A Fourth Church Sermon by Sarah A. Johnson

March 7, 2010 | 4:00 p.m.

Signs of the Kingdom: Bearing Fruit

Sarah A. Johnson
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Luke 13:1–9
Galatians 5:22–23

In part, the season of Lent is a time when as people of faith we intentionally take a look at our lives through the lens of Jesus’ journey to the cross.

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus’ journey towards the cross is an intentional section in the center of the gospel narrative, a section referred to by biblical scholars as the Lucan travel narrative. Beginning at the close of chapter nine and moving through the end of chapter nineteen, Luke tells us that Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem” and begins the journey to the city where he will be crucified. And as he does, Jesus devotes all of his time and energy to teaching about those qualities of our lives that evidence the presence of God’s kingdom among us.

This afternoon we are taking a look at one of those life qualities that Jesus teaches about on his journey in Luke, and we are doing so in combination with a passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

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Several years ago I discovered a short little book entitled The Gospel according to the Simpsons, in which journalist Ron Pinsky explores the theological relevance of one of America’s most popular TV cartoon families.

In a chapter entitled “If Everyone Were Like Ned, There’d Be No Need for Heaven,” Pinsky examines the faith life of Homer Simpson’s most religious neighbor, Ned Flanders.

Portrayed as something of a “super Christian,” religion and morality inform nearly every aspect of Ned Flanders’ life, from his doorbell that alternates chimes of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “Bringing in Sheaves” to his air horn that blares the Hallelujah Chorus at football games.

Together with his family he prays at meals and before bed. He attends church three times a week and tithes, contributing to seven congregations just to be on the safe side. Ned belongs to a Bible study, uses a fish magnet to hold the grocery list on his refrigerator, has his kids carve Bible dioramas out of pumpkins on Halloween, and occasionally turns his basement into a youth hostel. On the high school football team, Ned’s two sons wear the numbers 6 and 66 so that when they stand together on the field they form the number 666.

Ned is also deeply immersed in the good works of social justice, beginning with the random (and improbable) donation of his kidneys and a lung for anyone who might need them. Ned also volunteers at nursing homes and soup kitchens. He is active in the PTA and volunteers for the marital stress hotline.

Ned’s religion-focused life and specifically his belief in the second coming leads him to mistake Lisa Simpson’s backyard saxophone playing for the sound of the angel Gabriel’s trumpet, and an escaped elephant from the Brookfield Zoo as one of the four horses of the apocalypse. In an episode set thirty years in the future, a dissolute Bart Simpson rings Ned’s doorbell intending to ask for money. Ned, who has lost his sight (but not his vision), hobbles on his cane to the door and asks matter-of-factly, “Is that you, Jesus?”

Whether it is through the voice of “super Christian” Ned Flanders or our own, it is a question that we all ask about the character of the Christian life: How do we recognize God’s presence in our lives?

In our passage from Luke, this is exactly what Jesus wants to teach his disciples.

At the point in which we find him, a crowd of followers has gathered around Jesus in order to tell him about a recent group of believers who were killed on a pilgrimage from Galilee. While they were worshiping in the temple, Judean governor Pontius Pilate sent in troops and, perhaps fearing a riot, slaughtered all the worshipers. Working with notions of popular piety in which disaster is taken as punishment for sin, the crowd wants to know if the pilgrims’ death is a sign of their faith or lack thereof?

Did they not pray enough? Did they not memorize enough sections of scripture? Did they forget to use the fish magnet to hang their grocery list? Did they not give enough of their time and energy? Perhaps they should have taken a cue from Ned Flanders and rigged their doorbell with a selection of traditional Presbyterian hymns or given up that second lung.

Sensing their rising panic that somehow their faith lives might be shaped by all the things they forgot to do, Jesus answers, “No, it’s not about any of that. Each of you, no matter who you are or what you do, is equally in need of God’s forgiveness.” And then Jesus tells a story about a fig tree that has been planted but doesn’t bear any fruit. This, Jesus says, is how you will know my presence: through exhibiting lives that bear fruit.

The problem with this is that it leaves one essential question still unanswered: “What exactly is the fruit we are called to bear?”

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul lays out nine essential life qualities for those who are to follow Christ. He writes, “The fruit of the Spirit,” meaning the evidence of the presence of God in your life, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

Interestingly, Paul isn’t the only one who talks about this. If you look at the whole of the New Testament, you will find that the writers agree that spiritual maturity is synonymous with exhibiting the character of God.

Our lives are measured not by the positions we hold, the volunteer hours we give, the money we raise, or even the gifts we have; our lives are measured by the fruit we bear.

This is an important lesson for people of faith, for we have struggled with it throughout the centuries. Paul writes about it extensively in his letter to the Galatians, and he also writes about it to another first-century Christian community, in Corinth. The church in Corinth was a highly successful congregation struggling to define itself as a church of God in a complex and sophisticated urban setting.

They had a multitude of people with all kinds of gifts for preaching and teaching; they had lots of resources to offer in service to the kingdom, but they wanted a bit of latitude in their behavior—at least when it came to putting a little “razzle-dazzle” on some of the women of the church or treating one another fairly when it came to differences of opinion. (I am sure you have never heard of this happening in a church. But it has happened at least once, in first-century Corinth)

Factions sprang up, people began fighting, and the church began to divide.

Impressed by their gifts, these talented preachers and teachers said, “Look at how God is using us! Look at all our great gifts for teaching and preaching. Look at the good we can do in the community, the money we can raise for the poor, the lives we are saving. Our little skirmishes don’t matter. When it comes to living faithfully, surely we balance out in the win column.”

When Paul heard about all that was happening in the Corinthian church, he wasn’t very impressed. And so when Paul wrote to this fledging Christian community, beginning in the twelfth chapter of the book of 1 Corinthians he laid out this whole relationship between activities and gifts of faith and character.

“I do not care,” he tells them, “if you can speak like an angel, if you sing like Pavarotti, if you can offer the kind of wisdom that moves mountains, if you can give all of your time and energy to others, if you give all your money away, but you do not have love. If you do not have love, you are nothing.”

It is not that the practices of faith and the gifts we have do not matter. They matter greatly. In fact, each of us is called to participate fully in the upbuilding of God’s community, to contribute our whole lives, our time, our talents, and our treasures. And Paul is clear that God has given each of us great gifts with which to do that. It is just that when it comes to these parts of our lives, Paul simply ranks them. Character is more important than performance. Fruit matters more than gift.

I want to take a moment and think practically about what this means for our lives together.

One thing that it means is that it is OK for us to focus our time in our areas of giftedness. If someone asks you to get involved here—to teach in the Tutoring program or to say yes to singing in the choir, to serve at Sunday Night Supper—you should say yes, particularly if it is something that you are gifted to do. I know several teenagers who are so grateful for their gifts with children that every summer they give up an entire week of their summer vacation to help with Vacation Bible School. But if someone asks you to get involved in Vacation Bible School and you would rather swing a hammer on a mission trip or usher in worship because children are “just not your thing,” it’s OK to say no. As long as it’s honest, it’s ok to say no.

But saying yes or no to fruit is not an option for those of us who follow Christ. We cannot say, “You know, loving people who see things differently than I do, well that’s just not my thing.” Or, “Patience, well I have never been one to wait. Self-control? I’ve tried and I just can’t; I cannot control my mouth, my tongue, my language.” Fruits of the Spirit is a singular package that all of us are called to seek; all Christians, all fruit, all the time.

One other principle of the fruit of the Spirit is that it is most powerful when it is least expected.

This week I received a call from the building manager of a member of our church, expressing concern that this member, a model tenant for ten years and a lifelong paranoid schizophrenic, had recently gone off her medication and was suffering serious decline in health and ability to interact in a healthy way with other residents. This building manager, Sherri, knew that the woman belonged to this church and wanted to see what together we could do to help her.

I have to admit that I was astonished that Sherri had called in the first place. Most building managers would have called the cops or given out a thirty-day eviction notice on the first sign of trouble. Besides, Sherri wasn’t a family member or even a close friend.

But what astonished me even more was that as I spoke to Sherri, I noticed the kindness she exhibited in serving as an emergency contact for this woman, the patience she showed when the woman had been the subject of complaints from other residents, the generosity she extended when she said, “Despite her mental illness, nothing that happens will prevent her from having a home here. “

Bearing fruit.

In case you are wondering where exactly it is that we are to muster the energy to bear fruit, I want to close with a passage from the fifteenth chapter of John. This imagery of fruit and branches, trees and vines, appears consistently throughout the New Testament, and in the fifteenth chapter of John, Jesus talks about its source:

Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch cannot bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.

Fruit doesn’t grow on its own. Apples, strawberries, bananas—none of them just appear in the dirt or in the sky unattached. They are intimately connected to the tree or the vine from which they grow. The same can be said for the fruit we bear in our lives and our connectedness to God.

Jesus said, “Live in me and you will bear much fruit.”

All thanks be to God.

Amen.