07.01 The divine disappointment
I. THE DIVINE DISAPPOINTMENT THIS is a parable easy to understand taken from Nature, that great open Book of Parables which “he who runs may read.” In the corner of the vineyard, protected by its walls, and nourished by its specially prepared soil, a fig-tree has been planted. For two years the lord of the vineyard has come eagerly expecting to see the promised fruit. For two years he has suffered disappointment. On the third year his patience is at an end. The tree is a failure. It is exhausting the soil and hindering the other plants and his sentence goes forth: “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” But identifying himself with the tree in the friendly sympathy for his plants which is one of the marks of gardeners that most attractive class of men the vinedresser pleads for it; that for one year more he may be allowed to dig around its roots and fill the spaces with manure, and give it thus another trial. And the parable ends leaving the fig-tree with a great hope over it, “if it bear fruit, well”; but also a great risk; “if not, then after that thou shall cut it down.”
Primarily, doubtless, the parable applies to the Divine disappointment caused by the religious barrenness of the Jews, in spite of God’s choice of them and of all the care which He had lavished upon them. To them were given the adoption and the glory and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.” Yet there was no fruit with which God could be pleased in the dry and lifeless religion of scribe and Pharisee. But the parable has also its lesson for every age.
Let us try to learn it. Our life also has been planted in a vineyard chosen and guarded by God’s fatherly care, in a soil of special richness. We have been born in a Christian country, inheriting the traditions of centuries of Christian life, protected by centuries of Christian custom. By baptism, we were planted in that Body in which all the life-giving energies of the Divine Spirit are ever ready for our growth and nurture. There we were made “members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Every gift that was needed for our Godward growth was bestowed upon us. Yet when we look at our lives as they really are, can we say that they show signs of growth corresponding to all these possibilities with which we were endowed? Let memory take its stand at any point in our past life, and review the years which have since passed. Are we nearer to God in thought and plan and purpose? Has it become more natural to us to spend a large part of our time in communion with God? And yet, why should it not have been so? Why should there not be a constant and increasing vitality of the spirit corresponding to all this rich endowment which is bestowed upon us? What examples there are stored for us in the memory of the Church! What inspiration lies in the words of the Creed which we continually repeat! And yet, how listless, inert, and dull our Christian life at the best seems to be. I often think of the words of an earnest agnostic. He said, “If I could believe one-tenth part of what you Christians profess, I think there is nothing I could not venture and suffer, and yet, when I go to your churches, how dull and tame and heavy you Christians seem!” When we think of the great acts of worship and communion in which we engage, do we not feel that we are often like listless actors repeating their lines and performing their prescribed motions? That is the original force of the word “hypocrite.”
Surely there is scarcely any prayer which we Christians ought to have more constantly in our hearts than this; “From all hypocrisy, good Lord deliver us.” And if we, at our best moments, feel, as we must feel, this heart-sickness at ourselves how can we measure the disappointment of the God Who made us? Was it for these poor, puny, trifling lives, with their little concerns of money and pleasure, their ignoble aims and petty sins, that God Almighty gave us our birth in nature and our new birth in Christ?
TAGS: [Parables]