Sermon at The Cathedral of St. Philip

Homily from the Rev. Bill Harkins
8:45 a.m., The Cathedral of St. Philip
Lent 3—2007—Year C

In the name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to the Cathedral of St. Philip on this Third Sunday of Lent. Today’s Gospel reading includes the parable of the barren fig tree, an evocative illustration of being stuck in a pattern of unfruitfulness—or in what Henry David Thoreau called a state of “quiet desperation.” I imagine that for each of us the conditions that might lead to depleted and unproductive soil are uniquely ours, yet with common features to our stories. Perhaps it is one or more of the seven deadly sins with which we struggle, a topic courageously taken on during this Lenten season by the Old Fashioned Sunday School Class. Perhaps it is the soil of unhealthy family dynamics, or unresolved grief or anger which leads at times to bitterness. Perhaps we are angry with God, or with ourselves. Perhaps we have deep questions about why God allows bad things to happen, questions easily understood in light of events such as the bus accident just down the road last week, or the recent deadly tornadoes in Enterprise Alabama and elsewhere, or like those in Jesus’ time, the fall of the tower of Siloam. It is quite human to ask, as did those in our Gospel reading for today, if these events are somehow punishment for something we have done, or left undone.

Jesus responds to their question with a parable, and the metaphor from today’s Gospel, with its evocative image of a withering and unproductive fig tree, suggests a person disconnected from his or her own soul and from the wholeness that only the Light of Christ can give. Moreover, it is not until the vineyard owner expresses his discontent with the situation that the gardener is motivated to change. The owner desired that the tree flourish and grow, but the gardener seemed content to let this state of horticultural lassitude go on for another three years. Understood theologically, there are times when God’s judgment can be the occasion for grace, reminding us that we are to care for and nurture the soil of our souls, and that our lives are to be lived as fully as possible, rather than allowed to remain unproductive and unfruitful.

The season of Lent calls us to self-examination and repentance. Indeed, the word “Lent” comes from the Anglo Saxon word meaning “to lengthen,” or, put differently, to “spring forth” as in that season when the light of day grows longer.

Today’s Gospel brings this home to us in an urgent way. I wonder if you have a memory of a time or event in your life that demonstrates this parable for you…a time perhaps when you were rooted in unyielding soil, cut off from the rich ground of your own soul and from the light of Christ… a memory perhaps of a lost and squandered opportunity, or a season of misguided living in darkness.

One example that comes to mind in my own life takes me back all the way to high school, a time of life when for most if not all of us life is marked by intensity of every kind of emotion and experience. In the mid-summer before my senior year in high school a new student arrived in our neighborhood. He was from Southern California, and he fit the stereotype perfectly. With blond surfer good looks and an easy manner, he quickly stole the hearts of the girls at school and was the envy of all the guys—though we would not admit it. In the Sandy Springs community of the early 70s, a small town really, he was rather exotic and immediately stood out. Along with my football teammates, I simply chose to ignore him. Until, that is, he decided to go out for football. When the coach, in a moment of grace, granted him permission to join the team, we were filled with righteous indignation. After all, he had not suffered through years of two-a-day practices in the August Georgia heat, or cut his teeth on gray-y football in Chastain Park as had most of us. He was a stranger among us, in this our senior year, and my little band of brothers relegated him to the status of the “other,” and would not let him in. We considered it unfair for the coach to let this latecomer to our little kingdom onto the team; not this team, and not this year. This was our year. And so the cadre closed its ranks, and tried to ignore his presence among us. He seemed to take this with the same good natured equanimity with which, outwardly, he took everything else. He quickly made friends with others at school who, according to the proscribed rules of our football fiefdom were also social outcasts. Truth told, however, I was jealous of him, and when the coach let him join the team my envy only increased, because we happened to play the same position. And, he was very good; lightening fast with very good hands, he was ideal for the position of slot-back and receiver in our power-I offensive scheme. Thankfully, this offense also called for multiple substitutions and combinations, so we both got a lot of playing time over a very good season, and I secretly admired him, and learned from him. But I would not let him in, simply out of my envy of him.

When track season began he replaced a dear friend on the sprint medley relay team, of which I was also a member, and largely due to his speed we finished third in the state, setting a new school record in the process. One afternoon that spring, just a couple of months before graduation, I found him sitting alone in the locker room off to one side of the gym. He was crying. Letting the blinders of my own jealousy momentarily fall away, I sat down on the bench across from him and asked him what was wrong. He was quiet for what seemed a long time, and then, slowly, his story unfolded. His father was a prominent physician in southern California who left his family after several affairs. My teammate moved with his mother and younger sister into a religious commune—what now we might refer to as a cult. His mother’s mental health deteriorated after his parents divorced, and he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Atlanta. With his mother now in a state hospital in California, and his father involved in yet another relationship, life seemed in chaos. He worried about his younger sister, who was becoming involved with drugs and alcohol, and he felt he needed to stay close to her rather than go to college back in California. He wanted desperately to go home. He told me all this as we sat in the late afternoon sunlight of the gym, with motes of dust glinting in vertical shafts in the still sunlit air, and only the distant sounds of bouncing basketballs breaking the silence. I sat there and stewed in the juices of my own blinding self-righteous envy, and I realized that his good looks and easy going manner had masked his pain, and that we—all of us who might have been his friends—had been instead the gatekeepers to his emotional prison and loneliness. I felt deeply ashamed. I tried over the last weeks of school to befriend, him, but really, it was too late. Soon the forces of time and destiny swept us up in a river of change, and after graduation I never saw or heard from him again.

I often wonder what became of him, but I do not know. I did know that I needed to repent, and that summer I made my way to Holy Innocents’ church and began a series of conversations with the Rector, leading me eventually to the Episcopal Church, and ultimately, to be standing here with all of you. I needed to acknowledge my envy, a form of idolatry that had kept me from the life-giving possibilities of relationship. Yes, I had been guilty of wastefulness in relationship, of envy, of detachment from the fertile and life giving soil of the Good News. Yet unproductive and toxic guilt, so common in our culture of gratuitous public confession, is at times its own form of idolatry, is finally not the appropriate response to this recognition. Confession in the Episcopal tradition occurs in community, in the context of worship, and in response to the life-giving light of the Gospel. It is not about publicly bearing one’s soul for the sake of relieving us of toxic guilt. It is not as if God is engineering punishment for any of the things any of us leave undone or are guilty of having done knowing full well that we should have done otherwise.

Would God have sent Jesus to teach, and heal, and restore unworthy souls to wholeness if this were the case? Admitting my blame and culpability in the case of my erstwhile teammate those many years ago is not going to protect me from bad things…this is not how God works. When my best friend died many years later, it would have done no good to cast back to my high school envy as the source of blame for Mark’s death, as if doing so would protect me or my loved ones from vulnerability. What is our operative theology of crisis and loss, of repentance, of forgiveness? Many stories of heroism have emerged from the tragic bus accident here in Atlanta just over a week ago, and from the aftermath of tornadoes in Alabama and elsewhere. People do this not to interfere with the “will of God,” but rather because it is in keeping with the example of Jesus, who healed the leper, made straight the limbs of the paralytic, gave sight to the blind, exorcised the demons. Were these ailments punishments from a God angry about misdeeds? They were not. God does not micromanage our lives such that we are the reasons for catastrophes that occur by virtue of our having displeased God. Jesus did not tell those who fell at his feet in pain to go suffer a few years longer to pay for their sins. But he does ask us to repent.

In the Gospel for today we hear the clear message that if Israel does not turn from its national idolatry, does not turn from seeing its vocation in terms of privilege and worldly preeminence, the idols it worships will exact a high price. So it is for us. What I learned, and am still learning, from my experience with my high school teammate is that my envy—pure old fashioned jealousy, caused me to deny the abundance of God that might have allowed the relationship to flourish, bloom, and grow. I was like the fig tree that did not bear fruit. And, to continue the metaphor, I have often found myself wishing for just another year, just a bit more time to get to know him and to respond to his story with compassion, without being blinded by my jealousy and my operative theology of scarcity—that there was simply not enough love to go around. But it was not to be. Rather, my repentance, and the recognition of my own fears borne of envy, and the vulnerability that it opened up like a deep wound in my soul, had something to teach me. It is teaching me still. Jesus says that terrible things sometimes happen. “I am not going to focus on Herod,” he says in the Gospel last week, “and I am not going to worry about Pilate,” he tells us this week. Bad things happen sometimes, and it is not our fault. In this parable, Jesus asks that we attend to what we are feeling when we look in the mirror and see someone whom we do not like, whose life is not bearing fruit.

Regardless of the form our sin is taking, it is keeping us from flourishing and bearing fruit. Attend to that, and to the fact that we are bumping up against our own limitations and humanness. Let it be the occasion for choosing life. Let our confession be the turning over of the soil of our souls, in preparation for planting the life-giving seeds of repentance. If we name what we see, we may be afraid, but this can be life-giving. We may be afraid, but God is still the God of compassion, and our fear is not the final answer. We may be afraid, but Lent is a time for turning toward the light, connecting with the deep and rich soil of the Good News, and allowing our very souls to lengthen, grow, and flourish. We may be afraid, but the harrowing of our souls that occurs through the recognition of our own fear and vulnerability can become the source of new growth, new relationships, and new life in Christ. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Comments? Contact Bill Harkins at: BHarkins@stphilipscathedral.org view other sermons