The Manure of Life

By

Reverend Litton Logan

March 11, 2007

Scriptures:

Luke 13:1--9 (NRSV)

¹At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. ²He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? ³No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. ⁴Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

⁶Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. ⁷So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ ⁸He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Sermon:

          Among many people today, there exists the idea that calamity, diseases, accidents, and tragedies are the direct results of supernatural forces.  I have frequently heard people say that God had a plan in such-in-such tragedy or God is punishing people for sin, teaching them a lesson, or building character through tragedy or mishap. Others may say that the devil is afflicting people and causing tragedies.  Such understandings are a part of the age, old human effort to give explanation for moral evil in relationship to human freedom and responsibility as well as to explain what has been referred to as natural evils—tornados, hurricanes, tsunami, earthquakes, etc.

Yet, people who believe that human suffering is somehow a part of some divine or demonic scheme of things seem equally comfortable believing that God has given us freewill or the power of self-determination.  People don’t seem to grasp the logic that if God had created us as creatures that could only choose the good then we would not be truly, free self-determining, moral agents.  Many people do not think through the implications of their notions of divine-determinism and human self-determinism.  It seems for many that God controls everything in general and at best, we have only the illusion of self-determination.  Like the example one of my professors used to give:  We are on a train going from point A to point B.  Because we can get up and move around the train, seemingly exercising our free will, we think we are totally self-determining creatures.  Fact is we can’t control the train and we are going to point B regardless of what we think about it.

Many explanations for the causes of sickness, disease, tragedy, and sin are as kindly as I can put it, religious schizophrenia.  Let me push some of these understandings to their extremes.

          I guess some mornings God just gets up on the wrong side of the bed, goes into work in a bad humor, and decides to be really hard nosed about sinning and repenting.  I can just hear God yelling at the angels in the divine accounting department to get on the stick and bring their accounts up to date by punishing some people.  Punishments are down this month, God’s sense of justice is suffering.  The angels understand that every now and again God gets out of sorts when God’s sense of justice becomes offended or God doesn’t feel needed or taken seriously.  We can’t have God roaming around offended because in such cases things can go really bad in the universe. 

          All the angels in the moral accounting department get busy and hurriedly leaf through their ledgers looking for outstanding sins without confessions, and acts of contrition. (Heaven isn’t computerized yet.  Wait until Bill Gates get there) Yeah, here’s one:  Mabel Do-gooder, widow, 82 years old.  Mabel was a little risqué in her younger days and didn’t ask forgiveness for that episode up at the lake.  The accountant angel kicks a demon in the rump that just happens to be lounging around under his desk and tells it to go zap Mabel.  Mabel is on her way to church.  It is a bright, sunny Sunday morning, when out of nowhere, this eighteen-wheeler loaded down with 10 tons of steel comes barreling down the road; the driver of the big rig doesn’t see Mabel in her PC, Toyota Prius until it is too late. The driver hits his breaks, the breaks fail because the demon caused the break-line to burst and “splat’ Mabel and her PC Prius are history.  So much for that little episode up at the lake, Mabel.

          Bill and Mary where child hood sweethearts, they married after college and now have good jobs, a wonderful house, and two beautiful and intelligent kids, little Billy and little Sarah.  Bill and Mary are good people; however, both of them have open sins on the books. Also, Bill was once headed for the ministry but changed his mind and became an accountant instead.  Therefore, another accounting angel calls up Satan and tells him to release some harpies from hell to afflict little Sarah with a rare blood disease to get back at Bill and Mary for their un-confessed sins as well as to put Bill back on the road to ministry.

Bill and Mary are searching their souls trying to understand why this is happening to their baby.  Not only that, as Bill and Mary attend their weekly bible study group one lady relates some air-head story about how she had this very important appointment this last week to get her hair done and was running late.  She couldn’t find a parking place so she prayed that God would give her a parking place and viola, she found one right in front of the hair salon.  Praise the Lord!  Bill and Mary look at one another with a pained expression because they’ve been praying for the life of their daughter and their prayers seem to have gone unanswered.  Seems God is a little out of sync in the caring department for sick kids but doesn’t want to see a woman with a bad hair do.

          I mean if God had wanted to get Bill’s attention about the ministry Bill and Mary have a beautiful bedroom wall God could have written a message on instead of all this en-cryptic stuff with his baby girl.  Both Bill and Mary have Blackberries, God could have sent them an email or snail mail.

          A passenger train full of people is going through a mountain pass when an avalanche sweeps it off the tracks and down into a canyon.  Hundreds of people are killed.  The majority of the adults on the train had outstanding and unrepentant sins on the books and since the angels didn’t have time for the demons to sort out the innocent from the guilty they took some innocent children along with the guilty.  O, well, they eventually would have sinned anyway. I mean the supernatural forces, not the laws of physics, made the vibrations and noise of the train in the confines of a canyon loosen the snow and start the avalanche.

          Stupid illustrations aren’t they.  Yet, this is in essence how many people think.  Many people would rather have a God in charge of everything—good and bad--than to live in a world where human freedom and human ignorance are the sources of the moral evil in this world.  Moreover, if some of our environmentalists are to be believed we are now the sources of much of the evils of nature.

Let us look at the disciples’ thinking on moral evil and natural evil in Luke’s scriptures we read today. Their thinking is not to far off from my stupid examples.

          Some of those accompanying Jesus tell him about a group of Galileans whom the Romans killed as they offered sacrifices to God.  Most likely, this was a group of insurrectionist or terrorist, who had been killed by Roman troops as they offered sacrifices to God while asking God’s blessings for their rebellious enterprises.  So, Jesus’ followers asked him if these folks were killed because they were really bad or wrong in their actions.  Jesus says, “No, but unless you repent you will also perish.”

          Jesus next recalls a story about eighteen people working on the walled fortifications of Jerusalem in the employ of the Romans when they were killed by a falling structure. What we might term a natural evil. Jesus asks if they think these folks were killed because they were helping the Romans.  Jesus answers his question, “No,” but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

          Talk about double talk—No, these people didn’t get killed  because they were doing something wrong, but if you don’t repent—turn around and be good—you’re going to get something far worst than physical death whose source you will understand. 

Then Jesus interprets his rather cryptic answers by telling a parable about a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit. The owner tells the hired hand or sharecropper to cut down the fig tree. The man begs the owner to give him a little more time to save the fig tree.   This near disaster and destruction of a very valuable source of food and revenue for the sharecropper and the owner provides us with a moment of insight into God’s grace and God’s patience. 

In addition, this near disaster may have made the servant conscious of his earlier failures and neglect of the tree.  What might have been a tragedy for the tree and the sharecropper becomes the occasion for the sharecropper doing what he should have been doing all along.

          The man tells the owner to let him work the ground, put some manure around the tree, and try to save it.

          Now everyone knows that manure is a rich source of nitrogen, which is vital for healthy plants.  In fact, many horticulturists say that high-grade horse manure grows some of the best roses. (Please don’t ask me the difference between high-grade and low-grade manure.  I haven’t a clue.) Some of the best vegetables, grains, and fruits are gown by mixing and working manure into impoverished soils.  I think it is interesting to note that this word manure comes from an ancient Anglo-French word that means cultivate with one’s hands, the same root word from which we get the word maneuver.

          This good and repentant servant says let me take some manure—some of the waste, some of the bad stuff in my life, which is a rich source of education and valued experiences and apply it liberally to the current moral and spiritual situations of my life.  God, give me one more chance to make my life bear fruit for you by becoming a faithful, responsible steward of my life and your resources. If you will allow this God, not only will my life be more blessed but also my life will bear fruit that will feed and bless the lives of others. 

          The manure of our lives—those wastes, sins, tragic consequences of our choices, the adverse impacts of others on our lives, disasters of nature—can all become rich sources of grace, personal resilience, patience, and moral and spiritual growth.  If someone had told me that some of my weakness, mistakes, and sins would become some of my most valuable assets in ministry, I would have laughed them out of the house.  Yet, because of who I have been I can speak authoritatively of God’s patience, grace, and second, third, and even fourth chances. I am also a little more hesitant to condemn or throw stones.

          In these scriptures, I think Jesus is telling us that those tragedies, disappointments, failures, sins, and the consequences of our choices that don’t kill us serve as education, warnings and proofs of God’s patience.  As one theologian expressed it, the business of each human being is soul-making.  Each of us is given the power of reason and faith as self-determining creatures that allows us to participate in the processes of soul making and becoming children of God in this life and the one to come.  I would encourage people to learn from the lessons of their lower selves, their misjudgments, and mistakes. Be repentant, be ashamed, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.  Let us not condemn our selves and allow sin, shame, and guilt to destroy our potential for spiritual and moral growth.  Let us not loose our potential to become a blessing to ourselves and to others because of who we have been or what we have done.  We must seek to become our best selves from the experiences of our lower selves.  Let us trust God during times when we are down because of sickness, distress, or sin. In such times, let us not be like Job and blame God and demand explanations, causes, or reasons. Rather let us hold on to God’s promises to be with us in the best of times and the worst of times and use those times for soul making and spiritual development regardless of their causes or sources. 

          These followers of Jesus in our scriptures today came to him and wanted to know if violence and suffering are truly random or all in accord with providential will.  Jesus rejects such thinking and the attempts at calculating chance and cause and effect.  Jesus does this not only because such attempts are futile but also because such thinking is counter productive to our living in a faithful and open relationship to God and others.  We must understand that our trust in God is linked to life’s sorrows and life’s joys.  Life in God’s kingdom is not some elevated game of gaining favors and avoiding losses, but giving thanks and praise in all things.  Being a Christians does not mean we are exempt from the laws of cause and effect, nor are we entitled to a risk-less life.

          I want to point out that frequently we do experience tragedy, illness, and painful consequences because of our choices or the choices of others.  However, such things occur as natural and explainable outcomes of violating physical laws, good health practices, and the principles of good human relationships not as the direct agency of God or some demon.  In such times, if we are truly people of faith, we gain the experiences of life, some manure if you will, that will help us to grow in joy, grace, and hope as we are given chance after chance to develop the best of souls and to do life right.  If we learn from our failures, sins, and mistakes, we can become the best of God’s children through God’s patient grace.

          Remember, folks, manure happens.  That’s a fact.  It is not important to ask why it happens but rather how we can use it to grow in to our best self.

          Therefore, the truth is, we can take like’s manure, let it pile up and stink up our lives—impede our soul making process--or with God’s help we can work it, maneuver it, into our life and relationships and grow beautiful roses--Christ-like lives.