What is your favourite parable told by Jesus? When I asked a group of people this question, I was not surprised that the prodigal son, the sower and the seed, and the good Samaritan ranked high. Eugene Peterson writes that his favourite parable is what he calls the manure story. We find it in Luke 13.
Then [Jesus] told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?' 'Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’” (NIV)
I have read this parable many times, but it never really stuck with me until I read Peterson's sermon on it in As Kingfishers Catch Fire. We tend to hear more ponderings about Jesus inexplicably cursing the fig tree instead of this tale of saving a fig tree. So what does it mean? At face value, Jesus seems to be encouraging his hearers to have patience when things don't look promising. But a closer look reveals that this parable is all about the connections it invites the hearers (and us) to make. I draw your attention to three of them.
1. Fire from Heaven. Peterson notes that the manure parable recalls an incident which occurred earlier in Jesus's ministry. In Luke 9, Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem where Jesus will meet his death and the disciples will come face to face with disillusionment and disappointment. As the group passes through Samaria, they find all doors shut to them and they have no place to spend the night (unusual in a hospitality culture). James and John are angry at this harsh treatment and ask Jesus: "Lord, do You want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy these people who have rejected You?" Jesus responds by rebuking them. The Voice translation interprets it this way: "You just don't get it. [The Son of Man didn't come to ruin the lives of people, but He came to liberate them.]"
In the manure story, the owner's cry of "Cut it down!" is a contrast to the gardener's request to "Leave it alone." In Luke 9, we have the disciples' impulse to destroy a people (who, it could be said, give no evidence of good fruit) in contrast to Jesus's rebuke invoking them to leave the people alone. Peterson observes that, just like the disciples in this story, we like to "solve kingdom problems by amputation" [1]. We like to get rid of those things which are unfruitful or unhelpful or seen as obstacles. We are reluctant to think that a situation might not need our intervention, that, given time and attentive care, things might change or be resolved. We do not trust the wisdom of the gardener.
2. God as Gardener. Notice the two characters in the parable: the owner and the gardener or caretaker. The owner is clearly concerned with the bottom line; he has no time to waste on trees which are not producing, not giving him good value. The gardener, on the other hand, sees beyond a quick return on investment. He works in the garden every day, so he understands firsthand the nature of the trees, the soil, the seasons, and the cycle of life. We catch echoes of God as a gardener in numerous other places in the Scriptures. The first is in the creation account when we have God fashioning, caring for, and enjoying the primordial garden. In John 15, Jesus employs a garden metaphor to speak about unity and loving relationships: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener."
In John 20, Mary mistakes the resurrected Jesus for a gardener. The resonance with the creation story is unmistakable. G. K. Chesterton comments: “On the third day the friends of Christ coming at day-break to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of a gardener God walked again in the garden, not in the cool of the evening, but in the dawn.” [2]
3. Aphiemi. Peterson calls attention to a word Jesus uses in the manure parable: aphiemi. It means "let it alone, let it go, do not hinder." In Luke 5, it is used to describe the disciples walking away from their lives as fishermen. "So they pulled their boats up on the shore, left everything and followed him." In Luke 18, Jesus says: "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." The idea here is that one should not make it harder for people to come to Jesus. In other words, leave the children alone.
The word, aphiemi, is also found in what we refer to as the Lord's prayer: "Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us" (Luke 11:4). In this case, the word is translated "forgive," but the idea is consistent with letting something go. As he hung dying on the cross, Jesus uttered, 'Father, forgive [aphiemi] them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:24). Once again, we see the juxtaposition of "Cut it down" and "Leave it alone." Jesus was perceived to be a threat to the religious and political leaders, so he was cut down. In response, Jesus asked his Father to leave the perpetrators alone, to let them be. He trusted that the great Gardener still saw life in what appeared to be dead or hopeless.
The key subject in the parable of the unfruitful fig tree is not the tree, not even the manure, but the gardener. The story is an invitation for the hearer to trust the gardener and to adopt the same patience and restraint as the one who cares for all living things. Though there are definitely things God asks us to do (love God and neighbour), there are also things we are commanded not to do. Restraint was not a popular posture in Jesus's time and it is still counterintuitive to many of us. However, "Letting it alone" is totally natural, and we would do well to take a lesson from nature. Peterson observes:
"Manure is not a quick fix. It has no immediate result. It is going to take a long time to see if it makes any difference. If it is results we are after, chopping down a tree is just the thing: clear the ground and make it ready for a fresh start. We love beginnings: birthing a baby, christening a ship, the first day on a new job, starting a war. But spreading manure carries no such exhilaration. It is neither dramatic nor glamorous. Manure is a slow solution. When it comes to doing something about what is wrong in the world, Jesus is best known for his fondness for the tiny, the invisible, the quiet, the slow: yeast, salt, seeds. And manure.
"Manure does not rank high in the world's economies. It is refuse, garbage. We organize efficient systems to collect and haul it away, out of sight and smell. But the observant wise know that this apparently dead and despised waste is teeming with numerous microorganisms and the things needed for life: enzymes, minerals, nutrients, energy sources. It's the stuff of resurrection." [3]
I have mentioned three connections that this parable invites us to consider, but there are many more. One is the parable of the wheat and weeds found in Matthew 13. The workers want to yank out the weeds which have been sown among the wheat, but the farmer urges restraint. He knows that it is easy to mistake one for the other, so better to wait until the harvest to see which one bears a food crop and which one does not. Though it seems inefficient and unjust in some ways, Jesus very often prefers restraint (leave it alone) to a quick fix (cut it down).
May we learn to trust the wisdom of the great Gardener instead of our impulse to get rid of what we perceive is broken, languishing, or of little worth. May we never let our desire for quick results put us in opposition to the slow mercy of God. And may we ever be grateful to be the blessed recipients of God's patient restraint.
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[1] Eugene H. Peterson. As Kingfishers Catch Fire (New York: Waterbrook, 2017), 252.
[2] G. K. Chesterton. The Everlasting Man (1925), 192.
[3] Peterson, 253.
Image: Thinking he was the Gardener by Eularia Clark. Accessed at https://fr-fr.facebook.com/pg/EulariaClarke/posts/
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