The Manure Story

“‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” – Luke 13:6-9

“The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profound relationships.” - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Dave and I wrote letters for months before we first met in person: he from California, I from Boston. After we finally met in person (and I told him I felt “neutral” when he expressed interest), we began talking on the phone. One day years into our marriage, I found an old notebook of his from med school, and scribbled into the margins, next to “basic immunology functions and disorders of the immune system,” were notes for our phone conversations: “be silly. Have fun. Flirt.” At the bottom of the page, below “septicemia, Hep B, TB, meningitis,” a paragraph: “Don’t expect too much, or demand any promises, affirmation, time, attention—it’s a free gift from her to me, God’s gift of companionship, fellowship, and friendship. Don’t think too far ahead.”

Nowadays, he and I are more liable to text than write letters or call, sometimes even from one room of the house to another. Back then, neither of us had text, much less whatever dating app is trending, and I can’t help but think there was something valuable in the slower pace that forced us to take. We live in an instant society, and I appreciate certain conveniences as much as the next person, but it can cause changes we hardly realize. Rather than allowing more time for rest, our efficiency increases what we’re expected to produce. Boundaries between home and work blur. I find myself getting upset if someone drives below the speed limit, when I see the rainbow pinwheel on my computer, or when I can’t get anything in the world shipped to my front door within two days.

Dropped cold into this chapter, without any kind of context or prelude, is this curious parable, which Eugene Peterson calls “the manure story.” He writes, “Manure is a slow solution. When it comes to doing something about what is wrong in the world, Jesus is best known for his fondness for the minute, the invisible, the quiet, the slow—yeast, salt, seeds, light. And manure.” Manure is dead or unwanted organic matter, which works into the soil to fertilize it, adding nutrients, increasing microbial growth, making it richer so it can bring life. It doesn’t require anything but strategic placement and time. It is unhurried. It is silent: as Saul Bellow writes, “The more you keep your mouth shut, the more fertile you become.” It is a submission to the workings that bring death to life.

It is completely contrary to our impulses, this kind of working. We are more like the man who says, cut it down! And less like the vinedresser who says, let it alone. This word for “let alone,” Greek aphes, means “to let go, let it be,” but interestingly, is also translated “forgive,” as in the Lord’s prayer in Luke 11:4: “and forgive us our sins.” Not long after Jesus shares this parable, we see it playing out in the events of the cross. We hear another violent indictive: “Crucify him!” And we hear a similar bid for life in Jesus’ words: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

God is a God who acts, but he is also the God who waits. His purposes, the workings of the gospel and of resurrection life, the delight and gifts he gives us, can sometimes only be realized and received when we are willing to let it all work slowly into the soil of our lives. We tend to want to control, to direct, to act, when what we really need to do is listen to the vinedresser. And sometimes the answer is to let it alone. To let the manure work. To give it more time.