03-20-2022 Bearing Fruit

Thomas J Parlette
“Bearing Fruit”
Luke 13:1-9
3/20/22

     With Mother Nature teasing us with warmer temperatures these last few days – I wonder how many of you have begun thinking about your garden this year? Probably a few of you., It’s possible you’ve already done your planning and maybe some online shopping already.
     I’m not a very good gardener myself. I would like to be. But I have a seriously black thumb when it comes to growing things. I’ve tried. A couple years ago I bought some good planting soil and some containers and I planted tomatoes, green beans, carrots and zucchini. I was very faithful in my weeding and my watering. And I did get probably one nice salad for my effort – but not that much. I can relate to something writer Richard Diran wrote about gardening. He said, “I installed a rock garden this year. Last week three of them died.” That describes my gardening skill as well.
     But I admire those who are good at it. I admire their knowledge and patience to make things grow. I wish I could do it. There is a man in India who is a good example of the passion and patience of a master gardener. His name is Kalimulah Khan. He is a professional horticulturist. Khan is 80 years old, and his family owns a mango orchard. When Khan was 17, he saw a crossbred rose bush in a friend’s garden. This was a bush that bore multiple varieties and colors of roses. Khan was so inspired by this rose bush that he began grafting different varieties of mangoes onto one tree in his orchard.
     Today, more than 60 years later, Khan has created a mango tree that bears 300 different varieties of mangoes. The tree is massive, its branches weighed down with pink and purple and orange and yellow and green mangoes. Khan has named this super tree “The Resolute.” He doesn’t say how he chose that name, but miracle tree would also work. When visitors come by his orchard, the mangoes from this miracle tree are free.(1)
     Khan names some of the varieties after distinguished people who have made a contribution to Indian society. He has named mangoes in honor of scientists, doctors police officers and politicians. Although he noted in a recent interview that in his 65 years of experience, the trees that produce mangoes named after politicians have not produced a single piece of fruit. All the others did just fine. But the tress named in honor of politicians did not bear fruit this year.(2) Interesting. I won’t jump to any conclusions – but it seems oddly appropriate, and perhaps prophetic.
     In these verses from Luke 13, Jesus tells a story about a landowner who is checking on the progress of a fig tree. He has been waiting for fruit from this tree for three years, and still, nothing. So he tells the gardener to cut it down. Why should it be wasting the soil?
     But the gardener defends the fig tree. “Let it alone for one more year. I’ll dig around it, use some manure and give it some tender loving care. If it bears fruit next year – fine. If not, then cut it down. Just a little more patience,” advises the gardener.
     This is another one of those odd stories from Jesus. Last week we heard Jesus describe himself as a mother hen. And this week we hear a story about cutting down a fig tree.
 Jesus doesn’t seem to like fig trees very much. We have another story of Jesus walking past a fig tree with no fruit, and he cursed it, and the leaves withered on the spot. We have other references in scripture to trees being cut down and thrown into the fire if they don’t produce. I guess gardeners were pretty demanding back in biblical times.
Most uncomfortable about this story is that we seem to be the fig tree in this parable. God, the master gardener, wants to see us bear fruit. And if we do not bear fruit – well we seem to be living on borrowed time. Life is short. Any good we would do in this world needs to begin now.
Sharon Carr was studying at Emory University with a double major in English and Religion when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Sharon’s attitude of faith and hope in facing her diagnosis inspired her classmates and professors. In the year after her diagnosis, she wrote poems and short meditations about her struggle to find hope in dying. One of her professors compiled her writing into a book that was published just before her death. He titled the book Yet Life Was a Triumph, after one of her poems. Part of that poem goes like this:
“I had to love today, because you couldn’t promise me tomorrow…
  I had to hold tightly to purpose, because you might not give me time
for carelessness, and lifeblood is too precious to spill on selfish whim …
I had to cherish hope, because you couldn’t guarantee light amid despair,
and I was tired of hurting…
Because I was forced to live life boldly, thankfully, lovingly and joyfully,
death is tender, and life was a triumph.”(3)
That’s what God wants for us. It’s too easy to waste our life in selfish, apathetic, unfruitful behavior because we don’t realize how short life is.
Bearing fruit is also a measure of how much our life reflects God’s character and love. How do you measure your life? By the number of years – or by the positive impact you have made? If we look at Jesus, he only lived about 33 years, and yet look at the impact his life had.
Verse 7 gives us some insight into what a life that does not bear fruit looks like. The landowner accuses the fig tree of wasting the soil, or using it up as some translations put it. In the original Greek, the word used here refers to something that is deprived of “force, influence or power.” It also refers to something that has been “severed from” or “separated from” its source of power.(4)
Back in the 12th century, Japanese gardeners created dwarf trees or “bonsai” trees, by cutting the tree’s tap root. The tap root anchors the tree deep into the ground so that it can grow taller and wider. With the tap root severed, the tree relies on smaller, surface roots for growth. The result is a tiny tree that can be grown in a pot on your kitchen counter.
Eric Ritz writes, “What our Japanese friends have learned to do intentionally with trees many of us have done by neglect of our spiritual lives. How many of us have cut the tap root of faith, and have tried to live and grow on an occasional trip to church, opening the Bible once in a awhile and only praying in moments of great distress?”(5)
A few years ago, William Safire wrote about the origins of the phrase “spitting image” in his “On Language” column for the New York Times. Have you ever said, “He’s the spitting image of his father” or something like that?
Safire explained that the phrase is actually a garbled version of the original phrase, “spirit and image.” It doesn’t just refer to a physical resemblance, either. It was originally used to mean that someone reflects both the spirit and the image of another.(6)
So what if others could say that you are the spitting image of God – that your life reflects the spirit and image of the Divine? If you are bearing fruit, such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – people could say that. You are the ‘spirit and image’ of God.
Bearing fruit will also leave a powerful, positive legacy. Few of us really think about leaving a legacy. We try to be good people. We try to do positive things in our work and our relationships, maybe volunteer at a favorite charity. And that’s great. But legacy building is a bit more intentional. It is a commitment to act in ways that will have a powerful, positive impact on the people we encounter each day. John Rohn speaks about legacy building as he says “Considering our legacy helps us to focus on the long term and it gives us values that we can judge our actions by.”(7)
Leaving a legacy by living lovingly, boldly and joyfully, reflecting God’s character and spirit – that is what it means to bear fruit.
Once there was a young man struggling with an important decision. He was interested in becoming a missionary, but he was concerned about what he might be getting himself into. What if he failed? So he asked his dad, “What if God calls me to do something I can’t do?”
Dad was quiet for a moment. Then he spotted his son’s baseball glove in the corner. Dad went over and picked up the glove and asked. “Can you tell me what this is?”
“Yea – it’s my baseball glove.”
Dad propped the glove up against the wall and tossed a baseball into it, and the ball rolled out of the glove and across the floor. Dad picked up the glove and said, “This glove is a total failure.”
“It can’t catch by itself, Dad. The glove doesn’t work too well without my hand in it.”
And Dad said, “That’s right. You’re just like this glove. God puts us on like a glove and uses us to do what God has in mind.”(8)
Bearing fruit begins when we place our lives in God’s hands. Bearing fruit is to reflect God’s character and love, to live intentionally and leave behind a powerful, positive legacy that results in others bearing fruit as well. That’s what God made us for – to bear fruit.
May God be praised. Amen.

1.  Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1, p54.
2.  Ibid… p54.
3.  Ibid… p55.
4.  Ibid… p55.
5.  Ibid… p56.
6.  Ibid… p56.
7.  Ibid… p56
8.  Ibid… p56-57.