Another year of grace
Sermon for New Year's Eve, year C
Bible reading: Luke 13:6-9
There’s something startling, even frightening about this parable: A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and he found none.
He came looking for fruit on it and he found none.
He came looking for fruit on my life, on your life, and he found none. So here I am again this year, joining with you to confess how little I’ve changed, how little I’ve been transformed, how little fruit there’s been in my life. And how glad I am to hear the gardener once again pleading for me, pleading another year of grace for me, another year of forgiveness, another year of digging around me, another year of manuring me so that I’ll bear fruit this coming year.
And we need to be as startled by the grace of the gardener, as we are by the demand of the owner of the vineyard with its fig tree. Even more startled, for it makes sense that the owner would want fruit from his trees, but it hardly makes sense that the gardener keeps pleading for another year of grace for the fig tree, for me, for you…
And will I bear more fruit this coming year? And will you bear more fruit this coming year? Maybe. The expectation of the gardener is that we will. He pleads for another year for us with the hope that we will. He promises to dig around us and manure us with the hope that we will. But will we? If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.
It seems a 50/50 proposition. The gardener pleads another year of grace for us, even though you’d think we’d used up all the fruitless years available. The gardener promises to do all the digging and manuring possible to get us to bear fruit.
But if not… you can cut it down.
You, the landowner can cut it down.
All of us have had another year of grace. Not only have we been saved by grace, and not by works, but we have also survived by grace and not by works, or not by good fruit bearing. God has not treated us according to our sins, but according to his love. Every new day is a day to thank God for his forgiveness, and every new year is a year to thank God for his grace. And we have a lot to be thankful for tonight, and every day and night.
Never the less, God has not just put us on this earth to forgive us for our sins, and to be patient and gracious with us for our lack of fruit bearing. We need to take seriously that God comes seeking for fruit on his fig tree. He didn’t just create us to fill space on this earth, but to bear fruit which shows that we are his children, fruit which others around us can see and eat and be nourished by. Bearing fruit is a major theme of the Bible.
Jesus says: I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.
Fruit bearing does not come from trying harder. It comes from being united with Christ, trusting in him, feasting on him who was placed in the manger, and is placed in the bread and wine. Then the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience,
grow in our lives to honour God and be food for others.
Sundar Singh is a great example of fruit bearing. Born into a Sikh family in India in 1889 he was brought up to seek the spiritual things of life by his mother. He was 14 when she died, and totally distraught, so much so that unless God revealed himself to him he was about to throw himself under the passing train. In his desperation God revealed himself to him, but not the God he expected. He saw Jesus, and Jesus saved him, and gave him a peace and joy he had never known. At 15 he was thrown out of his family because of his faith in Jesus, and finally was taken in by a mission school far from his home.
There on his 16th birthday he was baptized. There on his 16th birthday he felt the call of God to tell India the good news of Jesus Christ. There, one month later, on the 6th Oct. 1905 at the age of 16, wearing the simple saffron robe as one vowed to a religious life, a blanket over his shoulder and his New Testament in his hand, Sundar Singh bade farewell to his friends and set off for the villages of India.
For the next 25 years he walked the roads of India, and the cities of the world, including Adelaide, preaching Christ, calling people to follow Christ, calling the church to go out and make disciples. As he went he was often persecuted, stoned, imprisoned, left for dead, but he continued to take up his cross and follow Jesus
, in obedience to the call of God on his life. Despite the persecution, God took care of him, and everywhere he went people turned to Christ.
In 1929 at the age of 40 he wrote to his best friends: I must go to Tibet to preach the Gospel there, quoting Acts 20:24 My life is worth nothing unless I use it for doing the work assigned to me by the Lord Jesus – the work of telling others the Good news of God’s grace.
Sundar Singh was never seen or heard of again.
You’re not called to be Sundar Singh, but you’re called to bear the fruit of Jesus wherever you’re placed in the world. You’re probably not called to go to India and Tibet to bear fruit. You’re not John Knox who prayed: give me Scotland or I die, or John Wesley who said, the world is my parish. But you are a disciple of Jesus, saved by grace, given another year of grace to follow Jesus in his work of seeking and saving the lost
.
Where is Jesus in the parable? Surely he is the gardener, pleading for the fig tree, and digging and manuring it so that it will bear fruit, so that it will do what it had been planted for. Jesus is the gardener digging around us with his word, breaking us open to receive him and the wholeness he brings for our lives. Jesus is the gardener, giving his body and blood for us on the cross, as manure to bring us new life so that we grow up to bear fruit. How amazingly good Jesus is to us – letting us live, and helping us thrive for another year with the hope of much fruit bearing.
But there’s more. God has placed us in his garden to join Jesus in caring for it. We are fellow gardeners, co-workers with Christ, digging around the fig tree and manuring it, ministering to others so they grow up as healthy, fruit bearing disciples. This is not just a pastor’s calling. The pastor is called to prepare all God’s people for this ministry to one another and the world.
So this is the question – where is the fig tree God has called you to dig around and manure for this coming year of grace? Where is the man? Where is the woman? Where is the boy or the girl? Where is the neighbour, or the colleague God is calling you to pray for, and love and witness to, by word and deed, so they will turn to Christ and grow in Christ, and bear fruit for God?
Jesus the gardener has been full of grace to you. Who are you called to be gracious to, to be the gardener to? Who in your family? Who in your neighbourhood, or workplace? Amen.