Dad was the son of Italian migrants, and so he knew how to grow vegetables. One thing he knew was that soil quality was everything. Often I would look out the window to see Dad in the paddock with the big old rusty wheelbarrow and his long-handled shovel, scooping cow pats off the ground. The old ones were good, all grey and dry, because they had had time to cool off, to ferment and break down. Dad would pick one up in his hands. “This is good stuff!” he’d say. “We’ll get big zucchinis out of this!”
The reading from Luke for this Sunday is a strange reading. First we have Jesus talking about atrocities and disasters, and then he tells a story about a fig tree. A fig tree that has not borne fruit in a long time. The owner threatens to cut it down, but the gardener – the one who knows the tree and knows the land – says, “No, wait!” Let me do some things: I’ll dig around it to aerate the soil, and I’ll add some manure. Give me a year, he says, and if it hasn’t produced any figs by then, you can cut it down.
Like any good story, this one sets our minds wandering and wondering in many directions. Today, I’m interested in the gardener’s insistence that it was the soil that needed attention. The gardener, unlike the owner, knew this land well. And he knew that if the fig tree was ever going to grow any figs, it wouldn’t be tomorrow. No, it would take many months. And it wouldn’t be by tending to the leaves and stroking the flowers, but by paying attention to the soil. “I shall dig about it, and dung it,” he says (in the King James Version).
What ‘fruit’ do we hope for, in our lives? Flourishing friendships, happy children? We might hope to become a community of welcome and love, where all can find a home. We might hope to live joy-filled lives, away from vices that keep us down. Financial security, stable housing, a relationship with God that bubbles up from below and through our lives. These are all beautiful fruits.
But this story tells us that if we want fruit, it’s not going to come about by wishing for fruit. It is going to come about by tending to the soil of our lives. Adding air. Adding compost. Adding manure. That’s right, sometimes the stuff that makes our soil good isn’t that pleasant. It might be past experiences that need time to rot down, and become the stuff that enables us to grow. And then we wait. Wait for something delicious to appear on our branches.
I wonder…what fruit do you hope for in your life, and our life together? What will you do to tend the soil now?
Words by Rev Andreana
Image by Bruno Braga
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