“Our Deep Hunger”

A Sermon by Rev. Patrice Ficken

Isaiah 55:1-9

Luke 13:6-9

Sanbornton Congregational Church, UCC

March 11, 2007

(Please do not re-print or re-use without permission of the author)  

I suspect the man who came looking for fruit on his fig tree spent as much time tending that tree as I have tending that amaryllis bulb I showed the children this morning – which is to say not much.   I guess he was expecting the gardener to care for it; or maybe the gardener overlooked it.   We hope, like most living things – that with a little love, care, and fertilizer the fig tree will eventually bear fruit.  But perhaps – with three years of neglect – it didn’t recover.

My question this morning is - what is it that we love?  What is important to us?  Day by day – where is our focus, to what and to whom do we tend?  For when we love something, someone enough we tend to it; we love it, we nurture it, we give it our all.  The fig tree clearly didn’t know this kind of tending. 

Jesus often used agricultural parables because he knew it would connect with the people he ministered to.  Most during his time would have been connected to the land in some way – whether as servants or workers or landowners. 

Living here in New Hampshire,  perhaps we’re still connected enough to the land to connect also.  I’ve said it before and I will again, that one of the biggest thrills moving here was the first time I went to the Sanbornton Farmer’s Market –  to see many folks from our church offering the fruits of their labors.  Yet we need not look far down the road to see what’s coming as the farming way of life becomes more and more difficult to sustain.

At what point are we able to say enough?  Our voracious appetite to consume – every square inch of forest, of land, of water – cannot be sustained.  Isaiah’s question goes right to the root of it:  “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

At the root of our over-consumption is, what Howard Thurman, theologian calls:  “our deep hunger.”   It is the hole in the soul, the gap that cannot be filled with food, or drink, or stuff at the mall, or work. 

Isaiah says, “Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live.  I will make with you an everlasting covenant.”

Since the word, “covenant” can make our eyes glaze over – let’s try a different take on it.

First, we enter into many different kinds of covenants – the covenant of marriage, the covenant of membership in this church, professional covenants.  Yet our primary covenant is with God.  I like to think of our covenant with God as the vision God holds for our lives.  It is not a single vision but as unique as each person.  Yet the qualities of covenant are universal.  In Judaism one word describes these qualities “Shalom.”  These are the qualities of harmony, peace, mutuality and respect in relationship, joy, love. 

Our covenant with God is everlasting whether we tend to it or not.

Our covenants on earth are another matter.

And here I would say – remember the fig tree.

When we enter the covenant of marriage – God holds this covenant for us and we promise to our beloved to do our part to uphold it too – through sickness, health, rich and poor.  For the marriage (for any covenant) to bear fruit – we must tend to it; nurture it, love it.  Otherwise, like a fire that is not tended – it will grow cold.

There’s another covenant that I want to speak of this morning – and that is our covenant with Earth. 

One of the most beautiful images from Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth  is that the earth breathes – in and out.  In the growing season – when foliage returns – the earth takes a deep breath in of carbon ; and when foliage is gone, it takes a breath out –like a living being itself.

Our very survival depends on nurturing and caring for this covenant with the Earth – and yet – by the way we live and are voraciously consuming the earth’s resources we would never know that such a covenant exists.

Isaiah – called out to the people:  “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near….let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

Isaiah called the people back into covenant – back toward the vision of shalom God holds for us all.

This is what Isaiah wants the people to remember – the people who have witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and now live in exile in Babylonia – far from the homeland they once loved.  Isaiah is saying – remember the everlasting covenant – it will feed you, it will satisfy you.  But you need to repent, to return – to tend to it. 

For this is the only true relationship that will feed us. 

From Tom Yeoman’s “Soul on Earth”

“The spiritual dimension is an experience we human beings “know” from birth, but “forget” as we grow in conditions that do not recognize, or support, this connection…

….if we have become disconnected, we sense there is something precious that we have lost and we try by many means to restore it.   We suffer deeply from the condition of spiritual disconnection, we hunger for our true selves and seek, knowingly and unknowingly to restore our souls.” (Soul on Earth, by Tom Yeomans, p. 6)

When we tend what we love – when we tend our covenants – we restore our connection to God, to each other, to our earth.   

Amen.