March 24, 2022

This week I want to offer a few ways our gospel reading from last Sunday, Luke 13:1-9, particularly Jesus’ parable about the fig tree that hasn’t produced fruit in three years and the gardener’s intercession to tend to it and cultivate it for another year before it is chopped down, speaks to this moment in which we find ourselves.

As a congregation, Spirit in the Hills is engaged in  a visioning and strategic planning process right now. We know that the world has shifted, and that there’s no going back to what was, but only moving ahead faithfully toward what will be. In this Lenten season, we’re asking you to speak not only about the things each of us personally hopes to let go of and to cultivate, but what we as the church at Spirit in the Hills are being called to cultivate and to let go. In essence, what are the trees that are taking up space in the soil even though they don’t produce fruit, which ones should we tend to and care for to see if they grow and which ones need to be uprooted so that we have space for new things to take root? 
**By the way, the next time you’re at the church, stop in the narthex and fill out a fall-colored card with something the church needs to let go of, and a spring-colored card with something the church needs to cultivate.

A second way this text speaks to this moment grows from the first. As we think about what we’d like to cultivate right now, I think about the parable and the tree being a representation of the community, and Jesus the gardener, and it begs the question, are we called to be the manure? Are we called to stink things up with change and the nutrients that the community needs? And no, this isn’t just about changing personal hygeine habits in a work from home world. Truly, are we being called to be salt and light and manure that bring to our community the things it needs to thrive and to grow the fruit of the spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-control. 

Continuing from there is the realization that sometimes the exact things we need, the change we are called to be and to make, stinks. Manure at first sight and smell seems like the last thing you’d want to have around to encourage growth and the production of fruit – but it is the exact thing needed. What has come our way that we have judged wrongly because its first impression stunk, when it’s really the stuff we need most in order to grow?

Finally, I want to acknowledge that it’s scary to think about cutting down and uprooting things that once bore fruit. It is hard to let go of things that have served us well, of trees that we have seen year after year, of programs that were once the best way to meet a need, of ways of gathering that were at one point the best way to turn us toward God and grow our love for neighbor. And if we let go of that, what else might we have to let go of? In a season of letting go, is there anything that isn’t on the chopping block?
I want to make the case that there is one thing to which we might cling, and it very likely will take both hands and maybe even our whole bodies to hold onto.

Let us cling to Jesus. Only Jesus. All of Jesus. 
We’ll refuse to let go of the one who refuses to let us go and constantly holds us in his love. 
If it doesn’t show forth Christ, if it isn’t helping us look and sound and act like Jesus, we might need to think about letting it go, but the grace of God in Christ, the incarnate Word of God, Emannuel God-with-us, is the one to whome we cling, the foundation on which we build, the thing that’s left even when the floor falls out beneath us.

We need to let go in order to grow. 
We need to be ready to cling to Christ with all we have and all that we are.
Sometimes change stinks.
But the grace and love of God that transforms us is exactly what we need – yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Blessings,
Pastor Drew