As a progressive, I believe there are many names for God and many ways to God; this article reflects one of those ways. Take from here what works for you. Celebrate life with joy and peace!
How quickly the seasons make their full circle and the rhythm of life continues. As many of you know, I like weather! I grew up in Wisconsin, and this past week while we had record breaking 90-something degree weather they had a cold and rainy week in the 40s – 50s! Brrr!
The rain is slowly soaking in the ground and melting the frost and now the farmers are out in the fields with their plows, tilling over that dark, rich soil getting it ready to plant corn and soybeans, barley and hay. Spring is beautiful!
Growing up, we had a cherry tree and an apple tree in our backyard. Oh, I loved to see the trees in full blossom; a sign that soon fruit would be starting to grow. Many of you have orange trees and lemon trees and avocado trees in your yards. How nice!
It doesn’t matter what kind of fruit tree, they are all fruit. Fruit is a mechanism for carrying seed. Fruit is nature’s way of ensuring that seeds are widely distributed, the fruit is eaten and the seeds are left somewhere else to grow; just like the parent plant producing the same fruit.
How many of you remember when San Diego and Southern California was filled with orange groves, acre after acre! Now the groves have moved north and east producing huge crops!
Paul, in our reading this morning, talks about a crop of fruit too. He isn’t talking about apples and oranges; his fruit is qualities, attributes like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And he calls this the fruit of the Spirit.
Now, as you know, there’s most always a story behind a story. Paul didn’t just write this list of good qualities out of the blue. He wrote it as part of a letter to the Christian Church in Galatia, which was either the Roman Province of Galatia, or a much smaller area that was called Galatia long before the Romans came to rule. It really doesn’t matter which it was at this point; the point is that the Galatians had a problem.
They wanted to follow Jesus and the teaching of Jesus, but some of their teachers thought that in order to do that, they must also keep the Jewish law. They were teaching that they must become Jews first and then Christians.
Well, Paul was Jewish himself and he knew that this wasn’t necessary. He himself was both. However, he was beginning to let go some of the legalistic laws when they became barriers to sharing God’s love.
Paul wrote that the law was good while it lasted, but now that Jesus has come, it’s all changed. You don’t need to be bound by the law anymore, “for freedom, Christ has set us free” as he writes at the beginning of chapter 5.
As we stay connected to God and as we seek the realm of God and a closer relationship with God we are filled with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit of God, Ruach (Hebrew), the breath of Life, the feminine attribute of God, fruit of the Spirit grows in us.
You’ll produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And then I love the next line: against such things there is no law! There is no law against such things! Freedom!
Now, let’s get real here for a minute! If I get angry and bite someone’s head off, have I lost the Holy Spirit? If I get jealous or anxious am I disconnected from God? Absolutely not! To me, it means I’m still a work in progress. The fruit of the Spirit is still growing in me; it hasn’t reached full maturity.
So, in order to grow we need to stay connected to the life source. The fruit needs to stay connected to the branch. We need to water and nourish the fruit to grow to full maturity.
Is Paul being idealistic here? Is there anyone who continuously lives in the full fruit of the Spirit 100 percent of the time? I haven’t met anyone like that yet. As we stay connected to God, we gradually develop and grow these qualities.
You can’t go and watch an orange being made; fruit grows. It takes time. It’s the farmers and the growers who produce fruit, not factories or mills. The farmer, or the gardener, works hard to protect the fruit trees, and see that they aren’t eaten by pests, or get too dry, and that the trees have been pollinated so that the fruit can grow; but in the end, they have to be patient, and wait for the fruit to grow and ripen.
So do we have to be patient. Oh wait, that’s one of the fruit of the Spirit!
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, reminds us of the “means of grace” of prayer, the Holy Scriptures and Holy Communion. He point out, in his famous sermon on “The Means of Grace” that these things aren’t powerful in and of themselves but only insofar as they bring us toward God.
The closer we can stay to God, the more fruit will grow in us. Jesus told us as recorded in John 15: “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.”
I grew up in a faith tradition in the Pentecostal church that being filled with the Holy Spirit was a continuous process not a once and for all thing.
Faith is a journey. We are all on our spiritual path. And our path might not look the same as someone else sitting right next to us. That’s OK. Our spiritual path is between us and God. We are to work on our own path, not our neighbor’s path.
I encourage you to stay connected to God. And in that connection, let these fruit qualities grow love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
We can’t make them. We can try to fake them. We can only grow them. Amen.
