I do not like olives (my apologies to my Mediterranean friends).  Ever since my first taste of one many years ago, I decided that they taste like aluminum foil.  (You ask how I know what foil tastes like?  That’s a story for another day…)  When I reach a place in scripture that talks about olives, I usually tense up and think to myself, “Yuck!”  It is no different when I read the lines in Romans 11 about the remnant of Israel:

“If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’ Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid.  For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off.  And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.  After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!”

As I read the passage through again, I realized that it was time for a new beginning.  I resolved to move past my disgust for olives and learn a little bit about how they are grown.  So, here is what I discovered in my self-guided tour of Olive Cultivation 101.

Cultivated olive trees cannot be propagated by seed.  What?  No worries, that was my response as well.  A cultivated olive tree is one that has been grown by using a cultivar.  Still at a loss?  So was I.  So, I grabbed my dictionary and learned that a cultivar is “a race or variety of a plant that has been created or selected intentionally and maintained through cultivation.”  It was now beginning to make sense – sort of!  A cultivated olive tree is one that is grown by the intentional choice (and care!) of the grower to ensure that the tree will produce the most fruit possible.  Since the number of cultivars reaches into the thousands, these cultivated trees come in many varieties.  I take from this that it is possible by selecting a prime cultivar to grow a prime olive tree.  While the wild variety of olive trees will grow, the success of the fruit cannot be guaranteed.

Imagine the inherent humor I saw in the following title of a web page about gardening maintained by the Australian Broadcasting Company:  “Totally Practical: Grafting Olives.”  (I gave about two minutes of thought about why the Australian Broadcasting Company hosted this page and then I moved on.)  While I was not so sure about the practicality of grafting olives, I went ahead and read the article.  As the author explained the process of getting a poor seedling to produce better fruit, I was particularly interested in the last sentence of the article:  “The tree will be a biological copy of the variety that supplied your scion wood and its fruit will be vastly superior to any produced by the original olive seedling.”  The scion is the twig from the good seedling that is used for grafting.  Feeling well-equipped to grow an olive tree, I summarized from my crash course in olive grafting that in order to get a bad seedling to produce better fruit I should graft in a piece of twig from a tree that is doing quite well.  Got it.  Now that I understood how grafting occurs in natural sense, I was better prepared to understand the significance of being grafted in to the good root of God despite the fact that I am wildest of wild olive shoots.

That’s just it:  in God’s goodness and kindness, He chooses to let a wild olive shoot like me be grafted into his family because of His choice to send Jesus to be my cultivar.   Revisiting Paul’s words in Romans 11, he remarks, “…you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree…”  The only way this wild olive shoot of a person can find any redemption is by being broken off from its root of sinfulness and by being grafted into the one root full of pure, redeeming sap – the blood of Jesus.  Contrary to nature?  You bet!   No olive grower would ever consider using a twig from a bad seedling as a scion.  In doing so, the grower would not be promoting the growth of the best fruit possible.  Yet, we have a High Priest who is our advocate – a master olive grower who sees the big picture.  I think it’s time for me to embrace the beauty of grafting olives.