The lesson of the Fig Tree

‘Anyone who tends a fig tree will eat its fruit, and anyone who takes care of a master will be honoured. Just as water reflects the face, so one human heart reflects another.’ - Proverbs 27:18-19

The Revised Common Lectionary for last Sunday included the parable Jesus told about a fig tree and the impatient farmer who found after three years it still wasn’t producing any fruit. [Luke 13:6-9] The gardener in this parable wanted to cut down the fig tree after looking for and expecting fruit for those 3 years but Jesus encouraged him to wait one more year, and not just to wait but to fertilize and encourage the fig tree in its unproductively! And then if the tree was still unproductive he could cut it down.

This quote from Proverbs would have been familiar to the writer of the gospel and I wonder if that is what inspired this particular parable? But no matter what inspired the parable, more important is the message it is trying to put across.

While we are not familiar with fig trees in Canada and the amount of time it takes for the fruit to appear [from 2 to 6 years, according to my research], we can all relate to the feeling of hopelessness when something we have longed for and expected does not occur. Just as the gardener in this parable wanted to cut down the fig tree after looking for and expecting fruit for 3 years, we too want to cut things out of our lives after what seems like an interminable time of waiting for something to flourish. But the parable tells us to give that relationship, that expectation, another chance. That we should even spend time tending to its needs. Then if after time it still doesn’t flourish we can get rid of it. [I like the use of the word ‘can’ in the NRSV because it suggests that it is our decision whether or not to give up at that point.]

Albert Schweitzer put the final sentence of the quote we started with into the common vernacular of our day when he said: ’In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.’

By looking after the needs of others, by encouraging and supporting them in their efforts to reach their full potential, we are in fact taking this parable of the fig tree to heart by not giving up on others, by doing whatever we can to help them reach their full maturity. I know I am thankful to those who didn’t give up on me, who by their words and actions have helped me to where I am today and to those who will be there in the future when I need their inspiration.

Not only this Lent, but always, we need to focus on helping and supporting others, worrying less about what we can do for ourselves and about our spiritual practises. It is in this way that we will all experience the most growth and renewal. Is this, then, what Jesus was teaching in the parable of the fig tree?

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