The Kingdom of God is Like . . .

Chapter 10

by Fr. Thomas Keating

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

 "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 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?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put some manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.' "  (Luke 13:6-9)

   The parable of the barren fig tree recalls the recurrent theme in the Old Testament of the barren made fruitful by the Lord's direct intervention. The birth of John the Baptist is the classic example. His mother by the power of God became fertile in her old age, and to the astonishment of everyone, brought forth the child who would become the greatest of the prophets. Rachel, the beloved of Isaac, like Sarah, the wife of Abraham, was also barren until she was made fruitful of God.

    The expectation of the original hearers of this parable, then, would be that God will intervene and turn this wretched tree, that has not produced any fruit for three years, into a flourishing tree bearing a superabundance of figs. In the Old Testament, the fig tree was the symbol of God's blessing and special love for God's people.

    The gardener suggests putting some manure around the ailing plant. A delicate touch! The text uses a more refined word, "manure," but the actual meaning is closer to "dung." Hardly a decorous word in religious discourse, but Jesus did not hesitate to use it. It adds a certain earthiness--if not outright pungency--to the story.

    What are we left with at the conclusion of this parable? A tree that is good for nothing. The gardener offers to shovel manure around it, but there is no indication that any new growth will actually occur. This tree and its predicament are striking symbols of daily life, especially when our efforts to do good fail or seem to be fruitless, our prayer periods are as dry as dust, and nothing ever happens. In addition, there is no sense of God's presence in daily life, no enlightenment experience, while our faults continue, people blame us unjustly, and disappointments multiply. Our spiritual life seems to be dead. What are we to do? The parable seems to say, just keep waiting.

    The parable hints that it does not matter if we do not succeed in our own estimation or in that of others. The divine presence is so present that nothing can take it from us. Of course, we can still reject God, but someone who is seeking God is not about to do that. When we realize the fact of God's closeness, success and failure are relativized. We simply do what we can: that is, we throw a little manure--symbol of our fruitless efforts--on the old stick. Of course it is not going to grow, because it is dead. But in some mysterious way, because of God's solidarity with us in everyday life, something much more important happens.

    This parable addresses something very deep in human nature and in the best of people. It is the perplexing question, "Why, when I do my best to pray, to do good, and to try to get closer to God, make sacrifices for others and put up with all kinds of trials, am I so beset with troubles, break an arm or a leg, turn up with some debilitating disease, lose a loved one, go through a painful divorce, live at the edge of financial ruin, or fall into some grievous addiction?" In other words, "Are life's reverses signs of God's punishment for my moral lapses, or are they just tests of my patience? Can I hope that God will eventually reward me with some high state of perfection or rescue me from my troubles by means of some apocalyptic deliverance?"

    The parable suggests that Jesus does not recommend that we count on either expectation. Meanwhile, we reach out desperately for something to lean on in the face of difficulties, reverses, and heartbreaks.

    In the light of the parables, it is a mistake to aim at a mystical state that we can feel, understand, and enjoy, all of which easily give rise to the temptation to feel superior to others. Jesus nowhere represents mystical union as the goal of the kingdom--still less, the prayer of quiet or the prayer of union. And less still, various supernatural interventions such as locutions, ecstasies, visions, charismatic gifts, and spiritual highs. These all feed into the naive idea that the kingdom of God will solve all problems, put "me" in a place beyond the everyday, the normal, and the nitty-gritty--in short that the purpose of the kingdom of God is to make "me" feel special. We are special, but not because of those things. What is special about us is God's incredible solidarity with our ordinary lives: with our sense of failure, futility, getting nowhere spiritually, and our lack of inner resources to cope with our particular difficulties. In the parables daily life is so clearly the place where the kingdom is working that symbols of success are totally irrelevant. They are like icing on a cake. We cannot live on icing. We need more substantial food. Trust in God disregards the evidence of everyday life that God is absent or forgetful of us and brings us into direct contact with the God of everyday. The God of pure faith is so close: closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing, closer than consciousness itself.

    An enlightened faith seems very ordinary. One might scarcely notice it. It accepts the way things are and finds God vibrantly present in the most insignificant situations and in the most unexpected disguises. "Dung" in this parable is the symbol of humble hope, which keeps trusting in God without trying to analyze or resolve the tension between the hard realities of everyday life and God's sovereignty.

    In a world in which God seems to be absent, people have to conjure up ideal situations in order to help themselves survive. And so poets and seers elaborate myths, one of which for religious people at least is to pass into a world of moral perfection, wisdom, and bliss; the other is to await the apocalyptic vindication of one's nation, race, ethnic group, religion, or bedraggled reputation.

    Does death and resurrection of Jesus offer a new myth into which we can escape by moving into an idealized state of perfection or into some apocalyptic deliverance? Not according to the parables. And not according to the crucifixion narratives of the synoptic Gospels in which Jesus' abandonment by the Father--"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"--seems to question his very identity as the Son of God.

    The divine emptiness of Jesus is the point at which the power and mercy of the kingdom are maximized. We experience the same divine emptiness in our daily lives as we wait for something to happen that will fix everything that seems wrong in our particular environment or in us. Jesus in the parables affirms, "The kingdom is right where you are with your bundle of difficulties, your sense of getting nowhere and waiting in prayer for experiences that never happen." Divine union is not the achievement of some perfection of our own or an escape from our external problems, but is the radical change of attitude that enables us to deal effectively with our weaknesses and our problems--the humble acceptance of our lives just as they are, including the monumental moral corruption we may find in ourselves.

    This experience of failure can cause no little disappointment and disillusionment. But disappointment in what is the question we have to ask. The answer is usually to be found in our deep-seated expectations, of course. Divine love is not normally going to change the situation by some great miracle. It is trying to change us, so that we can courageously and lovingly unite ourselves to God in the situation.

    It is a mistake, then, to look for spiritual experiences in contemplative prayer or to judge our progress by them. The essence of contemplative prayer is not spiritual experience, but the purification of the unconscious. The process, usually quite lengthy, is what radically changes our attitudes and enables us to see ourselves as we truly are. Contemplation must not be presented as a road to glory. It is easy to become attached to spiritual experiences. The regular practice of contemplative prayer initiates the purification of the unconscious with all its repressed emotional pain: anger, shame, grief, fear, discouragement. Our experience, therefore, is not likely to be of an abundant harvest of delicious figs, but rather of "the dung."

    Gardening is the first job that Adam was given in the garden of Eden; it is the symbol of what everybody's job is: shoveling manure to make the unfruitful fig tree (us) bloom. It will never bloom because of the manure, but God, touched by our persevering efforts and patient endurance, may make the thing blossom anyway--not because of our efforts and patience, but because of God's most tender love for us.

    What happens to the barren fig tree if there is no one, like this concerned gardener, to take an interest in it and to try to save it?