It’s Lent.  The readings and the sermons are about sin, sin, sin!  Temptation!  Watch out, or you may perish!  You may be cut down like the fig tree!  Are you uncomfortable?  Are you wondering what is going on here this morning?

Paul certainly is warning us, or the Corinthians, really, about many things.  Don’t become idolaters.  Don’t indulge in sexual immorality.  Don’t put Christ to the test.  Don’t complain.  And if you think you are standing, watch out that you don’t fall.

It’s not very comforting, is it?  It almost makes you want to put your hands over your ears and say “just tell me what the rules are so I can follow them and then leave me alone!”  Religion does have this reputation, of being a list of rules, of do’s and don’ts, and if you follow the rules then you get the prize, which I suppose is going to heaven when you die.  

This reputation is what spawns things like the atheist billboard outside--have you seen it?--”Are you good without God?  Millions are.”  Personally, I’m not entirely sure whether it means “are you good” as in not bad, like doing good things, or “are you good” as in “hey, it’s okay, I’m good.”  My real response, though, is that there is no such thing as being without God:  you can ignore God, but God won’t ever ignore you.  Is there a way, then, to look at Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, to think more deeply about what God does or doesn’t want us to do, and why?  

I wonder if what God wants most is for us to listen, to stay in relationship, and to follow when we hear God’s call.  Maybe we could phrase that by saying:  God wants us to do what God wants us to do, and not do what God wants us not to do.  It’s more than just a list of rules.  Sin and temptation may simply be whatever it is that keeps us out of relationship with God, or keeps us from listening to God and following when we hear God’s call.  

So what would sin and temptation include?  Probably some of the same things we are used to thinking about, like idolatry, sexual immorality, putting Christ to the test--the things that Paul talked about.  But probably other things, too, like zoning out in front of the television night after night after night, even when there’s nothing at all worth watching.  Drinking too much too often, or using drugs in irresponsible ways.  Taking people around us for granted.  Ignoring opportunities to do good.  

All that sin and temptation stuff, whatever it may be that is most compelling for you or me personally, is distraction from what we are supposed to be doing.  The thing is, though, that by turning our whole selves over to God and doing what God wants us to, we wind up being much more fulfilled than we would have been by going with the sin and temptation, or whatever our own thing was that we wanted to do.

Look at Moses.  How close was he to giving in to the temptation of ignoring an opportunity to do what God wanted him to?  He had escaped from Egypt, and found a new life with his wife’s family.  He was minding the family business when God caught his attention with a burning bush.  God told Moses to go back to Egypt and lead the people out of slavery.  Moses tried to object, using the tried-and-true method of making himself out to be too unimportant to do such a big job.  He says:  “who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  

Just as an aside, that makes me wonder if God doesn’t get thoroughly tired of asking people to do things and having them respond “but God, this is only little old me, don’t you think you should get someone really important to do this big job?”  I mean, really, Moses was talking to a burning bush here!  He knew it was really God--did he think that maybe he knew more than God did about what the right thing to do was?  

And as for us, when we respond in the same way, consciously or unconsciously, sometimes we may be able to hide behind the idea that we’re not REALLY sure that it is God asking us to do something, but again:  do we think we know more than God does about what the right thing to do is?  

Anyway, back to Moses.  He went around and around with God a few times, but eventually (after 23 more verses in the text) he went and did what he was asked to do.  

Maybe the biggest temptation of all is simply to sit around doing nothing.  After all, if we’re doing nothing, is that really a bad thing?  We’re not doing anything wrong, right?  

Like that fig tree in the Gospel that didn’t bear fruit--for three years the owner had been looking for figs, and found none.  Finally he was ready to tear out the tree, but the gardener asked him to wait.  He offered to take special care of the tree for the next year, and if it still didn’t bear fruit, then it could be torn out.  The gospel doesn’t tell us what happened to the tree.  What do you think happened?  What happens to us when we sit around doing nothing, not bearing fruit or being useful?

I think that not much happens, and that’s the problem.  Stagnation is what makes a swamp.  The ultimate stable state for a living being is, in fact, death.  That’s not what anyone wants for themselves or for anyone they love.  But sometimes it’s tempting to talk ourselves into being that fig tree, not bearing fruit--we might complain that we would bear fruit if we got special attention, but no one seems to care.  We can easily work ourselves into a victim state, believing that no one cares and so there’s no point in doing anything in particular, and besides, when we try no one appreciates us, and what about all our aches and pains, and, and, and . . . this leads to what I have heard described as “terminal specialness,” which can easily lock us into a pattern of stagnation that is sinful in its insistence that it can do nothing.  This is what might have happened to Moses if he hadn’t turned aside to look at the burning bush, or if he had continued to insist to God that he couldn’t possibly do what God is asking.

But both the Epistle and the Gospel for today have a theme of “you’re not very special.”  Paul says:  ”No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.”  In other words, you don’t have it any worse than anyone else, God is still with you no matter what it is that you are enduring.  In the Gospel, we have Jesus giving examples of people that bad stuff had happened to, and then asking:  “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”  So you aren’t worse off than anyone else, and you aren’t better than anyone else:  you are really in the same boat, although of course each of us is different in details.  

Now, I’m thinking that, if you heard that line about “you’re not very special,” you might be wondering a little right now.  That’s not what we generally hear in church--we are much more likely to hear that we ARE special, that God loves us personally, and that we are an integral part of God’s ongoing plan of salvation for the whole world.  Well, all that is true.  But in terms of suffering--we all suffer at some point.  Suffering alone doesn’t set anyone apart from anyone else.  Same with sin.  Each of us has our own temptations, our own sins, but they don’t make us particularly special.  None of us is beyond the reach of God’s embrace.  

In fact, that’s what the gardener in the gospel was demonstrating.  Rather than cut the fig tree down, he was going to give it special attention to help it reach its potential, to help it live into its true nature.  After all, it is in the nature of fig trees to blossom and bear fruit.  It is in our nature to blossom and bear fruit, too--not just to be okay, or to get along, but to thrive and be fruitful.  

It’s Lent.  It’s time to think carefully about sin and temptation, about repentance and renewal, about how God gives us what we need so that we can bear fruit for God’s kingdom.  Be the fig tree.  Accept the special care--even if some of it is manure--that helps you bear the fruit that the world needs.