Please pray with me. Living God, help us to hear
your holy word that we may truly understand.
And understanding, believe. And believing, follow
in all faithfulness and obedience, not only in
words, but in deeds that reflect your kingdom.
Amen. Our gospel lesson this morning is taken
from the Gospel of Mark, the 11th chapter, beginning
with the 12th verse. I invite you to hear God's
word for you. On the following day, when they
came from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the
distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether
perhaps he would find anything on it. When he
came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for
it was not the season for figs. He said to it,
May no one ever eat fruit from you again. And
his disciples heard it. Then they came to Jerusalem,
and he entered the temple and began to drive
out those who were selling and those who were
buying in the temple. And he overturned the tables
of the money changers and the seats of those
who sold doves. And he would not allow anyone
to carry anything through the temple. He was
teaching and saying, And when the chief priests
and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for
a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him,
because the whole crowd was spellbound by his
teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and his
disciples went out of the city. In the morning,
as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered
away to its roots. Then Peter remembered and
said to him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you
cursed has withered. Jesus answered them, Have
faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to
this mountain, Be shaken up and thrown into the
sea, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but
believe what you say will come to pass, It will
be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you
ask for in prayer, believe that you have received
it and it will be yours. Whenever you stand praying,
forgive. If you have anything against anyone,
so that your Father in heaven may also forgive
you your trespasses. This is the word of the
Lord. Well, today we are concluding our series
on the miracles of Jesus with the miracle of
the fig tree. This one is unique. It's the only
miracle where Jesus performs a miracle of destruction.
It's an odd one, isn't it? Jesus getting mad
and taking it out on a tree. It also happens
to be Craig's favorite miracle story, so he says.
Craig, this sermon is with special thanks to
you and, of course, to the rest of our worship
team, Bill and Taylor and Leslie and Bryant and
I get together every week to talk about upcoming
services. And this one, when we were talking
about the last of the miracle stories, I felt
encouraged to take this one on. So what they
didn't know is that I had an ulterior motive.
I actually do have a fig tree that doesn't bear
fruit. I've gotten quite cranky about it to the
extreme that tomorrow I'm having it cut down
on Labor Day. It's true. We installed the tree
in 2021. Year one, no figs. The person who installed
it chalked it up to it not having its root system
fully whatever happens to root systems. Okay,
year two, still no luck. Mind you, it was a large,
mature tree when it was planted. Huge root system.
No problem getting established. Year 2 .5, I
had it transplanted. I moved it from one location
to another in our yard where I believed that
it would thrive. Year 3, we went back to the
root system excuse. followed up with some thoughts
about birds and squirrels, and so I put a net
over it, you know, the kind you get from Amazon
to protect it from anything that might attack
all the fruit that you really think you're going
to get, but you're not ever going to get. No
luck. Now, according to the Gospel of Luke, where
there's another story about a fig tree not bearing
fruit, Jesus tells us to try a little harder,
forgive a little more, for at least one more
year. So I did one more year from last to this.
This is the fourth year of my sad fig tree, full
of lovely foliage all summer long and little
tiny nubs of nothing. I'm calling it quits. If
anybody wants to dig it up before the kid across
the street comes and hacks it down, you are welcome
to come over. I mean it. It's not unfair of me.
to expect figs in their season. Ecclesiastes
assures us that there's a season and a purpose
for everything under heaven, a time for this,
a time for that, a time for figs, especially
when they're due. For my tree, the time is up,
and I firmly believe that Jesus would agree.
Jesus has a documented problem with fruitlessness
in season and season out. He hoped, that by the
time he was reaching his final days, that people
would understand that. To punctuate his point,
he did away with a fig tree that was fruitless.
This morning, we're going to talk a little bit
about what it means to be fruitful as a Christian.
To be fruitful as a Christian is our job. It's
what we're supposed to do. It's a full -time,
full -on responsibility. It's defined in so many
ways throughout Scripture. In Paul's letter to
the Galatians, he says that it's love, it's to
show joy, it's to have patience, to be kind,
to be faithful, to be gentle, to have self -control.
How are you working on those things? I fall short
a whole lot of the time, but that's our job.
Paul wrote that these gifts are given to us,
these fruits are given to us by the Holy Spirit,
born out of a life of prayer, truly believing
that God will respond to our prayers, not just
offering them out because we feel like it's the
time of the day or night to do so, but truly
having conviction that our prayers matter. These
fruits are sealed by our lives and service that
strives to make progress toward justice and righteousness
that Jesus intends for all people. There can
be nothing seasonal about it. So that when Jesus
looks upon you in whatever season of your life,
Jesus will say, well done. Labor Day is another
theme for this weekend. The worship team challenged
me to figure out a way to incorporate it, saying
it just can't be done, right? There are too many
services that we try to incorporate a secular
holiday, but this has been a national legal holiday
since 1898. Labor Day is to honor workers and
a worker's right to a fair workday and fair wages.
There was a woman who was born a few years after
the first Labor Day. Her name was Dorothy Day.
She was born in 1897 in Brooklyn. Throughout
her years, she lamented the depth of financial
desperation in the United States and worked hard
throughout the Great Depression to ameliorate
the plight of the poor. In 1932, she was covering
a hunger march in Washington, D .C. for some
Catholic magazines. While she was there, She
prayed that some way would open up for her to
even more strongly serve the poor and the unemployed.
Check this. The very next day, she met a guy
named Peter Morin who had a vision for a society
constructed of gospel values. They became soulmates.
They founded a publication called The Catholic
Worker and a movement of hospitality, houses,
and farming communes that spread throughout the
United States and even to other countries. Together,
they bore fruit that lasts to this day. The publication
is still put out there seven times a year. There
are still families of faith that live together
in the way that they conceived. Seth Godin, the
world -renowned author of all things motivating
and marketing and high -tech and good about business,
says that we are marketing our story, what we
support, who we are, with every step we take
down the sidewalk and every glance we make in
another person's direction, every season of our
lives, how we carry ourselves. what we write
in our blog, the choices we make, the things
that fly out of our mouths, all of those things
tell a story of who we are, what we know, what
we believe in. We live in a connectional world
in which people find value in the stories that
they find. They find value in things that resonate
with them. So the question that we need to ask
ourselves is what kind of story are we putting
out in the world? What kind of world are we perpetuating
with the stories that we communicate with our
actions and our voices and our affect? Is it
a story of humility? Is it a story of love? Is
it a story of bounty and generosity? Is it a
story of kindness? Is it a story that sparkles
like the children's shoes? Is it a story of self
-control? Is it a story, dear church, that communicates
that we care? Ultimately, we want our story to
be one that others can believe in, particularly
if we're wearing the cross of Jesus Christ. It's
the stories that we're putting out in the ordinary
moments of life that help people see the reflection
of Christ in your life, the Christ who is present
with us again and again, desiring to bind up
the brokenness, the woundedness of the world.
Ask yourself every morning that you look in the
mirror, is your story bearing fruit? At the end
of his journey, Jesus was all but fed up with
image builders. He was fed up with beautiful
trees that have lovely leaves far off in the
distance. He was fed up with profiteers, false
prophets. He was downright visibly disgusted
by the faithlessness of his day. He sure wished
he could see not only a tree bearing fruit on
and off season, He wanted to see people bearing
the fruit of the life that he was trying to share
with them. He demanded that we be faithful stewards
of his good news, of his good news of justice
and righteousness and peace day in and day out
through today. He's counting on us to break into
the difficult moments at hand, to be his fruitful
presence in the world, to address the needs of
humanity and strengthen the church together.
It felt like such a simple message that I decided
to peel away all of the extra parts and just
hit it straight on with you. Let it sink in.
Challenge your heart today. Ask yourself if the
way that you are living all the time, not just
when you want something especially good, is the
way that you're living less than fruitful. Does
your lack of fruitfulness... Particularly if
you have a bumper sticker on your car about your
church or a cross around your neck or you're
proclaiming something special at a special moment,
does your lack of fruitfulness, especially if
you're proclaiming Jesus with your words, keep
people away from the table that Jesus has so
bountifully set for the world? Remember, All
of our beings are a walking story of our lives.
Jesus calls us to be a walking story of his too.
It might seem like awfully hard work, yet we
know that when we know and believe in what we're
doing as the call of Christ, it will lead us
all to a harvest that's bountiful for all people
without a hint of seasonality. Let us pray. Lord
Jesus, every one of us wants to be fruitful.
We all desire a kind of seamlessness to our experiences
and our relationships in the world with you.
May we not be found fruitless, but alive in faith,
persistent in prayer, and ready to forgive. Make
us trees that bear good fruit for your glory,
so that in all we do, your name is honored and
your will is done. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.