Letters from Paul—Fruits of Spirit: Jer. 17: 5-8; Gal. 5: 16-26
A friend of mine should have been a contestant on “Kids Say the Darndest Things” as a child. One Sunday he went to church as a sweet, innocent 5-year-old and asked for a prayer request for his family because his mom was trying to kill them. The shocked Sunday School teacher asked what he could mean. He said, “Well…Daddy said mom put enough garlic in the mashed potatoes to kill us! Pray for my family.” The next week, he came back and say pray for his dad. When asked why, he said an animal was hurting him. When pressed a little more, he said, “Mom said daddy’s hairpiece looks like a dead ferret. Pray for my daddy.” My friend’s parents were filled with the fruit of the spirit known as patience.
One of the biggest struggles with this list to the Galatians is looking at it as a grand checklist. I remember my grandfather liked to watch Rev. John Hagee. At one point he did a sermon with this giant billboard. On one side was Satan and Hell on the other side was Jesus and Heaven. It had the sins listed on the Satan side and the fruits of the Spirit on the Jesus side. Then he proceeded to go through and define each of these sins so that you felt guilty of it no matter what. Then he went through the fruits of the Spirit in such a way that you felt like you had generally failed them regardless.
Friends, this isn’t a checklist or a sliding scale assessment. Paul starts this portion of his letter with the most important words of this scripture, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives.” Too often we get caught up in all of these details. Am I selfishly ambitious? Did I cause dissension? Am I envious or jealous? Did I quarrel? Wait, I did, and oh no, I’m going to fail the holiness test because of this! These sins and fruits of the Spirit are meant to be examples. They are not your grocery list for Heaven’s gate.
What Paul is getting at a bit more is how do we orient our lives? A pastor friend of mine said, “You can tell the nature of a person by what piques their interest the most in life.” If a person wrestles with addiction, they will bend all of their time towards fulfilling the desires of that addiction. If they wrestle with doubt, they will spend all of their time bending their behavior and doings towards filling the emptiness that an unhealthy doubt brings. But as people of faith, we are to be consumed by the goodness and the love of God.
I remember a powerful demonstration during the closing arguments of a trial. The defense attorney put three cups of water in front of the jury. They were crystal clear, perfect cups of cold water. Then he talked about holes in the evidence and places where the witnesses and physical proof was lacking. To each cup he added some dark coffee until that crystal clear water was a dirty brown mess.
Paul doesn’t give us a checklist, but he does give us a call to ponder what fills our lives and consumes our time, and whether it is something filled with the goodness of God. That’s why he talks over and over about this competition between “sinful nature” and “God’s Spirit.” Paul was a very bright line kind of guy. There was nothing which allowed for a partial following of God. Paul was clear to say either you fill your life with God’s love and goodness, the Spirit, or you muddy the water, if you will.
That’s why Paul wraps up with this: “Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.” The examples from our lives that we are living by the Spirit are shown in how we practice love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. As an attorney, I’m required to present evidence in court to prove my case. If we think of our claim to following Jesus as a case to be proven to the world, Paul tells us that these are the examples, the evidence and testimony, which show our faith.
Here’s why we cannot live these as a checklist. We are too human to get them all right all the time. Faith is about living into grace and not aimlessly seeking perfection. There are times we may not be so loving and gentle, and our sarcastic snark wins the day. There are times we lose our patience. We can be robbed of our peace. And if you put anything with chocolate in front of me, I will lose all semblance of self-control. As the writer Oscar Wilde famously said, “I can resist anything but temptation.”
Instead of a checklist, we have a directional guide. I spent a lot of time the past two days at the Regional Assembly pointing directions. Bathrooms are down the hall. Parlor is over there. Fellowship hall requires your walking shoes. This is what Paul says the Spirit does for us. As we seek to follow Jesus in this world, we orient ourselves to the direction where God’s wisdom and the Holy Spirit lead us.
In a way, the fruits of the Spirit are both evidence and gifts. They are evidence in that they are the final product of what we claim to believe, the living testimony of our desire to follow Jesus. But they’re also gifts. It is a gift to follow peace and not hostility. It is a gift to follow gentleness instead of anger and selfishness. It is a gift to seek real, true, and abiding love instead of temporary affection and pleasure. It is a gift to live with self-control and not all the wildness of one’s youthful partying. As we go day by day, we learn how to walk in faith, following Jesus, where the Spirit of God directs us to go.
As you know, we had the Regional Assembly here this weekend. There were close to 200 people here on Saturday. Between the week-long merciless training for the legal work and the assembly starting right on top of it, I’m ever thankful for the miracles of Ibuprofen and coffee. But there was also something powerful in hearing stories of faith, of folks who lived experiences where the fruits of the Spirit truly became the evidence of God moving in and through other people.
There were points when a toilet needed to be plunged, part of the barbecue was late, the business meeting went a bit…well…somewhat…long. It would be easy to expect irritation, outbursts of anger, quarrelling, hostility. I’ll stop there because I am pretty certain there was no impurity, immorality, idolatry, or sorcery. But instead of grouching, there were people filled with goodness, patience, gentleness, love, peace, joy, and all these things. This is how you live in fellowship as God’s people.
There may be times of testing. My friend, as a child, had a mouth that could test any parent’s deepest patience. If you said it in front of him, it was going to be repeated elsewhere. But thanks be to God we don’t measure our faith on the fearfulness of a checklist for perfection. We live in grace, and we live to proclaim in and through our faith and our lives the evidence of God’s Spirit within us. So may you go from here today to live the fruits of the Spirit in your family, in your community, and in this world.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/1133988251130685