Advent 1B Learning from the Fig Tree: Awake to Creation’s Signs
By Laurel Dykstra
The lectionary for Advent 1B is filled with communal lament, yearning for God, urgency, signs and portents in the natural and cultivated world, and a profound call to be present. These readings, particularly Isaiah and Mark come out of crisis and resonate with varied experiences of the global climate crisis including catastrophic wildfires and shifts in the onset of seasonal indicators like plants flowering and bird migrations.
Commentary
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Isaiah has many references to wild species from outside the urban environment and the greatest number of references to vines and vine-culture in the prophets. In Isaiah wilderness is an ambiguous place that is not always hostile. Hillary Marlow says that in Isaiah, non-human creation has a separate identity and an inherent positive value, in some cases God prioritizes the non-human world over humans.
These verses are part of a longer song/prayer of communal lament which is thought to come from the time after King Cyrus of Persia had defeated the Babylonians (539 BCE) and allowed Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem. Divisions, power struggles, and disputes over land erupted between and among elite returnees, those who had remained in the land, and those who had settled there from other places after the conquest of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. The scriptural context is one of communities in conflict under colonial power. These conflicts are particularly painful in light of the Israel-Gaza war.
The lectionary passage is a call out of alienation and crisis to powerfully experience God’s presence again. (A lament is not a reasoned argument.) That God should show mighty deeds in creation that awe and correct wrongdoers. The passage starts with adversaries outside the community but shifts to focus on “we and us” who do wrong and feel God’s absence. A people waiting for God blame God for their sin in God’s absence.
Two linked ecological themes in the passage are the abundant metaphors from the natural world which signal the presence of the Divine, or human responses to that presence, and the implication that sin or harm in the human realm results in disruption in the more than human world.
Verses 1 and 3. God controls natural elements -heavens and mountain, they respond to God (v. 1b). Israel is in the seismically active the Rift Valley Jordan River —so the people have experienced earthquakes. Earthquakes repeatedly associated with God’s presence and/or God’s judgment. (Job 9:6; Psalm 18:7; 68:8; 99:1; Nahum 1:5). At Sinai (Exodus 19:18). God’s presence was also felt fire and smoke and a shaking mountainVerse 2. Human response to divine presence is like brushwood kindled by fire, water boiled by fire -here desire for divine action is directed externally at the nations -ecosystem to ash, liquid to gas are profound transformations
Verse 6b -frail inconstant humans are like a faded leaf carried on a wind Verse 8-the speakers remind God of their kin relationship “you are our father” like clay in a potter’s hand. This clay/potter idea appears also in (Jeremiah 18) (Romans 9:19-24), a part of the earth and a God with hands, also evokes creation
Verses 10-12 The final verses of the chapter are outside the assigned lection but powerfully relevant. They contain the recurring (Isaiah 13, 23, Zeph 2, Jer 50…) prophetic oracle of desolation where fires or thorns and wild animals over-take the cities, palaces, and temples of the sinful. This can be understood as divine condemnation or the assertion that all empires fail and the more than human world reasserts itself.
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Like the Isaiah passage this is a lament from a community experiencing the absence of God, begging God to show up. Some say it dates from the Northern Kingdom after its fall to Assyria in 722 BCE. The psalm begins by addressing God as shepherd-king, a pervasive and repeated metaphor that bears unpacking and the lectionary omits verses 8-16 rich in imagery from the more than human world.
Verses 1-2 God is referred to as shepherd of Israel who leads Joseph like a flock. This is a repeated metaphor best known from Psalm 23 is rooted in interspecies relationship, care and interdependence but the word “enthroned” indicates that here it is a royal image, a version of the metaphor that has lost touch with the wisdom of the folks and the mutuality of shepherd-craft.
The lectionary gives us verses 1-7 and 17-19 of the psalm, missing completely the extended metaphor of the nation as a vine, first flourishing and nurtured then abandoned and threatened by wild animals and fire. This metaphor recurs in various forms in the prophetic tradition with themes of the God-to-nation relationship like an abundant plant thriving in a complex web of life, sometimes with garden/agriculture content, and the persistent presence of wilderness can be seen as either a threat of destruction or perhaps a promise of rewilding.
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This passage comes from Jesus’ longest speech in Mark, his final teaching to his disciples before the passion. The voice is Jesus’ but the subject is the destruction of the Temple in 70CE after the Jewish revolt against Rome, and event decades after his death. With the repeated use of the verb immediately conveying a sense of urgency. The Markan focus is particularly apocalyptic, not in the sense of promising a future crisis but revealing a current one: Jesus and the Way of discipleship reveal what is hidden, expose false consciousness/promises of empire.
Verses 24-27 this passage is called the “little apocalypse.” It is an apocalyptic theophany type scene (eg Enoch, Ezra) where the divine appears, with disruption in the natural world, particularly the skies, and delivers punishment or judgement, but the gospeller has shifted the emphasis from judgement to a gathering of the scattered people.
Changes in the sky -sun, moon, stars, heaven are (like climate change) examples of the predictable and reliable behaving in unpredictable ways. The darkened sky also figures in the crucifixion.
The human one, the son of humanity will come in clouds as in Exodus that great example of human and more than human responding together to social and economic injustice in a shared uprising.
People are gathered from the four winds an expression conveying the furthest possible distance, used to describe dispersal but particularly reuniting after exile.
Verses 28-36 From the fig tree learn its lesson is a beautiful expression of human attention to the more than human world. There is a vulnerability in the branch that becomes tender and puts forth leaves. The passage assumes that the hearer knows and is attuned to changes in season and that spring is good news. This is an example of what the Earth Bible Project calls the principle of Earth’s voice.
In the prophetic tradition God’s people are often represented by a fig tree/fruit (Hosea 9:10, Jer 8:13, Jer 24). In Micah 4:4, in the Messianic Era is imagined as peace and the modest prosperity of each household under their own vine and fig tree, unafraid. These verses are also a reversal or rehabilitation of the fruitless fig tree that is cursed in Mark 11:12-14, right before his cleansing of the Temple.
Verses 32-37 Repeated calls to be awake/alert/on watch appear four times in as many verses, this urgency is part of the Markan theological message.
These verses allude to the trope that recurs in various ways of God as a householder/vineyard keeper who goes away. In the parable the task of staying awake is delegated to slaves and doorkeepers, demonstrating the way that class and status determine who has access to sleep.
Evening, midnight, cockcrow, and dawn are all natural time markers that are referenced again in the crucifixion, as is the call to wakefulness in the disciples sleeping at Gethsemane.
Preaching and Teaching Ideas
Responding to Crisis
Much of the writing from this week’s lectionary is crisis literature -Isaiah, Mark and even the Psalm. Although the crises are different, they have elements that are similar to our experiences of climate change: violence, disruption of the current situation and fear about the future. Out of that uncertainty people feel the absence of God and long for God to show up tangibly and dramatically, and to fix what is wrong.
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Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and evangelical Christian calls for the end of the use of fossil fuels but she also encourages people to share stories about what we love and what we fear. Preachers and teachers can name or ask about what their communities fear in climate crisis or share their own fears. -loss of species, their children’s future, violence and system collapse, loss of what you have worked hard for?
Does it feel like God is absent in times of crisis? Do you wish that God would show up and fix things? What do you long for? Do you ever want perpetrators to be punished?
The lectionary passages draw from the prophetic and apocalyptic traditions -both of which are frequently over simplified and misunderstood in ways that are relevant to responding to climate change.
Rather than predicting the future the prophetic tradition points to the consequences of our current actions. Walter Bruggemann famously defines the role of the prophet to radically critique the existing order, to feel and express the pain that would otherwise keep us numb and immobilized, and energize us with imagination and hope for an alternative. When we tell our stories and express our climate grief this is part of the work of the prophetic.
In the tradition of wilderness prophets (like Myriam, Elijah, John and Jesus) the prophet encounters the Divine in wild places and when there is exploitation and unjust relationship in the human world, there are consequences and disruptions in the more than human world. Indeed creatures and natural elements participate with humans in resistance.
Who are prophets of climate justice for you? What sign acts do they perform? How do they galvanize hope and inspire action? What actions have you taken?
The apocalyptic (more about this below), rather than detailing end times is a drawing back of the veil to reveal what is hidden or denied in our current situation, particularly the lies of empire.
Consistently and repeatedly in these lections the call to those in crisis is to pay attention, to be alert, awake and attentive to the ways that the sacred, in the Gospels it is the way that Jesus, is breaking into our lives. Is showing up in unexpected ways. What are the signs of hope that you are seeing this Advent? How do you cultivate this noticing? What helps you to be fully present?
Where is transformation? Christ in our lives now? Time of climate crisis, what are we watching for? What signs do we notice?
Learn the Lessons of Creation
“From the fig tree learn its lesson” these words from Mark are a clear directive that part of the work of Advent is a deep attention to the more than human world. In the readings, the sun, moon, stars, clouds, brushfires and cooking fires, budding leaves and falling leaves are all signs and wonders that call us to pay attention, that point to something going on.
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In Mark, Jesus says to his disciples “as soon as you see the fig branch become tender and put out leaves you know that summer is near.” An assumption that attention to the living world was part of their lives. In Isaiah people who are far from God are like a faded leaf carried on the wind. What are the signs of changing season in your bioregion? Chickadees call? The first shoots of skunk cabbage emerging from the ground? Ripe blackberries? The leaves that reveal bright colours that are always there but concealed behind the green of chlorophyl? Flying geese? First snow fall? Has the timing of these signs changed with rising global temperatures?
The presence or appearance of the divine in scripture is frequently accompanied by changes in the skies. Have the skies changed where you live -in recent years, in the course of your lifetime? Can you see the stars at night or are they obscured by light pollution? Are storms and floods more frequent?
The darkened sun and moon in Mark and the wish in Isaiah that God would be known like fire igniting brushwood resonate with the experiences of wildfires out of control and smoke-filled skies in BC, Alaska, Saskatchewan, California and elsewhere. In many cases these are related to rising global temperatures but also to the commodification of forests for lumber and the eradication of Indigenous fire stewardship. Practices of cultural burning enhance ecosystem biodiversity, and reduces wildfire risk. The human response to divine presence is likened to brushwood kindled by fire, and water boiled by fire. The transformation of ecosystem to ash, liquid to gas are profound changes. How are we changed by our experiences of God? How do we wish others were changed?
The skills of observing tracking, noticing weather changes, seasonal changes are Advent practices that are also spiritual practices and skills. That deep attention and noticing is a kind of prayer.
Bayo Akomolafe, Yoruba philosopher, psychologist and author says, “We are a companion species, inseparable from the entangling ecologies that sustain us. When ‘we’ act, it is the whole that is acting – not the ‘human’. An irrepressible vibrancy of agencies, of fauna, of rock, of story, is implied in the seemingly isolated instance of choice. The wave does not crash ashore, the ocean does.” How can we come to better know our creature companions and allies in this work of care and resistance?
Can your community take on an advent practice of noticing together? What plants stay green all year? What are the plant species that make up your advent wreath? Do you know their names? Do you recognize them as kin and neighbour? Which are native and which are introduced? How are humans in relationship with these?
Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring credited with galvanizing the modern environmental movement, is rooted in just this kind of attention -this staying awake. Carson writes “One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
Apocalypse
Vocabulary for human-wrought impact on earth’s climate has moved in the past decade from “climate change” through climate crisis, climate emergency, climate catastrophe, and some are now using the term “climate apocalypse,” anticipating extreme weather, famine, war, and system collapse due to climate change.
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The passage from Isaiah has apocalyptic qualities and the passage from Mark is called the little apocalypse. While apocalyptic literature biblically is a response to crisis that focuses on the revelation or exposure of what is real and true and a reorientation towards God’s timeline, the Apocalyptic is popularly understood to mean pertaining to end times. This misunderstanding, or at least an over-emphasis, impacts how some Christians understand global climate change.
Some, including politicians and policy-makers believe that if the world will end with Christ’s fast-approaching return there is no reason to preserve or protect it. Thus unpacking the apocalyptic can have very practical consequences.
Mark 13 is often interpreted as speaking of the annihilation of the world, but read against the background of the destruction of the temple it can more accurately be understood as a shattering crisis that provokes judgement and results in a new era.
Christians can anticipate Christ’s coming however we understand the timeline, not in terms of the end of creation, but of a coming Kingdom and a renewed creation that we are called to be partners and participants in. This kingdom is both immanent and delayed, both coming and yet to come. And this kind of understanding can be a positive resource for environmental activism because it is a participatory kingdom. What we do now matters in the world to come. We have a role in building Christ's Kingdom and our acts of love and justice toward each other and towards creation matter profoundly.
Images of God from Nature
In scripture persistently and repeatedly human experiences of God, experiences of the divine, are accompanied by natural phenomenon: Heavens opening, changes in the sky, earth shaking, clouds appearing, fire burning. Or mediated by elements of the more than human world -a dream or a visitor under a special tree, a vision or a message by an important source or body of water. Often these portraits, especially those with changes in the heavens and storms are intended to show God’s power but they also reveal a deeper complexity about relationality. As we anticipate the Incarnation -God in human flesh, how do we understand these incarnations in the more than human world?
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In this week’s readings there are three images of God, all of which occur elsewhere in scripture, where God is imagined as a human interacting with the more than human world: potter, shepherd and absent landlord. These are complex images that bear unpacking. Especially in the season of Advent when we sing and recall the many names and titles for Jesus it is important that we ask ourselves and each other who and what we are waiting for?
In Isaiah, the speaker(s) remind God of their kin relationship “you are our father” and we are the clay in your hand. This clay/potter relations appears also in (Jeremiah 18) (Romans 9:20-21). Clay comes from the ground where rivers used to be. It is made up of minerals, and the remains of plant life, and animals which have been ground into fine particles by water over time -itself a powerful image. The idea of being molded by God’s hand evokes the creation story of Genesis 2. The idea of a potter who shapes, destroys and reworks is intended to show God’s power and control but the reality of working clay is that the potter cannot do whatever they want but must understand the material full of the memory of creatures and work within the limits and boundaries set by the clay.
Psalm 80 references the recurring metaphor of God as shepherd. There are elements of power and control in this metaphor -foolish sheep who are protected by the smarter, stronger shepherd. But So Sonopolous-Lloyd of Queer Nature has done some excellent work on the wisdom, accountability and ecological knowledge of sheep, particularly rotationally grazing dairy flocks. And like the clay/potter relationship there is a great deal of mutuality, and interspecies collaboration between human, animal and land.
The reference to God’s throne indicates that this is also a royal metaphor and as we anticipate the birth of Christ the King we need to keep in mind what a profoundly alternative vision the shepherd-king who trusts the wisdom of the flock might be.
The third image which appears in Mark and in the omitted verses of the Psalm 80 and elsewhere in scripture is the most troubling. God as an absent landlord, vineyard keeper, or gardener, one who has responsibilities for and ownership over land, who provides care and nurture and who withdraws that care.
Each of these ways of imagining God as a human with relationship to the more than human can be understood, if we imagine humans at the apex of a pyramid, as indicating power, value, and importance –models that are quite different from that of a baby cradled in a feed trough. But if we understand humans as part of a web of kin-relationships then the potter and shepherd are images that resonate with the child in a manger. And the absent God and our desire for reunion and for powerful action in times of crisis are core to this season.
Sources and Resources
https://www.queernature.org/criticalnaturalistblog/shepherdcraft
https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2017/11/30/wild-lectionary-learn-from-the-fig-tree/
https://www.greeningthelectionary.net/448484485.html
https://politicaltheology.com/the-politics-of-sleep-mark-1324-37-amy-allen/
https://youngclergywomen.org/cultivating-hope-climate-crisis-advent-1/
Author bio
Laurel Dykstra is the founding priest of Salal + Cedar Watershed Discipleship Community, a church that worships outdoors and seeks to help Christians in the lower Fraser watershed grow their skills for Climate Justice. Laurel’s latest book on interspecies loneliness, Wildlife Congregations will be out from Hancock House in late 2023.