March 11, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

Exodus 3: 1-15 & Luke 13: 1-9

In trying to create a story for themselves, the remnant of what had been the province of Judah before its Babylonian period imagined that one of its founders – perhaps an alien Egyptian by birth – somehow rose to a position of leadership among their ancestors, a position so exalted that it had to have been by divine appointment. Prior to that advancement, as the document known as “Exodus” has it, Moses was working for his father-in-law as a sheepherder. I have never yet known a man who was content to work for his father-in-law, or not for very long. The Exodus writer imagined that Moses was lifted out of that drab vocation to free his adopted people from bondage. The story says it was slavery in Egypt. In the writer’s own experience, it might have been whatever the Jews endured in their Babylonian period.

The Exodus writer wanted us to understand that his character Moses had hidden talent that went beyond the task of herding ovine creatures. Events and Moses’ own ambition would make him a leader of human creatures. Much of the Exodus document is the story about how Moses became what essentially he was. – That story was re-told in starkly different terms by Luke along with a weird call to contrition having to do with ritual murder and accidental death. Where Luke was going by that murky, labyrinthine way was to the parable of the fig tree in which Luke depicts a horticulturalist who planted a fig tree for the obvious reason that he wished to harvest its fruit – a very valuable commodity in the Middle East then as now.

The horticulturalist was mad at his fig tree because, despite his attention to it, figs came there not. His assistant was a tad more patient, saying, “Give it some more time. But if it doesn’t become what it actually is, cut it down.”

Moses and the fig tree. The first was imagined to have become what he was in essence: a great and effective leader, whose stewardship would issue over time in a body of law that would give direction, justice and purpose to a people. The second was imagined to have failed to be what it was in essence: a fruit-bearing tree. The bible writers’ fiction did not go so far as to admit Moses to the fabled Promised Land – a curious omission, if not an unjust one. Luke’s parable does not tell us if, after the special attention given to the non-bearing fig tree, it finally produced the desired fruit. Did it take its long-term place in the orchard of its master, or did it become fuel for his cooking fire? That’s what we’re supposed to wonder.

Underlying both of these stories is the educated assumption that every creature under heaven, as the writer of Ecclesiastes might put it, has a purpose in and for its existence. The further up the food chain we go, the more urgent the playing out of purpose seems to become. Our children are tested for intelligence quotient, proficiency, ability and inclination. When we get the results, we automatically have expectations of them because we think we know that of which they are capable, and we want them to become doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs. And we become frustrated if they do not.

When we go to doctors with aches and pains and troubling symptoms, our expectation is that they will know or eventually work out what it is that ails us and fix it. We want our doctors to be the physicians and surgeons that they are. When we consult an attorney or a plumber or a furnace man or an auto mechanic, we bring problems we can’t fix to those who have supposedly become what their titles suggest. And when we lose in court, or the faucet still leaks, or the furnace still malfunctions or the car continues to stall out, we have the same reaction as the horticulturalist who bought, paid for and planted the fig tree. We are frustrated because our investment has come to naught.

Here’s my little story. As a lad, I was “given” piano lessons. My father meant them as a gift. I thought they were a huge pain. I practiced as little as possible. And when I decided to play, I used my own weird fingering technique, harmonies and rhythms. I’ve told you before that one of my piano teachers committed suicide, though her motivation to that desperate act was never traced to the madness my being her pupil must have contributed. Some people who know what they’re talking about have heard me play “at” the piano and have observed that I might have been a really fine musician. The key words there are “might have been.” Who would want them etched into his or her grave marker?

Moses could have gone on tending his father-in-law’s sheep and retired with all the mutton he could eat. The guy’s fig tree might have failed beyond the point of his patience and have joined the kindling pile. – That’s not how the story of either should have ended. Nor is it how your story or mine should end. I am a failure as a musician, but at least not at other things. Are you succeeding in becoming what you are? That’s a question we really need ask ourselves just about every day.

Though I loathe most of his Victorian Age poetry – and, in the case of what I am about to quote, his uncritical piety – I cannot help but think of this telling line from Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto”: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

The idea is that Moseses should Mose, and fig trees should bear figs. Or why should either take up space?

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.