Fruity

Scripture Reading

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Luke 13

6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the man working the vineyard, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ 8 He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”

Kids to the Knowing Place

Introduction: Just by looking.

A few years ago I was at an event in a big room, not unlike this one, filled with a bunch of people.

A friend of mine had a sister who was visiting, and she was across the room from me, about 20 or 30 yards or so.

At a break in the conversation, she yelled from across the room “Hey J! How long were you in speech therapy?”

Which…was odd.

Indeed, I was in speech therapy for a few years when I was a kid.

Just enough to really get to work on my S’s.

I think I was in for maybe a year or two...

And certainly at the point in my life she asked, it was not something I thought about at all!

Speech therapy did what speech therapy does, it made it second nature to me. I just speak, and it comes naturally now.

But…how on earth did my friend know that?

I would have been in speech therapy 20 years or so earlier.

I didn’t spend a whole lot of time around my friends sister at all.

How could she know?

Well it turns out, she herself was a speech therapist.

Even from all the way across the room, just by watching my lips form the words I was saying, she knew that I had been corrected at some point along the way.

She knew because she knew what to look for, even in the things that had been long engrained in me.

The Text:

On a personal level

Jesus asks a difficult question of us in this parable:

Are we producing fruit, or are we just wasting space?

If we’re being nourished, if we’re being fed, if we’re being poured into by the gardener.

Is there anything to show for it?

Are we producing?

And we have to be careful here:

Our western capitalist minds can take “producing” to some pretty dark places.

We can turn this faith that was meant to be nourishing and cultivating for our souls and turn it into a hustle-culture rat race in a second.

But yet, Jesus also notes that there should be something to show!

Someone who is engaged in this faith, as the gardener has been tending to the tree, should have something to show for it.

If not, we’re just taking up resources from the other trees that could be producing fruit.

So perhaps, we ought to get clear on one more point:

What do we mean by fruit?

Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit in his letter to the Galatians.

Love

Specifically in this case, this is the kind of love that puts other people first.

Do you love others as much or more than you love yourself?

Joy

I have this theory born out from years of research:

While I’m riding my bike, I’m the happiest guy on the planet.

But when I’m riding on the trails around my house, and passing untold number of joggers and runners, they are never smiling!

Except for my friend Tim.

Tim is a marathon runner and the coach of a local cross country team out by me.

And Tim is just so full of joy!

The man is never not smiling, and offering everyone he passes a hi-five.

Tim reminds me of that line from Chariots of Fire: “When I run, I feel His pleasure.”

What do we take joy in?

Peace

It’s getting trickier, isn’t it?

Our world is far more interested in being right than we are in promoting peace.

Peace is a secondary concern to almost everything else in our world.

Patience

In a world of Amazon same-day delivery and Door Dash groceries, it might be fair to say that we’ve lost our sense of patience.

This by the way is one of the fruits of the Spirit that Jesus is pointing to directly in this parable:

If you are working on someone in your life that you wish you could see growth and fruit on, are you willing to be patient with them on that road, or will you cut them down at the first sign of trouble?

Kindness

Again, a kind of waning virtue in our society today.

In fact, in recent days on the news, I actually heard someone use “Mr. Rogers” as an insult toward someone.

Imagine that!

Mr. Rogers is the thing that we insult each other with now?

What would it look like to be the kind of people who were kind above all, even when no one else was on board with it.

Generosity

I can pretty well size up how seriously a brother or sister in Christ takes their faith by how well they tip their wait staff.

But this can cover some other areas of life too.

Are you generous with your time?

Are you generous with your praise and admiration of other people?

Are you generous with your attention, particularly with those you love the most?

Faithfulness

Loyalty means a lot to me.

If you tell me you’re on the team, are you really going to be faithful, or are you going to slip back into old patterns and habits at the first sign of trouble.

Are you going to ride in to this Christian faith all the way, stick with it, or are you going to let the old way of life keep hanging around?

Gentleness

This Greek word could also mean humility.

Are you the hero in all of your stories?

Are you interested in other’s successes more than your own?

When those around you require correction, are you gentle in that, or are you aggressive and bitter?

Self-Control

Look, I wrote this part of the sermon in a donut shop, so I don’t really want to talk about this one...

These Fruits take some cultivating!

While the gardener advocates patience with the fig tree, he isn’t content to let it keep doing whatever it’s doing.

All the circumstances that this particular tree has been going through have brought it to this point of bareness.

So the gardener needs to change the circumstances.

Dig back around it.

Move the distractions out of the way.

Take anything that isn’t helpful in producing the fruit away from the roots of the tree.

What is it that keeps you from producing the fruits of the spirit?

If it’s greed, cut it back in favor of generosity.

If it’s bitterness, cut it back in favor of kindness.

If it’s white hot rage, cut it back in favor of love.

Put manure on it.

Augustine wrote on this passage, and was subtle: “The manure in this scripture is a sign of humility.”

Having crap dumped on your life is a bit humbling, isn’t it?

But like the soils sermon a few weeks ago, sometimes that’s what’s required to cultivate good fruit in us.

Could it possibly change the way we view the difficult, tiresome, crappy things in our lives?

That they are actually working out for our good?

Could we make these fruits of the spirit second nature?

I want to be able to spot a Christian from across the room.

Not because they are wearing a Jesus t-shirt or because they invited me to church.

But because I see the fruits of the spirit in them, love, peace, patience, self-control.

But actually, what I want even more is to be the kind of Christian that others can spot from across the room.

I want to be kind in a world full of bitterness.

I want to be a peacemaker in a conflicted and anger addicted world.

I want to be generous to the point of other people thinking I’m foolish.

I want to be about love the way I am about making an S sound at this point in my life. Second nature.

On a corporate level

The vineyard as Israel.

In the prophet Isaiah, we hear again and again a parable of a Vineyard, which stands in place of the country of Isreal.

Isaiah speaks of the vineyard as kind of broken down, messed up, un attractive.

But one which God will break down, and build back up again.

This was such a part of the national consciousness, that as soon as Jesus in our passage today said “Vineyard,” his listeners would have jumped right to a nationalistic understanding.

He’s talking about the country.

The Fig Tree has no place in a Vineyard…but it’s a representative of the religious leaders.

I didn’t catch it the first couple of times that I went through this passage, but isn’t it odd that a vineyard, which typically grows grapes and other things that grow on vines, has a fig tree in the middle?

The fig tree was a symbol of both the nation of Isreal, but more specifically it was the logo and symbol of the religious leaders at the temple, the priests and levites and such.

So while we can read this story on a personal level, to see how it was meant to impact our own personal relationship with Christ, this text originally had a different kind of question behind it?

So how could a Church be more fruity?

Are our religious institutions producing fruit?

Are churches capable of displaying the fruits of the spirit?

Are collections of believers able to be fruity?

Point to the Fruit!

Exceptional Friends

I asked both the staff and our Wednesday night Bible study where they saw fruit here at Beulah, and our Exceptional Friends rose right to the top in both groups.

I’ve attended a few times with our friends, and I always try to stop by when they’re meeting.

I have never been met with anything less than love, joy, patience, kindness, generosity, and faithfulness by that group.

And in fact, so many of you have told me that when our friends are able to ring here in worship with us, we as a congregation get the same overwhelming flood of joy and love, don’t we?

Small Groups

I have been meaning to get around to all the small groups of Beulah since I got here.

And I have to admit, there are still a few that I haven’t made it to!

If you are looking for a small group to fit in to, to find a sense of belonging here in the Church, there is something here for you!

Because the ones I’ve been to, they have some fruit being produced too.

I have seen generosity in our small groups, whether it’s looking out for the needs of the group in difficult moments, or being generous with time, or even especially being generous with attention.

I have seen gentleness in our small groups, where difficult moments and even sinful moments of failure are met with compassion, forgiveness, and gentle words of encouragement.

I have seen peace in our small groups, when so many members tell me that no matter how chaotic the week has been, there’s no way that they’re going to miss they’re midweek meeting.

It’s not hard to see the fruit of our small groups here at Beulah.

Summer Camp is coming!

Admittedly, in my case this is more like rumor of fruit than having laid my own eyes on fruit for myself.

But still!

I have met this week with counselors of the summer camp, who are deeply and passionately excited about coming back to serve.

I have heard from students in our ministry about how they were made to feel like they belong because they were a part of summer camp.

I have a pair of boys in my own house who are super excited to be a part of the camp this summer.

I know that I haven’t seen it with my own eyes, but I don’t think it’s too big a stretch to imagine that there’s some good fruit available here at camp this summer.

I haven’t seen it, but I bet that our students are going to grow in kindness.

I haven’t seen it, but I bet that our students are going to grow in peace.

I haven’t seen it, but I bet that our students are going to grow in love.

A 3% Mustard Seed: Taste and See!

Last week, we talked about how big changes, how substantial flourishing, comes about most often with small changes.

A mustard seed sized change is all you need to start on the path toward growth and flourishing.

It’s true in this parable too, isn’t it?

A few weeks ago we had earth care Sunday here at the church, so I happen to know that digging back a little bit from a tree and spreading a bit of manure around it isn’t a lot of work.

But the gardener sure seems to think that it’s enough to cause some fruit to come forth.

So what mustard seed sized changes could help you to produce more fruit?

Maybe it’s just a commitment to give a slightly bigger tip to your barista this week, to practice a generous heart?

Maybe if you’re filling your media diet with aggressive, cantankerous, vitriolic news stations, you need to cut back a little bit to make room for kindness to grow in you. So maybe your mustard seed size step is to turn the news off at night and read a book instead.

Maybe you want to practice in self control, so you pledge to stop writing your sermons in donut shops.

Whichever you choose, mustard seed sized changes can make a difference in the lives of a believer in being more fruitful.

But what about a church? What about an institution?

What mustard seed size changes can help us produce more fruit?

For starters, I think we ought to be amateur tour guides.

For each other, for those who are in this building, what would it look like to point to the fruit of our congregation more regularly.

Truth be told, I had three examples for you, but that’s just scratching the surface, isn’t it?

What’d I miss? What’d I leave out?

Tell me, for sure, but tell each other.

Invite each other to see the fruit of our congregation.

But likewise, maybe for you the mustard seed sized change is showing up for something new?

Maybe you’ve never seen the exceptional friends up close. Go ahead and visit them next time they meet. I promise you won’t regret it.

Maybe you’ve never experienced a small group. Hop in! See how quickly you’re made to feel like part of the family.

Maybe you’re like me, you’ve never seen summer camp. What does it look like to show up not as a volunteer, as a worker with a job, but rather as someone to observe, and to just drink deeply of the goodness God is putting on display there?

Take that next step, however small it is.

Because one step leads to another.

Eventually those small steps become second nature.

Eventually you’re not even thinking about it any more.

But those around us who know what they’re looking for? They’ll know right away.

May it be so that someday soon, folks will be able to see us from across the room, and notice the fruits of the spirit alive and well in us.