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The Third Sunday in Lent (C)
Verses: Luke 13:1-9
FERTILITY V. STERILITY
Luke 13:1-9 English Standard Version, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers]
1There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." 6And he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7And he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?' 8And he answered him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
FERTILITY V. STERILITY (FERTILITY VERSUS STERILITY)
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It was hard to tell which of the two had been dreading this day more. Of course, it would have been a violation of the family’s code of silence for either the mother or her grown son to admit they were not looking forward to his coming home. It was not that they didn’t love each other. It was not that she didn’t yearn to have someone else in the house. It was not that he didn’t derive a kind of security from sleeping in his old bed one more time or to revisit the hours and hours spent there during his growing up years.
There was, for him, a certain comfort in knowing what she would serve at each meal – his favorite foods. There was, for her, a joy in having someone to cook for again, knowing that he would praise her culinary skills and clean his plate. She loved that.
All of this notwithstanding, it was still no less true that each had been dreading his visit. To be together under this same roof was to admit again that Papa’s place at the head of the table was empty. He would never again sit in his easy chair with the ballgame blaring too loud or in total silence working his way through some academic tome. He would never again occupy his side of the bed. He would never again ask his son probing questions about work and family and what he was reading and his politics and all the other life choices. Mama would never again have to referee these inquisitions that were so much part of their life together. Her husband had gone to his grave professorial to his last breath.
She had hated the fact that he could never not use the Socratic Method even with his own family. Whether she spent her afternoon working in the garden or her mornings at the Farmer’s Market, she knew always the questioning would start. And she would find herself preparing for these inquisitions. It was part of their matrimonial dance…opposites attracting and all that. It was what they did and how they lived. He had scoffed at her suggestion that he read Benjamin Spock’s book on childrearing. “No, thank you” had been his response. “I’ll not raise a narcissist who does not understand duty and discipline and honor,” he had said. “Thus spake the LORD!” she had thought but not said…only later realizing that he had read the book and dismissed it.
Her son had had his own love-hate relationship with his father. So much alike, the two had clashed often, making the evening meal, for her, somewhat like living in Luxembourg or perhaps Alsace Lorraine – knowing that opposing forces would battle before her eyes again and again. How often she had tried to change the subject, trying to draw one or the other out of the war. And so her desserts had been a kind of waving of the white flag. Both of her men had a sweet tooth, and so she had become a master pastry chef, a kind of maternal saboteur.
When her son had left home, he had begged her to leave the old…such language from her son. She had slapped his face, the only time she had ever raised her hand against him, and said: “Honor your father and your mother!” And that was that! The family code of silence was reaffirmed. Some things are simply not talked about…end of discussion!
It had been strange for spouses to be alone again. She had loved the holiday breaks and looked forward to the summers. But her son always had some new travel program or internship to do in the summers, and his visits had grown shorter and farther a part. And then he was bringing home his foreign girlfriend…so unlike his mother…feisty with the old man and her husband actually loving the girl and delighting that she spoke several languages and could match him quote for quote and source for source.
One day the President of the university arriving at her doorstep with policemen telling her that her husband was gone…just like that, one minute questioning a graduate student in his most abrasive tone, the next lifeless clay. A sobbing phone call to her son, his shocked silence on the other end of the line. Then, a blur as the pastor had come to say prayers and then visits to choose a casket and plan a funeral, her son so like his dad taking charge and making decisions. Their daughter-in-law everywhere at once, organizing her home and her kitchen, and then it was all over and they were gone. And she had been alone for the first time since she had been a girl leaving her parents’ home.
At first there were notes to write and bills to pay and visits to the lawyer and the accountant, but then the gray days had begun. She had decided there was no point to cooking for one, and so she didn’t. She had decided there was no point to keeping the house, and so she didn’t do more than the most obvious things. Who was going to ask about how she had spent her day and why had she made the choices she did and the like? She had lost weight. She had no appetite. She didn’t finish those cardboard microwave meals. She didn’t return her friends’ phone calls. She avoided the pastor and stopped going to worship. When her son called, she created lovely little fictions so that he wouldn’t be cause for concern. And she found herself drinking more, her best friend.
In honor of the visit, she had actually gotten her hair done, arranged for a maid to clean the house, and a landscaping crew to get things in shape out of doors. She had gone shopping for her son’s favorite foods…he was coming home without the wife. But she was dreading his visit, for she knew that he, like his father, would never be able to avoid the probing questions…the ones that might actually shatter the family’s code of silence about feelings. She could handle questions about how she spent her days. She had a lifetime of experiences from which she could weave lovely fictions for him, she thought. But she could not stand up to the big questions: “How are you feeling, Mom? How are you handling your grief, Mom? How do you really get through your days?”
It was hard to tell which of the two of them found it harder to face that the son was a well-known, highly respected psychiatrist who had written textbooks on death and dying and the grieving process. He had inherited his mother’s faith, something his father had never been able to fathom, how a man of reason could also be a man of faith. And so the son had spoken with the pastor and knew more than his mother thought he knew about her isolation. He had spoken with his childhood sweetheart’s mother, a neighbor, and knew more than his mother thought he knew about how she spent her days. From the neighbor, he had learned about all the bottles in the recycle bin each Friday.
When he walked through the door, there had been tears as they had embraced. She had had supper ready for him as soon as he washed off the three-hour flight and had come down to the table in an old college tee shirt and jeans he had fished out of the back of the closet in his old room. Somehow they had managed to get through dinner and the obligatory dessert by her asking him to tell her all about his life. Strangely he had obliged as if he would honor the family’s code of silence during his visit. She had controlled her drinking until he went off to sleep, and then she had had just enough to fall asleep.
Shortly after breakfast the next morning, the doorbell rang. It was the pastor, and it seemed that her son had arranged the visit. She did not like this one bit. It was still her home, and how dare her son invite the pastor without telling her that he was coming. Good thing that she had dressed nicely, and the house was clean, and there was coffee cake and fresh coffee made. Of course, she was gracious. The family’s code of silence required her to be charming and hospitable and warm…even though she was not pleased.
Her son said, “Mom, I asked the pastor to come over because I am very concerned about you. We had agreed after the funeral that we would stay in touch. And we have. Pastor, would you tell, Mom, about your concerns?”
The pastor replied, “I have been missing you in worship, and I sense that you have been avoiding me and others. I have driven past the house, and it almost always seems to look like no one is home. The blinds are shut. The flowerbeds seem untended. This is awkward to say, but it is almost as if both your husband and you have gone away. I am worried about you.”
She managed to control her rage as she had seen her own mother do a time or two, so that her response came off cool but civil: “Pastor, I really don’t see how any of this is of your concern. And, frankly, my son, I find this a grave breach of good manners, if not disrespectful in the extreme. Pastor, isn’t a grown son still supposed to honor his mother? I’m not some patient or client or whatever it is that the people who come to see my son are called. And I was under the impression that pastors ought not to snoop in the lives of their parishioners without an invitation to do so. I didn’t ask for you to visit today.”
The pastor and the son looked at one another, and her son replied: “Mom, I’m the one who asked the pastor to come over, that’s true. And I know that you are not happy with either of us right now, but, and this is the hard part, I’m going to break our family’s famous code of silence about the things that matter most. In many ways, it is our code of silence that got me interested in psychiatry in the first place.”
She shouted, “Don’t you dare say one more word!”
Her son answered, “Oh, I’m going to say many more words, Mom, because I love you. You have become a recluse since Dad died. You have crawled into a bottle as if it were your final resting place. And….”
She jumped to her feet and screamed, “Enough of this! I’ll not have it. Not in my own home! And both of you can just damned well get the hell out right this minute. I will not be treated this way by my son or my pastor.”
Her son replied, “Mother, sit down and calm yourself right now! You are not dead. Dad is dead. Now you’re going to listen to people who love you enough to tell you the truth! And you’re not going to interrupt again. Do you understand?”
“Pastor,” her son said, “is there anything else you want to say to my mother?”
The pastor replied, “I have a gift for you.” He took a small box from his coat pocket and handed it to her. She opened it and said, “Very lovely, thank you, pastor. But why would you give me a crucifix? We’re Lutherans. We believe in the resurrection.”
The pastor answered, “Lutherans have always used the crucifix. It ought to be in every one of our churches and on or above every one of our altars. It reminds us of Christ’s suffering and death but also of His resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father. By His cross, He has won the victory over sin, death, and evil. And He is always present, by His Word of promise, in the bread and wine of the Holy Communion. When we see the crucifix, we know that Christ is with us in our troubles as our older brother. He shares our suffering, and He will bring us safely through every loss. We have died with Him in Holy Baptism, and, even though our bodies die, we shall live with Him forever in new bodies and in a new heaven and a new earth.”
Before she could speak, her son said, “Mom, you feel so alone, and, because Dad seemed never more than tolerant of our faith, I wonder if you doubt that he is alive with God today. I wonder if every time you try to go to worship, you wonder if he has died twice and that he is eternally separated from God. And so you cut yourself off from the very help God wants to give you in your grief by avoiding the services of God’s house.”
She began to cry. “It’s true. Even though he was baptized as a baby, and attended parochial school for twelve years, he spent his whole adult life pretty much detached from God and from faith. It was as if he could not reconcile faith with his great intellect, and the academy did not help him. You know how hostile his colleagues were even to the idea that you and I went to church on a regular basis. Their mocking infuriated him!”
“Yes, mother,” he said, “I know all about the closed minds of those who pride themselves on their openness…just so long as it is the academically approved and politically correct openness that we all embrace and march locked step like lemmings towards the grave. Theirs is, for Christians, one more false story that we reject when we renew the promises made in Holy Baptism. The devil’s empty promises offer no hope, for they never value the infinite preciousness and “loveableness” of each life in God’s eyes!”
“Mom, I asked the pastor to give you a crucifix in the hope that you will wear it every day, embracing the truth that God loves you more than His own life and that there is no place you can go…even in your most secretive and loneliest places…that He will not be there with you as Savior and Brother. God loves you more than you can imagine, mother, and I love you, and pastor loves you, too.”
Her son said, “I want us to worship together this weekend, mother, and I want you to hear the Gospel lesson about the barren fig tree. You are not dead. Dad is dead. God is calling you, mother, to fruitfulness…to fertility and not sterility. He gave you great gifts that He expects you to use for His glory and to be a blessing to others!”
The pastor said, “I am wondering what you want to do with the rest of your life in this world. You don’t have to be stuck where you are. And God knows you don’t have to embalm yourself every day and every night behind closed blinds and locked doors.”
Her son said, “Yes, mom. What do you want to do next? There’s a well-known man in our city that sold his business at 65 and went to law school. He practices elder law, and he’s in his 80s. A woman in our congregation just moved to our city. She’s about your age, mom. She’s training to be a lay hospital chaplain.”
The pastor said, “It may be hard to hear this, but your husband’s death could be, for you, like the part of our Lord’s story in Luke 13, when the gardener digs around the barren fig tree and puts some manure on it. Yes, it’s a load of you-know-what when bad things happen to us, but these can be the defining moments that God uses to change us!’
Her son said, “Mom, that’s what repentance is all about. It’s a change of heart, a change of mind, and, yes, a change of our lives as we open ourselves by praying, ‘Thy will be done,’ and surrender ourselves to become what God created us to be!”
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
©Samuel D. Zumwalt, STS
szumwalt@bellsouth.net
societyholytrinity.org
St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
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