Are we afraid that when God spies in on us, we will be found lacking and then cast off?
And if we can’t imagine that God gives us the gift of time, are we then impatient with God? When our prayers are not immediately answered or answered in the way we expect, do we assume that God is not invested in us? Do we stop investing ourselves in God?
The parable of the fig tree is intentionally juxtaposed with Jesus’s call to repentance. If we wait too long, we might miss the boat. If we constantly delay our own self-examination and grappling with our own sin, there will come a time when we will be faced with the consequences of our stubborn and foolish choices.
But this parable adds some nuance to the anxious urgency associated with calls to repentance. This parable teaches us that God is not, in fact, like the vineyard owner but more like the gardener because God gives us the gift of time.
God is invested in us because God created us. This is the same God who created our inmost parts and knit us together in our mother’s wombs. This is the same God from whom no secrets are hid. This is the same God who called the wayward human race back time and again when they just couldn’t get it right. God does not give up on us precisely because God knows us intimately. God is invested in us in a way we can’t even begin to see. It turns out that the gift of time is not an excuse for inaction. It’s permission to understand the investment that God has in us and that he calls us to have in him.
God doesn’t behave as we so often do, with our hasty judgments of others, especially those with whom we have no relationship. God doesn’t operate according to the rash moral reasoning we employ that often contains very little nuance and understanding of the complexities of life. God doesn’t have a rule of three-strikes-and-you’re-out.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Christianity today is that we profess to understand the gift of time. We claim that one bad choice doesn’t mark us forever. Because we are claimed as Christ’s own forever in baptism, we are marked towards a life full of plenteous chances to repent and turn to God. But we must first understand God’s investment in us and God’s willingness to forgive us so many times. Sadly, we usually don’t live up to what we profess, even in the Church.
God gives us the gift of time because God knows that repentance needs to be cultivated, not summoned with the snap of a finger. God gives us the gift of time so that we can be more patient with him, more understanding of his role as the gardener of our souls, and ultimately more patient and forgiving of others and ourselves.
This is the message of Jesus in today’s Gospel: none of us is wasting the soil. None of us is indispensable. God gives us the gift of time to help us learn and understand this. It will take a long, long time to realize this. It won’t happen in this life, for sure. But if we’re patient, it’s well worth the wait.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday in Lent
March 20, 2022