“So, The Tree Will
Live?”
The Reverend Tom Steffen
7 March 2010
Luke
13:1-9
In his book Between
the Dreaming and the Coming True, Robert Benson tells of a conversation he
had with a little girl who told him that she talks to God and God talks to
her. She made this claim in such a
matter-of-fact way that he was afraid not to listen to her. You never know. Right? If the Bible, experience, and tradition are
to be believed on any sort of basis at all, God does not seem limited to routine
sorts of activities and has certainly done stranger things than talk to a
five-year-old girl. Somewhere in the
conversation, however, the little girl confessed that she and God really didn’t
talk out loud to each other any longer.
“But,” she said, “I can hear him.”
“Are you sure it is God?” Benson asked.
And the girl simply gave him one of those “are you serious” looks. “So, God likes you?” he asked. And the girl said “Yep.” “How do you know?” And the girl replied: “Because of the way he
talks to me. I just know he likes
me. I can hear it in his voice.”
Today’s Gospel reading is a “Well, you never
know” kind of episode in the life of Jesus (Luke 13:1-9). Somewhere along the line Jesus’
contemporaries, like most of us, picked up the suspicion that most people get
what they deserve. The poor have so
little, because they are so lazy. The
unsuccessful don’t try hard enough. Those
who are unlucky at love don’t take care of themselves. And the sick, well, they must have done
something. But Jesus says, “Well, you
never know.” He suggests that when we
die and how we die are not the results of our sins and failures. And then He says a surprising thing: “But,
repent, nevertheless.” Repent. The word
is metanoia, which should be
translated “turn around.”
Turn around like a caterpillar turns around just
before it spins its silken cocoon. This
is how it works: “ it’s all about conversion”, Jesus
says. Turning around initiates the
transformation for which we long. Metanoia results in metamorphosis.
The Voice that speaks to
the little girl; the Voice that spoke to that fig tree. This is the Voice that said: “Let there be
light,” the same Voice that whispered the Word, the Logos that was “in the
beginning.” It is the Voice that the
Psalmist believed whispered you and me into being and this church, whispered
this faith community some 45 years ago.
It is the Voice we are asking to speak clearly to us today as we
consider what kind of fruit we will bear the next 45.
Fritz Kreisler, the great violinist, expressed
it this way. He said: “I don’t always
know what my fingers are doing when I play, because I’m concentrating on…the
music that I hear in my head. I want to
come as near to that music as I can.”
May you, may I, may we come as near as we can to
the Voice, the music we hear. And we
will, God willing and if we are willing.
“Give it a little time,” says the gardener, “and give it a little food.” You never know.
I am grateful to Reva Allington, friend and
member of St. Peter’s UMC, who edits my sermons.