Bearing Fruit
I confess that on Friday morning, I was once again wrestling with how to speak into this moment AND how to keep on track with a sermon series about our discipleship journey. The topic du jour is fitting for the season after Pentecost – a disciple is one who demonstrates the fruit of the Spirit.
Those fruit collectively are cited by Paul in his letter to the church at Galatia. They are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And the nuts and bolts of teaching that is pretty simple – when we are connected to the Triune God and attentive to the Spirit, our life resembles or produces those fruit.
We are people of experience and reason in addition to being people of scripture and tradition. And our experience this week is of a pandemic that is stealing lives AND is wearing on our last nerve. And our experience is of an anti-racist movement that is welling up to end discrimination – the kind of discrimination that is staring us in the face like police brutality against black and brown bodies, and the kind that is more subtle, like disparities in access to basic health care and good nutrition that compounds literally generations of accumulated stress and mourning and anger in black and brown lives. And our experience this week is of violence begetting violence. And injustice fomenting further injustice.
And so I have been sitting and thinking and praying. Wrestling. Like I do.
I think that for the first time this week, I understood Paul differently. Let’s back up and just review the basics of Paul’s story.
Maybe you’ve been there all along, but it suddenly dawned on me that Saul had been knee deep in minding the details of the law for a lifetime when he met Jesus on the road and was blinded. He was blind and scared and Jesus is speaking to him telling him he needed to set things right.
So he rather abruptly becomes a believer, gives himself over full repentance, walking away from where he was wrong and sharing the good news that is right. And one of his key messages through many of his letters is this - We are saved by grace through faith, not works.
I can sort of imagine the moment – Look, Saul, it’s not about these detailed rules and what to sacrifice when and where – it’s about believing that I am God’s son and I draw all to me to be part of God’s loving, grace-filled embrace….and when you figure that out, I think you’ll see again. (I mean, literally, I think you will SEE with your eyes once again.)
And that episode is MARKED by an experience of blindness and an experience of regained sight. And the experience changes Saul – in fact his name is changed and his worldview is changed and his behavior is changed.
And so in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he is mostly trying to settle yet another dispute about whether believers have to be circumcised in order to be part of this new tradition. Paul is once again telling them it is not about the myriad rules…
But…
It is about your experience with God.
It is not about all the rules - but you DO actually have responsibility – to be a good person, to do the right thing, to stay connected to God as your life source. To seek life beyond your own self, beyond your own body.
When you are focused on your own well-being, you are inclined to gluttony or greed or licentiousness.
But if you are attuned to the Spirit, following in Jesus’ footsteps, receiving the grace God has offered, then you bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
If you are attuned to the Spirit, things like love, joy and peace cause you to behave differently. The fruit of patience, kindness and goodness cause you to behave differently.
The fruit of faithfulness, gentleness and self control cause you to behave differently.
I am concerned that we might here these collective fruit as some docile, sleepy, I-get-my-Spirit-fruit-you-get-yours stupor that causes us to stay in our own corner, peacefully minding our own business. I am concerned that for years the church has nurtured a belief that what matters most is my personal relationship with the God who loves me rather than who I am in the world in light of that relationship.
Let’s wind back a bit to the two verses of the letter to Galatians that precede our reading for today (5: 13 – 15)
“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.”
I want to own that Paul uses the language of slavery a lot in his writing. Against the backdrop of the black lives matter movement, to use “slave” to describe a relationship is troubling. The NIV reframes the language – serve one another through love. But Paul is invoking a particularity in a word more closely and accurately translated as “become slaves.” He is pressing the important fact that we BELONG to one another.
Listen to that. We BELONG to one another.
Because if we live with that truth every day, we better be swimming in the fruit of the Spirit…because your very life depends upon mine. And my very life depends upon yours.
And so I have an interest in your connection to God and you have an interest in mine.
Because when we are connected to God through the Spirit, we are all living in the pursuit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
“If you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.”
Getting back to my ah-ha about Paul, I have to then look at his experience and wonder about my own. I have to think about how he turned and became something new. I have to think about how once he turned, he worked hard to help others experience what he had experienced….the grace that is in Christ and not in the letter of the law.
Practically speaking, turning from my bodily existence and connecting to life in the Spirit helps me to be my best. I want to help us all get grounded so that we can figure out what it means to be connected to the Spirit and what it means to bear fruit…
Surrounded by hard things right now, facing my own whiteness and a call to anti-racism, facing the hardship created by economic and healthcare disparities, I need to be my best…I need to be paying attention to being a presence of love and kindness, peace and self-control, justice and mercy in this season. So my discipleship journey – and yours – matters so much right now.
I was pondering last night – who am I when I am at my best?
The truth is, I am at my best when I am paying attention to my whole self – specifically my whole self as a beloved child of god – I am paying attention to my prayer life, my family life, my devotional life, my production, my rest, my eating, my moving, my breath, my recreation. My…re-creation.
And when I am at my best, I am able to hear what the other is saying. Practically speaking, that means I speak less. And I show up.
When I am at my best, I am able to be curious, ask questions, seek clarification and understanding. Practically speaking that means I take a pause and check myself.
When I am at my best, I don’t react with anger, with frustration. I react with love, and joy and patience and generosity. Practically speaking, that means I am not picking a fight on Facebook or in a meeting.
When I am at my best, I know that there is enough to go around – I don’t have to hold on to anything tightly because God is enough. Practically speaking, that means I make time for justice and peace differently. It means I reconsider how I use my time, my money, my energy.
When I am at my best, my heart is open and I can see the other differently. Practically speaking, that helps me see others as God sees them.
These works are not what save me. But they draw me closer to God and cause me to be better at loving my neighbor. They help me remember that we belong to one another. All of us.
Beloved, we are called to seek the Spirit’s guidance and presence. Not occasionally but daily and constantly. This is the journey that shapes us as disciples and helps us to be our best selves. And along the way, we begin to resemble the Oneness that Jesus invokes in his prayer to the Father in the Gospel of John:
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
Oneness is not without struggle.
Oneness is not going to be simple.
Oneness is not going to be pain free.
But we are called to oneness.
This is part of the discipleship journey.
It is why we strive for our best.
Onward. Forward.
May it be so.
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