Lent
1 corinthians 10:17 and Luke 13:6-9

Rev. Ron Robinson

Scriptures:

1 Corinthian 10:17

"Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."

Luke 13:6-9
"Then 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. So 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?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’"

Read the scripture again and again; focus on a phrase or a word that comes to you, dwell on it. Link it to your life. Continue to read the scripture, the passage, perhaps this time from end to beginning sentence by sentence. Sit with one word. Pray that word. Pray from that word. Come back to it throughout the day every three hours.

Reflection:

We are in the time of Lent, the 40 days of reflections, self-examination, repentence leading up to the Holy Week of 2010. This week's selection from the Revised Common Lectionary (see www.textweek.com) holds two scriptural passages that help us deepen our Lenten experience.

First the parable of Jesus from Luke about the man, the gardener, a fig tree without figs, and God.

Here, as in the Lenten season, a man comes seeking. He is seeking to see if his investment has paid off in ways he expected it too, to see if this extension of himself is bearing fruit. So in Lent we seek to see if what we have been giving our life to is bearing fruit in our lives, for the world. He has been coming seeking and not finding what he wanted to find for three straight years, and yet he still comes and seeks. So Lent rolls around once again and once again we come to it, seeking new ways to deepen our life and refresh our connection with God, making our Lenten resolutions of what to give up, what to take on, setting ourselves a little more in right relationship.

But he finds the fig tree barren. Brandon Scott, the parables scholar and the UUCF's upcoming keynote speaker at our Revival this year, remarks that the fig tree is after three years considered to be hopelessly barren. And yet the man comes again hoping to find something different, and in reaction to the barrenness, orders that the tree be cut down. So we may come to a new Lent season and still be wrestling and struggling with the same personal issues and questions and again are coming up day by day barren, hopeless, perhaps made all the worse because it is the season of Lent with its spiritual expectations. Maybe like us at time, the man in previous years had the same experience and also ordered the tree cut down before; we don't know much of what has happened in the past, and we don't know in this parable the outcome, what the man decided to do with the fig tree.

Brandon Scott says this not knowing the past or the future---whether or not even the fig tree will be spared, if the man will take the gardener's advice--all this points us to how the realm or spirit or kingdom or kindom of God is most alive in the moment and in the "manuring." Like the parable of the sower, God is in the act of sowing, and here God is in the saving of one moment to the next, of the tending of that moment or that fig tree. God is about defying what we and the world finds barren; God is about hope despite not knowing the outcome. We are called to see with God's eyes, the way the gardener sees, as opposed to the way of the world's bottom line on whether fruit is bearing visibly or not.

So with Lent and our spirits. Let us focus on each day in Lent, on how we tend to ourselves as the fig trees, how we see our communities as fig trees, in need of attention in the moment, in fullness of life even through times of barrenness. Let this Lent be a time when we contemplate the seemingly barren parts of our lives and our communities; let this Lent help us to see all with the eyes that find fruit in the manuring and tending of the tree itself.

Finally, from Paul, this week's lectionary selection offers the great words of liturgy that all people are part of the body of Christ, the bread of life. All are in the salvation. So don't waste time worrying about who is in and who is out; Christ has taken care of that; so, in place of that worry and anxiety, we are called to focus on the abundance of our lives, to eat of the bread, be a part of community of God, that is always before us. In Lent we need to turn our attentions toward what is all around us, without having to journey far to find it, toward the simple enoughness that feeds us because not only we but all are in this together. So this Lent let us turn also towards others, and the healing they bring by being part of the body, the bread, as well.

In barrenness of fig, or in the fullness of bread, God can be present, transforming despair into hope.

Prayer: O God, these are days when the world seems much about us, and much within us, seeking to divert us from your calling. We have seen the pain most visibly from Haiti, from Chile, and we know we are called to respond to suffering far or near. May our reflections and centering during these days of Lent re-orient us to how all are part with us in the one bread of the life of God, and may we find ways to help all in need who are struggling with the basics of life hour by hour. May we know Your healing presence in our own times of not finding what we seek, in our times of not living up to the expectations of others, in the daily work of tending to the life given to us, in small saving gestures, in standing up to the power of others. And may this Lent remind us that life is made up of moments, and to live fully in them, and find You there.

In Christ, Amen

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