March 20, 2022 (Third Sunday in Lent)

by Fr. Bob Glynn, S.J.

[This text is an automatically generated transcript.]

In 1997, I arrived at the International Airport in Lusaka, Zambia and was whisked away. For one of the most oh it for a lovely ride on a there was some tar between the potholes for three and a half hours into the middle of the middle of nowhere where I was to live and work and I wasn’t quite ready for some of the cultural shock. The greatest cultural shocks for me was there wasn’t anything there. There was no phone. There was no television. There was no library. It was remarkable what there wasn’t. But I lived in what was a very charming, I call it bungalow, because that makes it sound much more romantic than it was. And within the first two weeks of my being there because no one had told me that when I would arrive it would be four weeks before the quarter began. I sat and I thought of things to do. I read every book there was in the house. That was done. Take that off. Nothing further to do. I looked out the window a great deal. I walked around to see that yes, there was as little there as I imagined there was on my first impression. And so then lion came the sack. And I was living with two other American Jesuits and one of them said to me, Are you bored? I said, dreadfully. And he said, Well, you know you might be interested in taking care of the garden. Never in my life had that occurred to me as an interest anywhere or at any time. But at this moment I left with the idea there was something to do. So I said, Okay, well, what do I do now? I am a city boy. So I mean, I kind of looked in. I always think things grow by magic and are just delivered from the backroom where they’re growing them and Safeway into the place where you’re buying them. So I I went out and reconnoitered the garden.

Now the garden was heavy on this vegetable called rape, which I must say is kind of a downhill version of kale on a bad bad day. We had a lot of that and then some sorry, looking tomato plants. So I added my great skills here. So they’re just ended up being fewer of the right plants at that point. Then I looked around and I discovered what it was now many of you who are more culturally and horticulturally aware than I am I said, What’s that funny thing in the corner? And the preset? Oh, that’s a banana. I thought, well, there’s some hope here. Some hope. So I thought, okay, banana, it can’t be that hard. We have them in the supermarket all the time. So I went and I looked in the book, there was a very useful book by some British man who had grazers to the continent at one point about how to grow bananas. So all I got from this book was the thing beneath the ground is called the rhizome. The thing above the ground is called a sucker. And you need to put lots of water on this thing. Okay, so I put lots of water except that we lived in a climate much like this one. And so water was an iffy thing. So periodically, like every day just as the the banana might have had hope the water got cut off.

So I went along until bananas take a long time. Did you know that? Oh, they take a long time. A banana. Giving birth to a banana is like giving birth to a human child. It is nine months for bananas. So that first year, I kept waiting. I kept waiting. I kept waiting that banana sucker did not get pregnant at any point along the way. I was most upset. So then I thought well, let’s maybe get some advice on this besides from the useless British man. So I went around and I asked people who look like they might know something because they had banana trees. He said, What do I need to do so that I get bananas? And they said, Oh, Father, you need manure. Again, I must break this to you very, very gently. They do not have Home Depot. They do not have Lowe’s. So there I was. Thank God my mother couldn’t see me there. I was at this ranch shoveling manure into the back of the pickup truck. Well, I got that well, in case you ever need to know in case you have an arduous task like this. Yes, shoveling manure into the pickup truck is bad. Washing the remains of the things out of the pickup truck are much worse. Okay, just in case you ever need this important news.

So if he didn’t slam, and they did that, and then miracle of miracles, a while later this very beautiful kind of Red Bull dropped and some of the follow you have bananas. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Then of course we had the wait the nine months you know and bananas there this tricky thing because you know when you see them at Safeway or lucky you’re one of those places you go. They’re green. Yeah, they’re green on the tree on the sucker too. So I kept thinking, you think these things will get yellow? So I thought, okay, then I asked them and they said, oh Father, just cut it off and leave it in that sunshine. So I did that. Three months. It took me before they turned yellow. Guess what, this is a year only one is some bananas. Eight. They were this big. Apparently it was a species. I didn’t realize what variety or something. So then I thought, okay, it’s year three, and I’m not going back for the manure. So then I heard because by that time I knew who to listen to. I heard that you could go to the gym every now this is not the fun kind of January. This is a cotton generate. Okay, so I went to the content January and you could get the refuse from the January and you put it around and apparently this is great. Fertilizer. So I did that. It was another hot miserable day. I was very very well tanned. I will tell you that. So did that. And that year, okay. We the thing dropped. It was big I thought okay, now we have the recipe for success. And I thought okay, and I am going to bring Western technology now to this. I’m going to wait until the dumb bananas turn yellow. So I waited and waited and they do turn yellow. So I cut it off. I was very pleased with myself. I put them in the corner in the kitchen, this big thing of bananas. And next morning I came up and they had all split open. Because you’re not supposed to let bananas get yellow on the tree. There’s a reason and so out of each of these dreadful little bananas I got about this much that was edible.

Now you’re waiting on two for my success with this, aren’t you? Okay, sorry wait on. I was never successful. It was an unmitigated disaster from year to year. Hey you know what I thought about because I was thinking about these dumb figs today. And I you know, it’s funny. I actually liked the thing with the bananas. No, don’t tell anyone please. Okay, but I actually enjoyed it. Because it was just so much to it and kind of this grows and the beauty and then the mystery and the suspense and then the disappointment and all those things kind of tied up with it.

And I was thinking about these figs today. And they were bothering me a little bit. Okay, because this is land in case you had forgotten, right? This is land and this homily does have something to do with land in case you think no, he’s really gone off. It does have something to do with land. Eventually God will lead me to that point he hasn’t gotten me there just yet. Right. But fig tree thing. Like, who is this owner? And who is this gardener. And who is this fruit because often like we’re the fruit aren’t Wait, or were the branches and we’re bearing fruit? Who is the gardener? I’m guessing God is the owner. I’m guessing but it doesn’t work all that well because God already wants to rip out the thing and the gardener has to be much nicer than God is. So I was perplexed by this.

If we’re the bananas, and this is Lent and we’re supposed to somehow do something. It doesn’t work very well because bananas for those of us who are sometimes more generous about nonsense ate things. Bananas cannot think and cannot act of their own volition. So we can’t be bananas. And yet somehow we’re connected or figs or anything. We’re connected with this thing. And we treat Lent as though it’s this time when somehow either I am the gardener producing fruit that I’m not really sure how to do exactly. Okay. Or I’m the banana or the fig waiting to get right. And that all of this God is rather than demanding an unreasonable owner of the garden who is ready to rip out that tree in case I make a mistake and don’t bear good fruit.

Now that does not sound like our God. The message Jesus gives is repent. Now, repent does not mean do lots of things. Okay. We have taken often and the Roman Catholic Church is notorious for this the idea of Lent and really factored of all joy and hope and direction. Okay, because repenting is not about doing things that I should get out of a healthy self help book. We treat Lent often as though it is a self help book for making me perfect. Now, that’s what it is. It’s a waste. There is no such thing as a perfect banana. And no such thing as a perfect fake. They all get picked by birds. Let me tell you. It’s not perfect. But as long as I in some neurotic fashion, think that I am somehow serving the Lord by doing one of these crazy things that where I like I run around and I do this and this and this and I think yes, I am becoming rains. Then I’ve got a mess on my hands because I am becoming exactly what he does not want me to be more neurotic than when I started.

Instead, I am called to repent and to repent is to turn around and actually look at my life and not just my life, but my life in all its relationships and to see it actually see it, not how it might be as I move myself to the kingdom of perfection all under my own steam and my own wherewithal but that somehow I look at and through God’s grace I see. Well, it hasn’t been pretty all the time. But you’ve been with me. And in Lent, even though I refuse to recognize it the rest of the year in lent you and I are looking together at this banana or fig. And you and I are working together. And in fact, as I turn around and I see I see not just my relationships, but all those other people who are trying to grow these same damn bananas. We’re all doing it. But because we want to make it a competition, and I win that Lent because I managed to outlast everybody else and whatever stupid promise I made. I have managed to defeat the kingdom of God and poison the plant. And that would is what Jesus is worried about. That I will through my own determination, my own pride, my own I will do this and everybody else get out of my way that I will have defeated what it was he came to bring. He came to bring all of us somehow to be mixed together as owner and gardener and fruit in such a way that it’s impossible to extricate ourselves from each other. So that when we repent, we see not some crazy vision, not some idea of how wonderful I will become. But we see the Lord and we see that he just wants us to rejoice. He wants us not to kill each other, not to overwhelm each other and not to be victorious over each other but to share in a continual planting and cultivating and growing that goes without in.