Second Chances

More on those servants in our next parable. We find this one in Luke 13:6-8. The story goes like this – a man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He looked to have fruit from it for three years, and for three years was disappointed. He finally gave up and told the dresser to have it removed, for he now thought that it took up space that might be put to better use. It cumbered the ground, he thought, choking and limiting the place it occupied. The dresser asked him to give it one more year so that he might dig around it and add fertilizer. It is a small parable, but a large story.

If we think of God as the man who had the fig tree planted in his vineyard, what does this parable tell us about God's purposes? A man with a vineyard grows grapes, that's the fact of the matter. What he wants is a harvest of grapes. Why put a fig tree in the middle of all those grapes? An experiment? Aesthetics? Leviticus 19:19 shows us that God placed a restriction on experimentation: “thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed.”

Was God being a rebel? Was he bending his own rules? Why was there room enough to put a fig tree among the grapes – and what does that say of you and I? Are we grapes or figs? I should ask, rather, is our thinking like the fruitful vine, or the unfruitful tree? How long has God hoped to get something out of us, only to be disappointed?

Slated to be uprooted and used as firewood, an unlikely individual thought to give us one last chance. Who does the dresser represent? Is he an angel, or is he that obnoxious neighbor who is always trying to cram his religion down our throats? (I am speaking here for the fruitless trees.) We would rather hope for the angel, a being of splendor and power. The neighbor offers us only what we don't want.

If I was a tree being dunged, I doubt I would understand the good of it. I doubt I could fully appreciate the power of the obnoxious neighbor. That power, of course, is the power to care, to love, to hope in second chances. As I said before, Those who attend such truths, as the servants of the parable, approach the matter only through a genuine interest in the outcome. It is we the servants who keep an eye on the fields.