Proper 19B’24 The Fruit of the Spirit: Introduction
15 September 2024
Mk.8.27-38; [Gal.5.18-28]
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
O God, you have created us and you sustain us: Grant us your grace, that in a world filled with chaos and hate we might bring forth the fruit of your Holy Spirit, through Christ, and in Christ. Amen.
We have a couple of Crepe Myrtle trees in our front yard, and normally by this time of year they are both loaded with beautiful white blooms, but not this year. I’ve been really disappointed, there’s not a single bloom on either one of them. The mystery was cleared up by a sprinkler system technician who had dropped by to do some work on the sprinkler system. He asked if we used a lawn service, when I told him that we did, he blurted out, “Are they going to let your trees die?” He pointed out that there were slowly being killed by white aphids, insects that suck the tree’s sap and leave behind a black residue. We called the lawn care folks who came out and treated them and I can see a couple of blooms on it now and they look like they are doing better.
Jesus talks about trees and plants quite a bit in the gospels and uses them as metaphors for the spiritual life. The goal in gardening is to have healthy and fruitful plants, and the goal of the spiritual like is for us to be spiritually healthy and to bear fruit.
We have just finished a sermon series on the seven deadly sins and we have taken a closer look at how these sins and others can dampen, stifle, and suck the life out of our spiritual lives. The message translation makes this crystal clear in Galatians: “It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cut-throat competition; all -consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.”1
The good news as we have also heard about is that God wants to take these behaviors and habits that suck the life out of us and replace them with virtues like generosity, gratitude, diligence, and so forth. I have been glad to hear from several folks about how they have experienced release from some of these sins and the positive benefits they are experiencing!
Besides these virtues, God has more gifts for us to help make our lives fruitful and what are they? Look in your bulletin and you will see a beautiful list that hangs on the wall of the dining hall at Camp Mitchell – the Fruit of the Spirit. There are nine of them and they are also listed in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and temperance [which means self-control].”2 Again, these fruits are made crystal clear in The Message translation: “What happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard – things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.”
Well, how do we get these fruits, what do we have ‘to do’ in order to get them? This is where bad religion can be a hindrance, again picking up in Galatians: “Legalism is helpless in bringing this about.” The last thing any of us need is a cosmic sized “to-do-list!” As author Jonathan Cruse points out “St. Paul calls this list the ‘fruit of the Spirit,’ as opposed to the ‘accomplishments of the Christian.’3 Jesus himself, let’s his disciples in on the secret of bearing the fruit of the Spirit when he told them and us: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”4 In a phrase this means staying connected, not by rule keeping or following regulations, or observing rituals, but by staying in a relationship with Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
Do you remember ever having an idol back in your teen years? Often this was an actor or a musician, or a sports figure. We bought posters of their image, we bought magazines that told their stories, we bought their albums, you wore our hair like they did, we wore clothes like theirs – we wanted to be them if we could. Although adolescent in its perspective, this points to what a disciple of Jesus tries to do, we read about what he said and did, his teachings, and sermons, from them we learn how he treated people, especially those who were different from him, we are invited to practice spiritual disciplines and to find ways to ‘hang out with Jesus’ to let him into our conscious awareness as we go about our days and nights.
Healthy and true religion seeks to point us toward and to connect us to Christ in this kind of relationship. As we are with Christ, and Christ is with us, the fruit of the Spirit starts to grow and we become more and more like Christ. It is beautiful when these fruits are manifested in the lives of real live people, in day-to-day life.
I saw an example of this in the revenue office the other day when we were getting my daughter’s driver’s license. An older woman clerk had been assisting a lot of people and several of the patrons had gotten huffy and impatient with her. I could tell she was growing tired of the hectic day and the rudeness, I started to wonder when she was going to blow!
When the person just before us got up to the counter there were a lot of details (more than usual) that the clerk had to try and deal with. She patiently took care of the patron, and after the details were all handled the patron asked the woman clerk to look them in the eye, she did and when their eyes met, the patron said, “thank you for being so kind to me.” I was standing close enough to see the tears well up in the clerk’s eyes.
The Holy Spirit showing up in an insanely busy revenue office, where the staff were overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated, reminding a tired and faithful clerk that the Spirit was still shining through them with patience and kindness. How glad this must have made God to see the fruit of the Spirit shining through this woman who was stationed in a dismal place. May we stay connected with Christ so that this fruit of the Spirit can grow and be made manifest in us. Amen!
1 Galatians 5.18-21 The Message translation
2 Galatians 5 NRSV
3 Jonathan Landry Cruse, The Character of Christ: The Fruit of the Spirit in the Life of Our Saviour {The Banner of Truth Trust: Edinburgh, 2023} p.2
4 John 15.5 nrsv