THE UNFINISHED PARABLE

Fruitful Tree, Internet Domain

Times of crisis when the storms of life arrive is when we need to have trust in God and not other humans. Then we’ll have deep roots in a solid bedrock of strength and spiritual will to not only stand firm against the winds, but also possess the resolve to share with others. Jeremiah reveals that “I will bless those who trust me, the Lord. They will be like trees growing beside a stream—trees with roots that reach down to the water, and with leaves that are always green. They bear fruit every year and are never worried by a lack of rain”.

A fruitful tree was seen as a sign of godly living in early times, compared to one that bore no fruit for the patient gardener. In his parable of the four soils, Jesus teaches that seed which falls on good soil matures and produces a good and noble heart that hears the Word, retains it, and perseveres to produce a good crop. When we store goodness in our hearts, then good will be raised up out of our hearts. Jesus describes himself as a vine giving sustenance and strength and we humans are likened to the branches receiving it as we bear fruit for God. And he characterizes God as the patient vineyard gardener. The gardener will prune back productive branches to promote growth, which means sometimes we must endure storms and consequences to strengthen our character and faith. But the gardener’s patience has limits when no fruit is produced and those branches are eventually cut off from God’s life-giving power at the trunk.

Jesus mentioned that when teaching in parables, only those who had taken the time to study the Word of the Kingdom of God would understand the secrets of their meaning—“Others, though seeing, may not see: though hearing, may not understand”. He tells the story of a fig tree in Luke 13:6-9 in which we could consider God to be the master and Jesus to be the gardener; “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard. One day he went out to pick some figs, but he didn't find any. So he said to the gardener, ‘For three years I have come looking for figs on this tree, and I haven't found any yet. Chop it down! Why should it take up space?’ The gardener answered, ‘Master, leave it for another year. I'll dig around it and put some manure on it to make it grow. Maybe it will have figs on it next year. If it doesn't, you can have it cut down.’” This parable is sometimes called the unfinished parable because we don’t know “the rest of the story” like Paul Harvey used to report. The end of the story is still being written for many folks who enjoy God’s providence but do not share or give back anything in return.

And it may not have been a coincidence that when Jesus was raised from death in a garden on that first morning of Easter hope, the disciple Mary at first saw him as the gardener--a gardener and an intercessor for all of those branches of the tree of life that sprang from the Garden of Eden.

CULTIVATE YOUR GARDEN

Monticello Gardens, VA

Voltaire’s satiric novella Candide has been listed as one of the most influential books ever written. The story line follows the misadventures of a naïve and impressionable young man who leads a sheltered and easy life. He is being tutored by Pangloss, a staunch follower of Leibnizian optimism. The Leibnizian mantra of the time was “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”. Once these two have suddenly been cast out into the real world, disillusionment slowly follows as they are confronted with the realities of this broken world such as devastating natural disasters and mankind’s incomprehensible inhumanity.

One of the most quoted examples of Voltaire’s satire occurs when the two vagabonds witness the execution of an admiral on the deck of his own ship because he failed to engage a French fleet. The classic explanation was “to encourage the others”, a satiric quote heard ‘round many corporate board rooms after experiencing more than one consecutive quarter of low earnings.

I studied Candide in my college days and it made an impression. The conclusion of the book has been the subject of many academic papers and it’s still regarded as both enigmatic and contentious. Candide and his motley crew finally arrive on a farm which Candide purchases with the last of his once considerable finances. They’ve all experienced the fleeting possession of earthly riches—wealth, intellect, beauty, freedom, health, youth, prestige, and blind optimism. There they encounter a man working on a small farm with his family who shares his life’s plan; keeping occupied to be “free of three great evils: boredom, vice and necessity”.

As the story comes to a conclusion, we find Pangloss philosophizing to Candide that everything turned out for the best due to necessity. And Candide famously replies “Excellently observed, but we must cultivate our garden”. Academicians have speculated that the work’s focus is on the problems of Leibnizian optimism, the existence of evil, man’s inhumanity, environmental uncertainties, etc. My view hasn’t changed too much since college days—there’s nothing in this broken world that can be sustained; the best of all possible worlds cannot be found in this life but in the next; nurture and place your trust for survival within yourself and your Creator and not the external trappings of this volatile world; today’s treasures can be lost overnight, but any investment you make between your ears can never be taken away; passive retreat from the world is not the answer, but active industrious participation will help see us through so that we can hopefully leave this world a little better than we found it.

And I’ve always liked the ancient gardening practice of a small order of monks who planted one row of vegetables for the body followed by one row of flowers for the soul. We reap in this life what we cultivate.