Compost Your Fig Tree Series

Third Sunday in Lent

The brilliance of Jesus the preacher can be seen in today’s story, unique to St. Luke, about how He handled some local gossip. Pontius Pilate, the Roman boss of Judea, ruled as a tyrant. On this occasion, it appears he broke up a revolutionary plot right in the area of the Temple, killing the revolutionaries as they were preparing to pray and sacrifice for the success of their revolt. Jesus was asked if they had been discovered and murdered because of some sin they had committed. Jesus, as he always did, used the story as the occasion for a short sermon: No, he said, you are all sinners and without repentance and living in charity, all are destined to eternal death. The Galileans’ story was relevant for only a few days; the moral of their story has meaning for every age.

Saint Paul, too, reminds us of the reality of our condition, our moral weakness. It starts in our souls because of original sin, and if we don’t let God strengthen us, our own willed evil makes us weaker and weaker by the year. Even after great spiritual highs, like a great retreat, we are prone to fall back into vicious and self-destroying habits: gossip, alcohol, contraceptive sex, cheating. Paul told us the ancient Jews were given to us as examples: the Lord took them out of Egyptian slavery with a strong hand and outstretched arm. He worked signs and wonders no one had ever seen, the manna, the wondrous, water-giving rock. But they lusted after evil idols and foreign flesh, and grumbled even about God’s gifts. Many were destroyed. They suffered the natural result of their own folly.

This week we come down from the mount of Transfiguration and face the reality of our weakened lives. We return from the high of our Sunday Eucharist to the stubborn boss or malingering employee of the Monday workplace, to the looming tax return of the Tuesday office. And we ask God, what do You want? How can I escape from this weakness and tendency to sin? Deliver us from evil!

If our fig tree isn’t bearing fruit, it’s time to dig around it and apply some good compost. Both are important, essential actions.

Digging around a tree does a couple of things. It aerates the soil, bringing water and micro-nutrients to the root zone. It also digs out the little sprouts of oak trees that have poked up from the surface roots, the tiny trees that have no chance to survive but sap the life from the main tree. There are spiritual analogies.

The carapace of sin keeps the rain of the Holy Spirit and His gifts from our souls. We all know it’s true. When we develop a selfish habit—like ignoring the needs of the poor, or like self-abuse—we harden ourselves to God’s grace. We even harden our sensitivity to our need for repentance. The only way to break that hard shell of sin is with a heartfelt confession, spiritual counsel, restitution and acceptance of God's forgiveness. Jesus is waiting with hoe and mattocks to dig into the hardness surrounding our hearts. And when we turn to Him and acknowledge our guilt, and ask for His grace, He will literally aerate our hearts with the wind of His Holy Spirit.

As Jesus digs around our tree of life, He’ll uncover the little saplings that are sucking the life out of us—bad habits that lead us to sin, that suck the spiritual life out of us just as it is beginning to move us. First is attachment to sin. Sin is attractive, or else we wouldn’t want to sin. Jesus wants to root out that blood-sucking attraction to overeating, or miserliness, or shopping till we drop, or whatever is draining our spiritual life and moving us toward sin.

Remember what God identified as His occupation right in the first chapters of Genesis. The Word of God says He planted a garden in Eden. God is a gardener. That’s why after the resurrection Mary Magdalene thought Jesus was the gardener. He plants and weeds and prunes and even applies manure—compost—to our hearts, to our Church.

Compost enriches the soil, in which we live and grow. Spiritual compost provides the micro-nutrients we need for life in this world and in the next. What am I talking about? Word and Sacrament. The Word of God is proclaimed in every Sunday celebration, every Hour of the Divine Office. But it is also waiting for us in our Bibles, in our spiritual reading, in the books we read and the wise men and women we listen to. We need to meditate on that Word, not just its meaning for the first century Christians, but for the twenty-first century parishioners. As the heavens are high above the earth—no matter in what age—God’s steadfast love is also there for everyone to see.