A parable is a story, a teaching story. Please do not be concerned that any fig trees were injured in the course of these events.

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?’

We could look at this in several ways. The owner has been very patient. Waiting three years for figs from the tree. But no figs. No figs. Three years of using up the soil – although, it never occurred to me this was a thing.

We could also imagine the owner as been quite impatient. I am no expert on the life cycle of trees. Maybe this is normal. Maybe this is the way of figs. But our parable is not about gardening.

‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

The gardener seeks to save the tree, at least for now. Some attention, some nutrients. Maybe a vineyard’s soil meant for grapes is not great for figs. Maybe some tender loving care is just what was needed. We do not know if the gardener’s work pays off, for it is merely a story. A story about what?

About repentance. Jesus had mentioned several examples of calamities suffered by others. The Galileans harmed by Pontius Pilate. Those killed in the Tower of Siloam. They suffered and yet they are no worse than anyone else in the City of Jerusalem. So repent now, for you are no better.

But repent what? What is the sin? We do not hear anything about that. The repentance is generic and it is what might be called corporate – corporate meaning a body of people rather than any one individual. The people must repent, not a person. Which may seem completely unfair.

Why should I be lumped in with those people, those obvious sinners. You know the types.

Actually, I don’t. I have never in my life met a non-sinner, yours truly included. Sin meaning missing the mark, making mistakes, failing to live up to an impossible task of exacting moral perfection. The goal of the scriptures is not about living a perfect life, but understanding what is better and recognizing what is worse.

And then the notion of repentance comes into view. Repentance requires recognition of the problem, the sinful act or the sinful omission. Yes, you can sin by doing absolutely nothing. As I heard it recently described, in our youth we commit sins of passion and in our later years sins of despair. The sin of giving up.

Having recognized the problem, the repentant sinner next needs to seek forgiveness. How that comes about has a lot to do with the sin in question. But generally, it is an admission of the problem through a confession of that sin to the person affected by it. People often ask God to forgive their sins, but God was not always the target of those missed marks. Where were these various sins aimed and where did they land?

And what does any of this have to do with figs? The fig tree was used as a metaphor for Israel itself. If the tree is not bearing fruit, then it is the people who are failing to live up to their purpose. The fruit of the people, the fruit of their lives. If the tree is not producing, the owner has the right to cut it down. If the people are not producing, what then?

This is not a new Biblical idea, even if this parable is relatively new to the wider body of scriptures. Prophets frequently spoke out to the people in times of trouble or times of moral decline. The Book of Isaiah came centuries before the life of Jesus, and yet there are similar messages.

[E]veryone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Again, we are in the realm of metaphor. There is no water or wine or bread.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

The people are laboring, one way or another. Their money cannot give them the bread that will feed them, that which in life truly satisfies their hunger. They will eat regardless of the specific meal, they will labor regardless of the task. Why not choose the right food and raise hands to labor for the right tasks? This is an invitation to the people to return to God.

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.

In both cases, the people are being asked to act. To turn back toward God, to repent their sins. Isaiah invites the people to return into covenant, the agreement between God and the people. Jesus uses the language of repentance, but the goal is the same – the people need to change.

Let’s change gears for a moment. Shift away from the Bible to the Gospel of the New York Times. Perhaps some of you noticed the stories this week about going to college. And not just getting into college, but buying your way into college. There were multiple stories about famous people attempting to bribe their children’s way into schools. Money was paid to alter test scores. Fake profiles were generated for athletic consideration, often in sports the students had never played. Varied ways of cheating fueled by ample cash and driven parents.

The focus had at times been shifted to a few actors in Hollywood, but this was a wide-ranging indictment. And by indictment, I do not mean the dozens of people charged. There are many levels to the problem. Obviously, families that paid such bribes are at fault. So are the admissions officers who undermined the process and the coaches who looked the other way, letting phony athletes into their programs. Taking someone else’s SATs is not terribly noble. And having the test proctors fix a few of the answers, well that is textbook bad. Lots of bad all around.

But should we stop there? Is that where the line of demarcation falls between cheating and playing the game? Everything else seem fine, a systematic embodiment of meritocracy? Are these the fruits we want from our fig tree? And how much manure did it take to get us here?

A couple of months from now, I will be going to my college reunion. I am suspiciously the only person at the reunion planning meetings with grey hair, so something is up. But is that a surprise? Looking young is one of those treasured qualities you get to show off at reunions. Looking young, dressing well. In years past, it was all about how hard we worked, how high we had climbed. How small the apartments were in Manhattan and how little time we had to do anything. Type A personalities on overdrive.

But with time, that eases up, it seems. The wisdom of middle age tamping down those excessively competitive tendencies. Tamping down or redirecting. When the project of our own lives lands, in one place or another, do we then seek to live vicariously through the next generation? Can we replicate our good fortune or, perhaps, do we get the do-over we might desperately crave?

Think back to our poor fig tree. What is its purpose? To grow figs, obviously. To give the owner the return on an investment of time and soil. Notice though that the owner was not even doing the work. It was the gardener. I am probably breaking through the intended metaphor with this, but was it ever the purpose of that fig tree to give that owner figs?

And what about a person? Is it their purpose to go to a certain school, to work at a certain job, to have a certain type of family, to live a certain life? Are deviations acceptable? Not a doctor, but maybe a lawyer. Not a lawyer, but maybe a minister – probably not that one. Is the measure of purpose assessed by meeting specific goals, like school or work or family?

How about this bit of parenting advice – I just want my children to be happy. I have heard that stated desire over the years. And yet somehow the expectations on children occasionally seem more about the parents being proud than the children themselves finding satisfaction.

Maybe this is a suburban thing, the hallmarks of communities of privilege. One of the great ironies of modern life is that people of means and privilege have the ability to spend more time with their children and yet that time if often spent being adjacent to children rather than with them. On the sidelines at games, in the front seat of a car on the way to the next activity. Planning the next handoff to a parent, grandparent, or babysitter.

Much of this blur of activities has to do with keeping pace, contending in the college admissions arms race. This is far short of bribing your way into Stanford, but a society built around the milestones of achievement will inevitably see occasions for cheating toward those goals. And if you are running in a race, it pays to know where you are going.

Where exactly are we going?

I am responsible for one event at my reunion: the memorial service. We gather to remember those who have died. About 50 classmates so far have passed away out of 1,600. A representative from the alumni association remarked that this was the largest number of dead she had seen at this aged reunion.

If you keep in mind that this is a highly educated group, often of higher economic means than the average American, it makes you wonder what is going on. I have tracked the deaths over the years and, in my admittedly inexpert assessment, a startlingly large number of my college classmates have taken their own lives. And such deaths are still happening.

A complex system of programs exists across the country, across the world really, to get students into places of higher learning. The right schools, the right sports, the right activities. One can question whether all the work is worth it from an economic perspective, but honestly that is not the crucial point for me. What is the social cost of the system? The psychological strain, the unbalanced sense of self-worth tied to the brand name of a university or college. And what happens to those who fail?

In these criminal cases about college admissions, the students generally are not aware of what their parents did. They did not know if someone paid bribes or manipulated the system. They did not know. And now they do. They know they did not get into these schools on their own merits and so does everyone around them. And so do the students who have since graduated after having used these corrupt college prep companies and counselors. Not getting into the college of your choice is disheartening. Finding out someone cheated to get you in might well be devastating. Feeling like an imposter becomes knowing you are an imposter.

Why do we have a system of educational success so fraught with anxiety, so full of hurdles and obstacles, so squarely opposed to what I might call a good and happy life?  If one were to be tempted to follow the advice, I just want my children to be happy, would it ever cross our minds to forbid them from going to college?

Probably not, because the ability to succeed in society has become entwined with higher education even when that education has no bearing on the occupation in question. I do not mean to disregard the value of education, but a college degree often has nothing to do with the education needed to succeed in a particular field, let alone live a good and happy life. No, I do not want everyone to abandon English majors for accounting. I am wondering if getting into college has been sold as a cure and has instead become something like a disease.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

The covenant between God and the people has two critical aspects, the vertical and the horizontal. The vertical is our relationship to God, the love God offers down to us and the love we in turn lift up to God. The horizontal represents the connections we have to one another. The families we grow, the friendships we make, the communities that we build. In other words, the love we share.

But what if those relationships are skewed by misguided purpose? In this case, what if our communities are built on a flawed model of higher education at the expense of all other paths. What if our friendships are strained by the competitiveness of this system and our need to keep up appearances of success.

What if our families are mobilized to meet expectations of achievement at the cost of pretty much everything else, such as time spent together in meaningful ways rather than near proximity. Call this a suburban concern, call it a first world problem. But in many ways, I would call it missing the mark.

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.

What is the purpose of a fig tree? Is it to give figs until it no longer can? Is its life to be measured by its fruitful bounty alone, then to be cut down to make room for a more productive tree in the garden? If the purpose of the tree is a harvest, what of people? People who are no longer productive? People no longer working, no longer having children? Never having had children?

What should a gardener do?

The lack of figs on the tree in the story has nothing to do with God wanting a good harvest to show for all the bother of letting us live. This is about the covenant, the relationship between God and the people and the people among themselves. What is the harvest of those relationships?

The story is not about one person sinning, but those people not living up to their obligations as a community. The sin of not loving, the sin of not caring. The sin of placing idols and images before God and before the love of each other. And our children, our beloved children, can become false idols. How? Because somehow along the way, we stop loving them for who they are and instead we begin worshipping what they might become.

My son remains my son when he is a truck driver. My daughter remains my daughter behind the counter of a coffee shop. And that love is not to be conditioned on future plans of higher education or better jobs. Loving them, not their achievements. Loving them, not their resumes. Loving them, not our roadmaps for their lives.

We are asked today in our readings to repent and to seek forgiveness. Repentance requires that we realize that there is a problem and that we do something about it. Forgiveness comes when we ask those affected to accept our apologies and in turn to offer us their grace. It is not a sin to want the best for those we love. But it may be a problem when we seek to bend our lives, and their lives, to transform them into what we happen to think is best. We might long for a better story to tell, but then it really has become about us rather than them.

The fruits of life do not always meet our expectations. Some trees will never give us figs. And that may be because they were apple trees all along. The work now is learning to love apples.

Amen.