Finding Faith ... in how much more fulfilling 'Kingdom Time' is

EDITOR'S NOTE: On Oct. 23, 2021, I was ordained as a minister of word and sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and installed as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. I also served the same church for four years from October 2017 to October 2021 a synodically authorized minister. The journey together these past four years has been an amazing one, full of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on March 20, 2022.

This week's gospel: Luke 13:1-9

Repent or Perish

13 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ 8 He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

The message:

We are a society obsessed with speed. … There is proof all around us every, single day.

Our cars and trucks are designed to go faster than ever.

The main selling point now for a cell phone is how fast its internet is. It doesn’t matter what the actual phone functions like, it seems.

At work at The Forum, there is a group of computer developers whose entire job is to figure out how to make the website pages go even faster because readers who have to wait more than one or two seconds for the page to load on their phone will just leave.

I recently learned in a news story that based on recent research, 64 percent of drive-thru fast food customers believe that 5 minutes is too long of a wait to receive their food.

And even more astoundingly, 55 percent of in-house diners say that anything longer than 10 minutes to get their food is too long. 10 minutes to cook a meal from scratch is too long!

Quicker. Faster. … We have convinced ourselves that to be successful and happy, everything has to be done RIGHT NOW!

We have lost a healthy perspective on time, and come to where anything that isn’t instantaneous is unacceptable.

The trouble is that this horrible corruption of what God’s time is meant to be. … Oh don’t, get me wrong. God knows how to move quickly, Faith Family.

After all, He created the universe in six days. … The universe, all of its stars, our sun, the earth, and the millions of living plants and animals that inhabit it. … In six days!

So, if you want to crown a champion of speed, I’d say the contest is over.

But that incomprehensible level of speed was not what God had intended for us as his creation. … And today’s gospel story about the impatient fig tree owner and the gardener demonstrates just what God’s time means.

The fig tree owner, like most of us today, wanted results right now for his efforts. He planted the tree; he wanted the figs. He had waited three years. His effort wasn’t bearing fruit. He was ready to move on.

But the gardener was like, “Whoa, hold on. … Let’s give it just one, more, year. … I’ll invest a little more time and attention into this fig tree. And we’ll see what happens.”

My favorite theologian, John Caputo, often writes about a concept he calls “Kingdom Time.” … You see, everything is different in God’s Kingdom, and so it’s only logical to believe that time there is different as well.

In God’s Kingdom, time is less about seconds and minutes and being measured, than it is about results. … It’s not about how fast you complete the task, but rather what was the result of your effort. And who benefited?

I suppose as humans, we inevitably begin to worry about time at the point we become aware we are mortal. Right? … At some point we become aware that no matter what we do, we cannot escape that we all eventually pass away.

And so maybe it’s natural for our minds to begin measuring all of our time. We become aware that our time is finite. … So we convince ourselves that we have to use it all and get the most out of it! … We must do all the things! And we must do them all fast!

But God’s Kingdom just doesn’t work that way. … In fact, time in God’s Kingdom is measured in results, nothing else. … And we humans just can’t comprehend it.

Well, I gave that fig tree three years, and it hasn’t borne any fruit. Cut it down. Move on. I got other trees to plant there.

But God -- the gardener in this parable -- says, “Oh now wait a minute. … Let’s give that tree one more year, and this time maybe invest a little more in its outcome. We’ll till up the dirt around it, and give it some fertilizer. … Just another year. … A little more time and love. … And then we’ll see what comes of it.

It’s a mindset that we just can’t seem to understand. … But I wonder … just maybe could there be some good that would come of it … if we weren’t in such a rush to race through every minute of every day?

Would our overall collective mental health improve, if time wasn’t a competition among everyone?

Would our nutrition improve if meals were again centerpieces of the day versus an afterthought tucked into free moments between tasks?

Would our relationships improve if we took time for a conversation on the phone versus trying to decipher text messages that do not relay human emotion and nuance?

Ultimately, would the results begin to matter to us more than how quickly we accomplished something?

Faith Family, God welcomes us into a kingdom in which time is measured in ways so foriegn to us that we can’t fathom it. … But yet, as with all other aspects of the kingdom, the kingdom’s time offers us a far more enriching and life-giving way to live, than the kingdom we’ve constructed here on earth.

I look back on the past two years in which we’ve been living under the cloud of the pandemic as an example.

Remember, in those first months into the pandemic, when for the most part we all were home, and there was nowhere else to go anyway. The restaurants, bars and entertainment venues were shut down. Many places of work were closed, or the employees moved home.

And what did we begin to hear

People started talking about their families starting to eat together around a table again. … Why not? There was no where else to go eat, and you didn’t have any activities demanding your time.

People talked about their families putting puzzles together, and playing board games and reading books.

Folks began to plant more gardens, take more walks, adopt more pets, write letters and pick up the phone more, drive less and spend less. … For a short while, our families spent more time together, the earth started to heal and our national financial savings rate went up.

And by no way am I trivializing the millions of people who died from COVID, nor the tens of millions more who were financially, spiritually and emotionally affected over the past two years.

But for a very brief time in the beginning of the pandemic, we were forced to slow down … and in many ways our lives did improve. … We began to measure time more in the outcomes than we did in seconds and minutes.

And then what happened?

Eventually, we just couldn’t handle it any longer could we?

Despite all the good intentions to remember the positive lessons the pandemic taught us, we pushed on. … It was time to go back to work, to accomplish stuff, to get out of the house, to get back to the bars and restaurants and the ball games and all of the other distractions that keep us on the run.

None of these things is inherently bad, of course. The vast majority of us need to work to live. We want our kids to participate in activities that they find fulfilling. It’s OK to want to eat out or go to a concert or catch a ball game.

All of this stuff, all of this activity, is part of God’s creation and it is given as a gift meant to help fulfill our lives.

But the trouble comes when we convince ourselves that this stuff, and the more of it we do, is far more important than how we do it, who we do it with and what the outcome is.

Because if the answer to those three questions isn’t rooted in God’s desire for everything to be life-giving, then we’ve just corrupted it all with our earthly values, our earthly sense of time.

Faith Faith, earthly values tell us to cut down that fig tree that has not yet borne fruit because it’s not economical or logical to invest more time and resources into it.

But those are not God’s values. … And that does not take into account Kingdom Time.

As with all of Jesus’ parables, this short parable about the fig tree owner and the gardener is meant to teach us a valuable lesson about the difference between our earthly values, and the values of God’s Kingdom. … And there are vast differences that we struggle to discern.

This week, Faith Family, I would once again invite you to step back, slow down, drop one thing from your to-do list each day, schedule a meal around the table, stop for the yellow light instead of rushing to beat the red one.

Take a breath. … Take a pause. … Give that fig tree just one more year to grow, and a little more TLC, and see what comes of it. You may be surprised to see how much more fulfilling the Kingdom’s Time is … than your own.

And that is the Good News for this Third Sunday in Lent, March 20, 2022. … Amen.