Advent One – The Fruitful Tree

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Advent One
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Luke 21:25-33

When all this begins to happen, stand upright and hold your heads high, because your liberation is near. – Luke 21:28, REB

+ In the name of the living God: the Father , the Son , and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today, we observe the first Sunday of Advent, the season in which we anticipate the coming of Christ. First, we look to the end of the age, and then in later weeks to the babe of Bethlehem. Advent is about what’s coming. But what if what’s coming doesn’t seem too good?

Today, Luke gives us uncertain signs. Signs that are hard to interpret, or perhaps can be interpreted in too many ways. Astronomical – or perhaps astrological – chaos, environmental changes, and helpless nations. Luke tells us that, “People will faint with terror at the thought of all that is coming upon the world.” but what exactly the signs are referring to is not explained. The signs of the apocalypse are profound, but uncertain.

We have more certain signs, however. We only need to look around. From Eden onward to Babel, to Egypt and Babylon, and into our present day, we see clear signs that our world is broken. Our culture is broken. Things are not as they were meant to be. In 1919, after the first world war, the poet, William Butler Yeats pinned his famous work “The Second Coming .” He is describing his experience in post-war Europe, but the words describe our age all too well:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

The signs of our life at the close of 2024, as it ever has been since we left the Garden, point to the fact that things are broken. They are not as they were meant to be.

These signs, if we are honest, create in us a sense of an uncertain destiny. Living in an uncertain present, we are tempted towards nostalgia – looking backward to a better past – or perhaps our temptation is some form of progressivism, looking forward to a more hopeful future. These are, I believe, false choices. The truth is that every time – past, present, and future – has its own crisis. We do the best we can to adapt, to overcome, to apply technique and technology to our situation. What all that has produced, however, is a life of means without ends. We go through the motions of our daily life not really knowing what it all means, what’s it for, or where we are going. So often, our hope is in just getting through the day, just getting through our lives. In many ways there is no goal which we are living for or towards. It is this directionless, hopeless, rat–race kind of life- so often lacking any measure of meaningful truth, goodness, and beauty- that the revelation of Jesus Christ judges and will ultimately put an end to. Before you flinch at that statement, remember what I said two weeks ago about God‘s judgment: it always has a curative intent. There is no anger, no vengeance, but hope, purpose, and healing. Looking at the signs of this age, we may feel that we have an uncertain destiny, that’s understandable. Today, Jesus invites us to look at something else, something that- when we understand it- shows that in fact, our destiny is both certain and secure. In the midst of all these confusing and frightening signs, Jesus invites us to consider the fig tree.

The parable of the fig tree appears today in verses 29 to 31 of our Gospel reading. However, this isn’t the only place it’s mentioned. A fig tree also appears as a sign in Mark, Chapter 11 and Matthew 21. You remember the story, don’t you? It takes place during Holy Week. Jesus has entered Jerusalem for his final confrontation with both the Jewish leadership and the Temple, and He finds a fig tree bearing no fruit. Because it bears no fruit, he judges it with a curse. It then withers and dies. Then, he goes on to judge the temple with his cleansing. What’s the connection? In the Old Testament, the people of Israel are sometimes represented as a fig tree that bears no fruit. Both Hosea and Jeremiah use this imagery. Now, the withered fig tree makes more sense: it is a parable of the judgment of God on the Temple, which has become a dead tree that produces no fruit of righteousness. More broadly, the withered fig tree- like the signs in the heavens and the nations -is a judgment of our life of means without ends. Like the Temple , all our human systems left to our own devices, are ultimately barren. Taking this as backstory, what can we say about the parable of the fig tree we have today?

The differences are striking. This tree is fruitful. This tree points to the fact that summer is near – a season of warmth, growth, and abundant life. Jesus tells us that the sign of this tree points to the fact that the Kingdom of God is near. What tree could this be? What sign can give us hope of a certain destiny in the midst of all these discouraging signs? Well, what replaced the Temple? After the judgment, after the abolishing of our old worn-out means-without-ends existence, what does God set in its place? The fruitful tree is the tree of the cross. Jesus says heaven and earth will pass away, but that his word will never pass away. Orthodox priest and theologian Thomas Hopko reminds us that the word of God is the wood of the cross. It is to the cross that we are to lift up our heads in joyful expectation. Amidst all the uncertain signs in heaven and on earth that accompany the last days, Jesus deliberately tells the parable of the fig tree. He gives us a certain sign of a life that has a purpose, of a life that has an certain destiny. What’s more, he gives us the means to live toward that end, and in some sense, to live in that end, in that reality, here and now.

What are those means? It really shouldn’t surprise you where I’m going: I return to it again and again, week after week. The means that lead us to Gospel ends are the Sacraments of the Gospel. Baptism and Eucharist, when we partake of them, provide for us a certain faith, and a certain hope rather than uncertain signs pointing to an uncertain destiny. No mere signs, they are sure and certain promises of the Kingdom of God here and now for you. In the midst of the chaos of a world that has been judged and is already passing away, the church stands as an embassy of the world that is coming.

Lutheran theologian Oswald Beyer reminds us that “baptism marks the intersection of the old world and the new.” In the waters of the font, we are not only cleansed from sin, we are transferred from the land of the barren to the land of the Fruitful One. It’s the same with the Sacrament of the Altar: William Cavanaugh writes

The Eucharist makes clear that the kingdom does not simply stand outside of history, nor is heaven simply a goal for the individual to achieve at death. Under the sign of the Eucharist, the kingdom becomes present in history through Christ, the heavenly priest.

As our whole reality is shaken, as the old order ends, we stay close to font and altar, partaking of the gifts from the Fruitful Tree. Christ promises that he is with us until the end of the age, and we are with him after that. This is why we stand upright and hold our heads high- because our liberation is both near and HERE. Amidst all the calamity, confusion and uncertain signs, it turns out that what is coming is simply Jesus. The same One who has been with us all along. This is what Advent – both the second and the first – is about. As Dietrich Bonhoefffer reminds us,

Throughout all the Advents of our life, we shall wait and look forward with longing for that day of the Lord when God says “I am making everything new!“

Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come.