Dear Friends in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen

Everyone has their good and bad days… even pastors.   As a pastor, you know it’s going to be a bad day when…At the wedding, you call the groom by the bride’s former boyfriend’s name. You know it’s going to be a bad day when you enter into the pulpit to preach and you notice that your sermon notes are from last week’s sermon.  You know it’s a really bad day when you dare to preach that same sermon and nobody notices.  As a pastor, you know it’s going to be a bad day when you finally remember the name of the person you promised to visit in the hospital- while reading the obituaries in the newspaper.  And you know it’s going to be a bad day when you are elected pastor emeritus and you’re only 35.

Yes, we all have our bad days, but what does it mean when the bad days add up into year?  Or worse yet, when tragedy strikes and these bad days and years make you question your own self-worth and purpose?  It is a question that has troubled faithful believers for generations.  It is the proverbial question raised decades ago by Rabbi Harold Kushner:  Why do bad things happen to good people?   But before you rush to make sense of your bad days and the world’s tragedies, let me share with you, two convictions drawn from morning’s gospel.  First, do not allow easy answers to explain why tragedy visits you and not someone else. Let the mystery of God remain a mystery.  And second, when your life has been shaken by tragedy, may you live with the certainty that Jesus is still working to bring joy and fullness to your life.

Men and women often try to make sense of tragedies and search for reasons even when there are none.  They often attribute these acts to the will of God. Simply turn on the television news or computer, or pick up a newspaper in any given week and you will find a report of some catastrophic tragedy somewhere.  Only the locations change. Mass shootings, war, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes–all of them wreaking havoc and altering lives.  And then, there are the less reported events.  The car crashes, the building accidents, and disease, the bad things that happen on a personal level which seldom make it onto the front page.  To all of these tragedies, Jesus answers, that he does not accept the biblical teaching of Deuteronomy that human suffering is a sign of God’s divine retribution and punishment.  For surely, Jesus knows the heart and will of God better than you or me. Instead, he declares that there is no rational explanation for these tragedies.  Let God’s mystery be a mystery.

So, when bad things happen to good people, do not let critical voices assert that God is passing judgment, but be assured that God does not abandon his beloved children. When the first responder arrives at the scene of an accident, let it be known, God is the first to weep.  The loving heart of God is broken when the young child is shot and killed in a random drive by killing.   God’s own tears are mingled with yours when your son has lost his way.  Bad things happen in this world.  That is the nature of the creation God has established.  I remember my older brother comforting words when he was diagnosed with the leukemia that would in six months take his life, “It is, what it is.”  It was his own way of saying, “let the mysteries of God be a mystery.”

But then Jesus warns his followers, unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.  As much as the compassionate heart of God mourns, God also longs for his children to live a productive and fruitful lives. That is what we were designed and created to be. Jesus tells the Parable of the Fig Tree which offers the good news that God is in the business of opening doors and not closing them. The past is not the final word. You and I are called to be fruitful. Still, the parable challenges us with how we are to make something of our lives.

My friends, Jesus understands your fatigue and emptiness and your reticence to daring to do somethings new. He knows that there are times when you are longing for a cooling spring in the midst of a dry wilderness.  He invites you to come to the water, but it may be impossible for you to take the first step.  And so, in those painful hours, he comes to you. The gardener, you see, had a plan for making the fig tree fruitful.  “Let it alone, dig around it, and put on manure.”  He understood that setting long-term goals and planning small steps, changing and improving day by day, is a more realistic path to success than an overnight fix.  Like the gardener, you too must begin with a patient plan.  If the past year has been filled with pain and sorrow, you should not expect a bountiful harvest.  Let it alone. Your energy has been spent; it was not available for bearing fruit.  You need to step back, drink in the refreshing waters, and examine the forces that have been a part of your life- those who have lifted you up and those who have let you down.  You may have discovered that others were a great source of strength and hope.  Or perhaps, you discovered an unknown strength within yourself. Like the old saying goes, “People are like tea bags- You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water.”

The second step to bearing fruit is to dig around.  When you tell yourself that you are going to reach your goal, you need to start digging in and mapping out the way it will work for you. This kind of committed planning requires energy and effort, which may be difficult to drum up as you’re trying to recover from a tragic loss.  Today may not be the time to begin a clean slate.  Physically, emotionally and spiritually, you may not be ready.  Be patient.  Dig around in your life in little ways. Try to make room for more sleep, healthier eating, and walking in the fresh, brisk air . Give time to spirituality and meditation. After a horrible year the timing may be better for these smaller lifestyle changes than making a full-blown, new year’s resolution.

Mind you, that often comes as a surprise to many in our society.  They would ask, why not make a dramatic change- here and now. They accept the notion that everything happens for a reason.  Others choose to dig around and find new friends, new hobbies, or they suddenly recognize the loyalty of old ones. But one thing I have discovered, in my own years of loss- Things can be repaired, replaced and even upgraded, but you simply never get over the death of a loved one.  You learn to live, step-by-step, and day by day, with a permanent gap in your emotional landscape.  It is a beautiful and fitting metaphor.  But a tree that has fallen in the storm continues to cast a shadow.  For the living to bear fruit, you need to dig around for the restoring waters and warm sunshine to give their nourishment.

Finally, the gardener suggests putting manure on the fig tree to make it fruitful.  I am not a gardener nor a farmer, but I know that for a plant to grow well, it must be planted in fertile soil.  And this, I rather suspect, has something to do with humus.  Do you know what humus is?  Some of you may have a compost pile in your yard.  The compost pile is made up of humus.  Humus is partially decayed plant or animal material.  The reason you keep this compost pile is because it makes excellent fertilizer.  It causes growth and gives robust health to plants.

Interestingly, the Latin word humus is the root word for the English word humility.  And humility is the spiritual fertilizer necessary for your heart if change is to occur in your life.  Humility is produced when you realize that you don’t need to understand all God’s mysteries, or give meaning to life’s tragedies, and that you have no power or right to judge others.  For you yourself need God’s forgiveness and strength and mercy.  If there is no humility, then there is no need for this water of life to refresh your arid and parched heart, and there will be no growth.

My friends, our Savior Jesus invites you to come to the water to be restored.  He longs for your life to be fruitful and joyful again- in spite of the tragedies and sorrows you have known.   So come to the water. Drink deeply and let his promise, his love and his encouragement give you a new life this day – so that one day you may be fruitful again.  Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.