"Summer is near" by Jeanne.Belle, on Flickr

Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live. (Isaiah 55:1, 3a)

At that very time there were some present who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them — do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'" (Luke 13:1-9)
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This past Ash Wednesday was the first Ash Wednesday in four years where I have had no pastoral responsibilities. It felt weird.

One year ago, I began my Ash Wednesday before dawn, standing on a crowded train platform in the snow, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a small bowl of ashes in my other, offering ashes to commuters as they rushed by me, many of whom weren’t going to be able to attend any other moment of worship during their busy days and nights.

I was thrilled to be there, and nervous. When someone approached me, I felt like I was doing something important. But when I stood awkwardly by myself each time a train left and the platform was silent, I wondered if I was doing something silly. Because it’s one thing to offer people a sign of mortality when they are inside the safe confines of a church sanctuary. And it’s quite another thing to stand out in a public place, disrupting the routine motions of a morning commute with the sober words, “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I mean, how many of us, in the bustle of daily life, really expect or want to be confronted with our own mortality? How many of us look around and say, “You know what would make this bright sunny morning even better? A reminder that I’m going to die!”

No…not so much. Facing our mortality generally troubles us. Unsettles us. Makes us uncomfortable.

Today’s gospel begins with mortality. The crowds hanging around Jesus ask him if he’s heard the latest news of these Galileans who died at the hands of the Romans. They bring up the question because they want Jesus to give them insight into God’s divine plan for life and death.

It was a common cultural understanding in Jesus’ time that tragedies and misfortunes were God’s way of punishing sin. Remember the story in John’s gospel of the man born blind? The disciples ask Jesus, “who sinned, this man or his parents?” So the crowds want to hear Jesus say that these Galileans who died were somehow sinners who deserved it. And they want Jesus to affirm that those poor souls who died in that unfortunate tower-building accident had somehow offended God.

We do the same thing, don’t we? When bad things happen, we search for reasons, and we try to ascribe motives to God, and we really want to believe that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people who make bad choices. And at the root of this sort of thinking is our own fear of death, because we want to believe that some way, some how, we can avoid pain and death if we are just good enough people, and if we make the right decisions, and if we eat the right food and avoid trouble and keep our noses clean.

And so we, with the crowds, want Jesus to assure us that we’re all hunky-dory, and that even if other people are sinners who deserve death, maybe we are the righteous ones, and maybe we are the ones who will escape. But Jesus responds to us pretty bluntly: “Unless you repent, you will all perish just like they did.”

Bummer.

I mean, we know it’s true, even if we don’t like to hear it. We are mortal. We are human and we sin and we break. We get selfish and impatient and unkind sometimes, and we don’t perfectly love God and we don’t perfectly love our neighbors. Darkness and grief and pain show up in our lives despite our attempts to fend them off, and we see very bad things happen even to very good people. We are inescapably mortal, each and every one of us. Jesus’s “repent or perish” message brings us face to face with sobering truth of our mortality.

But today’s gospel doesn’t stop there. Jesus doesn’t end with a message of death. He goes on to proclaim a message of life, through a strange little parable of a fig tree.

There was a man who owned a vineyard. On his land stood a fig tree that was barren. Since this tree was bearing no fruit for his profit, and was taking up valuable land that he could use for other more fruitful ventures, the man called his gardener to come and chop the tree down. The gardener arrived, and looked at the tree, but refused to cut it down. “Please sir,” the gardener said, “give this tree one more chance. Let me water it and feed it, and pour everything that I have into it, and let us see if there isn’t life and fruit yet to be found from these withered branches. If there is no fruit at this time next year, then you may cut it down. But for now, let me give this tree its life back.”

By all counts, the withered, dead, worthless fig tree deserves to be cut down. It is both dead and condemned. But the compassionate, patient gardener steps in to liberate it from both condemnation and death. He gives this tree a chance at life where there was none to be found, and gives it hope, and gives it a chance to flower and bear fruit even from its withered branches.

We are that fig tree. And God-in-Christ is that gardener. He says, “Here. I will to pour into you water and milk and wine and bread; I will pour into you my very self to nourish your body and soul and spirit. And I’ll do this freely and without price. I will give you the grace to live another year, and water you with love and forgiveness. I will give you resurrection.”

See, what I love about this parable is that it isn’t a story of immortality. It’s a story of resurrection. A story of immortality would imply that we have a God who helps us cheat death. But a story of resurrection tells us that we have a God who defeats death.

We are working our way, week by week, to the empty tomb hanging wide open as a sign to all the world that death has no more power over us, and that sin and brokenness hold us captive no longer.

Resurrection means that we don’t have to keep working for food that doesn’t satisfy in some sort of quest to preserve our lives or our worth or our legacy; it means that we are free from all of those voices that say our health or our wealth or our success or our ambition will save us. Resurrection means that we don’t need to get hung up on our mortality, because God has a better, fuller, eternal life to offer us. Resurrection assures us that we have a second chance at life; that we’ve been given grace to live and not to be cut down.

“Incline your ear and come to me,” God says. “Listen to me, for in me you will have life.” This is what repentance is all about - returning to God’s promises of life and reorienting our lives around resurrection. Repentance means accepting the limitations of our mortality and clinging instead to the life that God pours into us at our very roots.

And to what end? That we might once again bear fruit. That our worried and withered souls might blossom. That we might live lives of service to others, and be gracious and generous, people of love and peace and joy and hope and compassion.

So today, my brothers and sisters, you have an invitation before you. It is invitation to God’s holy table, and an invitation to God’s new and resurrected life for you. God says, “All you who thirst, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come and eat, without money and without price. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen to me, for in me you will have life. Turn to me. Bear good fruit. For I am the good gardener. And I have given you the grace to live.”