“Fruitful Generosity”
October 22, 2017
Galatians 5:13-25
Matthew 7:15-20
I want to tell you about something that happened at recent meeting of one of our church boards. And in order to protect—well, to protect the guilty, I don’t want to tell you which board—in part because what happened probably could have happened at just about any meeting here.
At the beginning of the meeting the chairperson wanted to give the board members a chance to talk about what had been going on in their lives recently. I think this is always a good way to start a meeting—it helps us to connect with one another, to celebrate good events together and to bear one another’s burdens in times of sorrow.
And, the chairperson said casually: “We can do this by thinking about the fruit of the Spirit that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Galatians,” and then asked “So, what fruit have you experienced recently?”
That’s when the trouble began.
Some board members looked like deer caught in headlights.
Others looked down, awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact.
A few had that puzzled “What are you talking about?” look on their faces.
It quickly became clear that no one else on the board knew what the “fruit of the Spirit” was.
Oh, in self-defense, I can say that I knew—but maybe that’s kind of expected.
I turned to the chairperson and said: “You’re dealing with a bunch of Congregationalists here!” And indeed, the majority of the members of the board grew up in some of the great Congregational churches of Iowa and the Midwest. We take scripture seriously. We look at the broad sweep of the Bible. Along with our Pilgrim ancestors we affirm that God has yet more truth and light to break forth from God’s Word.
But we don’t always learn the details that some of you here might have learned in Methodist or Lutheran or Presbyterian Sunday Schools.
Fruit of the Spirit?
After the Board chairperson explained that, as Paul says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” I voiced my response: “Note to self—preach on Galatians, chapter five.”
Today seems like a good time to do that.
In his brief but majestic letter to the early Christians in Galatia, Paul addresses freedom and servitude, authority and authoritarianism. He emphasizes again and again that the freedom we have as those who follow in the way of Jesus Christ is the freedom to love one another.
Addressing a congregation he calls “foolish,” Paul in his great anger is also Paul at his most eloquent and inspiring. And he is angry.
Don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, Paul urges. The Greek he uses says something more like “don’t use your freedom as a staging ground for the flesh.”
And you probably suspect that he’s not talking about our skin here.
Nor is he, as is often assumed, talking about physical desire or sex.
“Flesh,” as Paul uses the word, is the power in all human existence and action that is opposed to God. Another word for this, of course, is “sin”—that which separates us from God, from one another, from the best in ourselves.
It is the flesh—sin—that leads people toward the hatred of their neighbors, toward the condemnation and belittling of others.
It is the flesh—sin—that leads the violence plaguing our nation and our world.
It is the flesh—sin—that blinds us to God’s abundance, that makes us both needy and greedy, that urges us to hold back.
Sin is so obvious that no list is needed, but for good measure Paul offers fifteen “works of the flesh.” It’s a fairly conventional list, really. But note that right in the middle of it are what have been called “eight words of dissention and disunity”—enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy—acts that threaten congregations and communities and countries far more than sensual vices. This is the sin that Paul warns against. This is the sin that is at large in our nation.
We all know from experience that it is difficult to resist the power of sin.
So instead of resistance, Paul advocates for love.
Paul, who has just spent a lot of ink and papyrus urging the Galatians not to be slaves, now says, “become slaves to one another”—and do this through love: through seeking the best for one another. Look closely—and see in each other the visible image of the invisible God. If any law is to be obeyed in the freedom of the Gospel, it is the Law of Love.
And so we come to the fruit of the Spirit.
Paul was one for lists. After listing the works of the flesh, he offers another list—what he calls the “fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, self-control. Again, the list is mean to illustrate, not to be comprehensive. And these are not just individual qualities—they are characteristics of the whole community.
Somewhere I read that instead of thinking about fruit, most churches usually focus on M&M’s.[i]
M&M’s. You know: Money and Members. And actually, we’re doing pretty well by those measurements.
Consider money.
As we start to think about our giving for the coming year, the good news is that members have been both generous and faithful in fulfilling their pledges.
I want to thank you for your giving. Your giving funds our programs of Christian education and music. It keeps our building in repair as it is used by us and the larger community. Your giving is helping as people recover and rebuild after storms. And your giving supports refugees and immigrants in Iowa City and around the world as they seek new lives in the wake of unthinkable violence and disaster.
Thank you.
Consider members.
Here in Iowa City, people come and go but even as we say goodbye to members we continue to grow at a healthy rate. People come here, like what they find, and stay around. Another new member class will be held in November. So thanks again for being a congregation of openness and welcome.
Money and Membership—we’re doing well with both. And, yes, that is something to celebrate. This is not the case for a number of mainline Protestant churches in this state and throughout our nation. Many are facing what one person calls a “financial meltdown” and they’re losing members. So let’s rejoice and give thanks to God for the good and different thing that is happening here.
As we celebrate, however, we need to remember that we’re really not all that interested M&M’s. And while our knowledge of some of the finer points of the Bible might be limited, my guess is that everyone here knows that the Bible doesn’t have a lot to say about M&M’s.
The Bible is more interested in fruit. The harvest that we anticipate is one of love, joy, hope, peace, patience, long-suffering, and kindness. Those are the signs that the Spirit of God is moving among us, equipping and enlivening us.
So the real question for us as a congregation is “How much are those qualities a part of our life together?
The money and members of this congregation are a by-product of a congregation that seeks to be faithful to God in our belief and our doubts; a congregation that seeks to show God’s love in our community and in the larger world; a congregation that seeks to welcome all people and speak up for their basic human rights.
None of these things is necessarily easy or to be expected. And so we should give thanks when we see such fruit.
The psalmist gives us a powerful image of a good tree, planted by the water, yielding good fruit in season. The lack of rain this summer has taught us again what happens when trees and plants don’t get the water that they need. A congregation planted by the water, a congregation that is nurtured by worship and prayer and action in the world will be fruitful in good times and bad. Such a congregation has a reservoir of strength and hope to draw on when resources are scarce.
There is an organic connection between the nature of the tree and the kind of fruit it bears. As he so often does, Jesus invites us to consider the obvious: “Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”
Jesus is concerned with behavior here. He focuses not on correct belief but on proper living.
We discover here the roots of our Congregational emphasis on covenant rather than creed. What we think and what we think about are important. What matters even more is how we live with each other and how we live in the world.
We aren’t involved in this city and the larger world because we have a little extra time and energy and money. These are not activities we engage in because we’re good people looking for good causes.
They are ways that we make visible the love of God made known in Jesus Christ.
They are central to who we are as the people of God.
If we fail here, we fail to be a church—regardless of how much money and how many members we have.
We seek fruit, not M&M’s.
The challenge for us, then, is to grow as stewards—not just people who look at money and members. Stewards are responsible for the care and use of what they have received—life, this earth, our relationships with one another, our financial resources. This is not a passive enterprise. Those who tend an orchard do not sit back and leave it all to God. They fertilize and water and prune.
Stewards care for the trees of our lives and the tree that is this congregation. They tend the trees in such a way that good fruit is produced.
As stewards of all the gifts God has given, we are called to be active—in giving, in loving, in service, in learning.
So here’s where the generosity that I’ve been talking about on recent Sundays comes in once more.
As I’ve said, stewardship is more than giving. It is caring. It is being fruitful—or at least creating the kind of openness that leads to fruitfulness.
And generosity is more than stewardship.
Our generosity grows out of that abundance and joy.
Our generosity shows itself in times of suffering
Our generosity develops over time—a bud, a flower, the final good fruit.
Look again and see what God is doing within us and among us and through us. Look around. I think you will see much that calls forth our gratitude and our generosity.
Continue to be fruitful.
So say it with me now—the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
OK—we still need to work on that. Take your bulletin home and reflect on those words.
Abound in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—so that others will know us by our fruits.