The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
March 11, 2007
Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Saint Luke 13:1-9
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Once again, I am delighted to be with you. If in the days ahead someone asks you whether Daylight Savings Time causes us to lose sleep, please remember today and say Yes. My prayer for you is that you are observing a holy and costly Lent for the love of Christ alone.
I want to convey the sincerely heartfelt greetings of Bishop Manasseh and all the people of Kajo-Keji whom I visited in January and who told me over and over again how deeply proud they are to be brothers and sisters of the people in the Diocese of Bethlehem. You cannot fully imagine the circumstances in which they live. I know I couldn’t imagine them before I went.
I would like to read something to you from the diary I kept when I was there.
“But I want now to make some notes about the term ‘subsistence economy.’ Features of it seem to be a lack of electricity and running water, very crude housing, the requirement that each person subsist on his own agricultural produce, usually farming, chickens, and goats, and the utter demand on time of the above. Thus work in the church is almost completely voluntary. The men apparently leave the domestic and agricultural work to their wives. Women remain thus chained to necessary and primary responsibilities while men are free to work on development and managing. There are times of course when the men find the primary responsibilities so demanding that they too join the women to complete them. I have not seen any men carrying water.”
“Though I noticed it first, the economic and infrastructural situation, however, fails to be the chief characteristic of the people. That honor belongs to their deep and yet (in every positive way) superficial faith in Jesus Christ. Every meeting begins with earnest spontaneous prayer, and every small speech and word of welcome begins with “Praise the Lord!” They mean it: they have been saved by Jesus Christ from so many things other than merely existential ones. They have been saved from war and the remnants of war, brief incursions and hostilities from their enemies, and land mines that are still being decommissioned by the United Nations. Every day’s activities conclude with a Scriptural reflection which invariably sews a credible connection between God's revelation and the dusty duties each person cannot but undertake to survive.
“The people of Kajo-Keji proudly identify themselves as your and my brothers and sisters, united as one family, as Canon Henry Leju said in greeting us, “by the sacred blood of Jesus Christ.” He and others could find, if they wished, so many things to distinguish us. Instead, he chose the Thing that unites us for time and for eternity.” It was a privilege to visit Southern Sudan, even as it is a privilege to extend their greetings to you.
For those of you who think that Jesus is meek and mild, a sort of nice guy who lives next door and who never ruffles any feathers, the parable in today’s Gospel is for you. This parable ruffles a lot of feathers. It disturbs the peace of everyone who thinks that things are fine just they way they are. The point of the parable is that everyone is given plenty of opportunity to put things right, to do the will of God, or to put his or her priorities in order. But that opportunity doesn’t last forever. After plenty of opportunity, people will be called in to give an account, to give the explanation for what they’ve done or left undone, in the words of the General Confession.
You remember the parable. It concerns a fig tree whose purpose in life is to produce figs. It concerns a gardener whose purpose in life is to see that the tree has what it needs to produce figs. It concerns an owner who has the reasonable expectation that his tree will produce figs. After three years of no produce that owner raises the obvious question, and the gardener intercedes—one more year for the tree. But after that year, after four years of expectation, well…
You can apply this little but pointed parable to almost any phase of your lives: your service to the community, your giving to your parish; your participation in its life and its plans—you can see almost any phase of your life in this parable, so long as you see yourself as that tree whose purpose is to yield fruit. “If it bears fruit next year, well and good.” Very well and very good.
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
