“So
God Made a Farmer” by Paul Harvey
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/paulharveysogodmadeafarmer.htm
I
played the audio version of Paul Harvey’s message “God Made a Farmer’ this past
Sunday because another storyteller celebrated the contribution of the farmer in
the stories he told. While standing in the rows of a vineyard, sitting beside a
freshly planted crop, or looking at fields ripe for harvest, Jesus never tired
of using the farmer and the soil of his profession to illustrate spiritual truths.
In most of these stories, God is the farmer, exhibiting interest in His
crops and enduring patience with what he has planted.
That
is certainly the case in the Gospel story about the fig tree. A vineyard
owner wants a fig tree planted on his land and has his farmer put one in the
soil. He expects it to grow and plant figs, yet it does not for its first
three years. He concludes that it is worthless and orders it to be
removed. The farmer, though, has more patience and convinces the owner to
give it one more year, during which he will give it special attention and
fertilize it with manure. He believes it has a future.
Recently,
we asked our parishioners to respond to a survey about the “spiritual health”
of Holy Family. One comment stated that maybe we should only baptize people
from the parish. In our last baptism, people in the pews felt uncomfortable
because the manners of the family at the font did not meet their expectations.
Some people felt annoyed and upset by what they witnessed. Our committee
members had a lively exchange of opinions. Maybe we need guidelines about who
and who can’t be baptized in the church? Others felt that the parish “mission”
statement welcomes all with open arms.
Kathleen
Norris, in her book The Cloister Walk, provides insight on what happens when we
don’t repent, Repentance is coming to our senses, seeing, suddenly, what we’ve
done that we might not have done, or recognizing … that the problem is not in
what we do but in what we become.
Our
lack of repentance results in our becoming something far less than God intended
when he planted us in this world. We may look healthy on the outside, but our
lack of fruit is evidence that we are perishing. You and I are not here to
enjoy the rich nutrients of the soil and keep them all to ourselves. We are not
here to take up space and not produce any fruit. We are not here to live
without accountability and inspection. We are not here to wonder about
other people’s innocence or guilt or etiquette and not consider our own.
What
we are here to do is to thrive in the vineyard of God and bear fruit for the
people of our world. The fruit of our branches is to provide nourishment,
taste, health, and life in our community. Is such fruit on our branches?
Are we that part in the crowd who can’t understand Jesus?
The
agricultural tip for the people to bear fruit rather than perishing was in the
manure. God could take the waste of life and bring beautiful and life-giving
fruit from it. This wouldn’t happen unless they were willing to use it as
fertilizer. There was still hope. Jesus, one skilled in bringing life
from waste, could see the potential in the people who gathered around him that
day. He looked at their fruitless branches and saw fruit. He could bring
it out of them if they would join in; if they would do their work of turning
away from the things that were destroying their lives and take in the
ingredients of life God had for them.
Let us pray and reflect: “But you are merciful to all,
for you can do all things, and you overlook people’s sins, so that they may
repent.” (Wisdom 11:23).
Lord,
I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that Lent becomes a time of crop inspection.
Let this season be a time to see not so much what needs to be given up, but
adding what is missing. It is a time to allow God to redeem the waste of
our unfruitfulness and bring the kind of harvest our world is missing.
