A Year of Manure

Luke 13:6-9

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I hope your year is full of manure.

That’s not something you’re going around wishing people as New Year comes up, or maybe has just past. You might even expect a more colloquial version to be something enemies lob at each other. But this is what we find in God’s Word. There’s a tree that has unrealized potential and what’s prescribed to it? Stinking, smearing, filthy manure with flies buzzing around it. This is what’s going to make the tree grow. Here’s what our Lord says in Luke chapter 13.

And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And 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?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)

In this parable, the tree is the human individual, you or I. And the question is, have you lived up to your potential? No matter how bold or confident you are, the fact that you have nagging regrets and insecurity, says you have not lived up to the standards you set for yourself, the standards the world sets for you. And God puts a sharper point on this. He says that there is a more basic fatal flaw that has impacted every aspect of our human nature. This is sin that keeps us from attaining the level of holiness, perfection that God demands in line with his will, but also from attaining this level of wholeness, right relationship with other people, and a flourishing life in the world as we were intended to.

Now the owner and the gardener, I would say, represent these two characteristics of God. The owner represents God’s justice, and this is communicated to us in what we call God’s law, his commands, his standards for us, and his threats that there are going to be consequences and punishments if we don’t measure up. Here’s what the owner said. For three years now I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree. There’s the standard. And I have found none. It’s failed to measure up. Cut it down. There’s the consequence. Why even let it use up the soil? But there is another impulse in God the gardener who shows patience. And you could even say mercy toward the tree. Sir, leave it alone this year also until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it produces fruit next year, fine. But if not, then cut it down. The owner agrees with the gardener’s plan, at least implicitly.

The gardeners plan is borne by what resources they’ve committed to the tree already. So what do they do? They commit even more to make it bear fruit. God has given his Son to offer up his life, to shed his blood, to give his human righteousness to us so that we could be his beloved children, cleansed of our sins by his blood, covered in his righteousness. We could say that we are in this vineyard of God’s church. I don’t believe the vineyard is the world, throughout Scripture almost exclusively, the vineyard is representative of God’s people, people in God’s kingdom. Here we have the rain of God’s Word that does declare us forgiven of all of our sins. Here we have the sunshine of Jesus’ righteousness, always there to bring new life where we have lived in defiance of God’s will.

But what about the manure? Well, Scripture is also very clear that God allows afflictions and sufferings, sometimes even persecution, to discipline and train us. Now like manure, this stuff is not pleasant. Sometimes it’s repulsive to us and to the world, but it might be just what we need. Keep in mind those regrets and insecurities from the past, and connect them to the challenges and suffering you may face in this new year. That suffering and challenge may be, in part, God’s answer to the regrets and unrealized potential of the past. That these afflictions, as difficult as they are, are fertilizing our compassion, our empathy, our wisdom, our insight, our humility, the fervency of our prayer.

Finally, I don’t want you to be afraid when you hear the owner threatening to chop down the tree after a year, it’s not as if you don’t get your act together in your Christian life in this year, God’s going to cut you off from his grace. No. The entire time of our lives in this perpetual patient year. And I pray that this year would be not only laden with grace, but with all the manure that you need to grow.