Fruit Bowl
(based on Galatians 5:13-25)
In Paul’s letter to the Galatian church he
makes a list of vices which is pretty exhaustive enough to include just about everybody. And I honestly think that was his intent. Perhaps you don’t struggle with sorcery or
licentiousness, but what about anger? Do
you quarrel? Has there ever been just a
moment or two of envy in you? No one can
claim that he or she is completely righteous, or you’d be the reincarnation of
Christ. But we might be tempted to play
the, “Let’s see who is holier” game. That
game becomes a competition to feel better about oneself–at least my sin is not
as bad as yours. Of course, in that game
we get to decide which behaviors are more sinful than other behaviors. And where, exactly, does that lead? To what end?
It leads to either moral superiority OR to feeling that you’re
never good enough in God’s eyes. I’ve
known some people who thought that being a Christian was all about trying to be
good enough. Or some who felt that the
only thing Church people did was criticize the sins of others, never admitting
their own. A lot of them eventually
threw in the spiritual towel, stopped going to church, or even believing in God
altogether.
When Christianity is reduced to a few formulaic professions of
faith and a list of moral imperatives, a living and growing faith will not take
root in the human heart. It’s when we
can trust that our “righteousness” is not about us, that it’s not about what we
do or don’t do. Instead, it’s about
allowing the Holy Spirit to do the work in us.
An apple can not be proud of its achievements all on its own. The apple required a lot of work going on
inside of it – from the beginning of a blossom to the large juicy fruit we can
eat – in order to become an apple, right?
However, Paul was not saying that the desires of the flesh are
bad in and of themselves. God created
desire. And healthy desires are what give
us life and vitality. It’s when desires
become disordered; when they begin to control us that we find ourselves out of
step with God, Christ, and the Spirit.
A few examples:
A perfectly natural human desire is for meaningful
relationships. But left unchecked true
intimacy gets substituted with shallow, self-centered encounters.
A natural desire is for enjoyment and contentment. But if unfulfilled, that desire might devolve
into excessive use of pain-numbing substances like alcohol, drugs or food.
Most of us desire a safe home and enough material possessions
that bring comfort; but left unchecked, our wealth and our “things” begin to
control us. We become stingy,
ungenerous, or greedy.
We were created to have a natural desire for community; but, left
to our human tendencies, our desire can easily become disgruntled feelings
toward people who grate on us like sandpaper. Which then leads to exchanging true community
with all its textured diversity for a homogenous one in which we are only with
those who are like us. Our church
becomes like us. Our friends are like
us. Our social-political bent is filled with those who see the world like
us.
Do you remember where you were between April-July of 1994? It was just 25 years ago. Do you know what was happening in the world
at that time? A friend and colleague of
mine, Charissa Howe, just returned from a mission trip to Rwanda, which is the most
densely populated nation in Africa. Last
week we met, had coffee, and talked about her trip. During approximately 100 days between April 7
and July 15, 1994 in Rwanda, 800,000 people were slaughtered. And, for the most part, the world stood by
and did nothing. How did this happen?
By 1994, Rwanda’s population stood at more than 7 million
people, split into three ethnic groups, the majority Hutus who made up 85% of
the population, the Tutsis, 14% and the Twa (only 1%), a relatively small
native tribal group, said to have been the original inhabitants of the country. The larger ethnic minority group, the Tutsis,
were in political power after the time of colonialism, when Germany lost the
possession of Rwanda following World War 1.
The Tutsis were the elite, the wealthy, the educated. But the majority group, the Hutus gained
power in the 60’s through a peasant and social revolution when Rwanda gained
their independence as a country. Because
of this many Tutsi Rwandans became refugees who had to leave their
country. ½ million Tutsis had fled to
neighboring countries by the 1980’s. On Oct
1, 1990, a rebel force of 7,000 soldiers from Uganda launched a major attack on
Rwanda. Because of this attack, all
Tutsis within Rwanda were labeled as accomplices and all Hutu members of any
opposition political party were labeled as traitors. On April 6, a plane carrying the presidents
of Burundi and Rwanda where shot down by a rocket. In retaliation, the Rwandan government called
for their citizens to slaughter every Tutsi and also all Hutu sympathizers in
the land. Within 100 days 800,000
Rwandans were dead – more than 1/10 of the entire population in 100 days.
Rev. Howe returned from this mission trip, not with sadness, but
rather with a sense of hope. How could
you visit a country with such animosity of what group against another and come
back with hope? Because, after the
genocide, and after prison for many of the perpetrators of this violence, the
Church stepped in and did what the Church is called to do. People of the Church, mothers and fathers,
sons and daughters sat down with those who committed murder against their families,
those who raped their wives and children and forgave them. And those who had done such horrible crimes
accepted their forgiveness and formed new bonds of friendship.
Friends, may we learn from others’ mistakes and from the grace
of the Church at work in the world. In all
honesty, we could be one incident from something like that happening here. One spark to set off a violent encounter that
spreads through the nation, if tensions keep rising and we allow the rhetoric
of politics to dictate how we should feel about one another.
Christ did not die so that in the afterlife we would finally be
free and experience an abundant life. Christ
died so that we might experience freedom and an abundant life in the kingdom of
God today, in
this moment, in this life. Said another
way, we know we are walking with the spirit when our desire to know God becomes
deeper and more expansive.
Paul lists nine fruits of the Spirit; love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
THIS is the role of the church.
It is our duty and our freedom.
We must be a beacon to the world.
We must be that light set on hill that cannot be hid.
The Spirit filled life and one that is full and abundant is about
grace. It is about being filled with love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control. If you are filled with
these things, the bad things that Paul also mentioned earlier in the passage have
no hold on your life.
The Spirit filled life is about unfurling our clenched hands
around things that aren’t ours anyway, in order to receive what Christ has done
for us, what Christ taught us, what the Holy Spirit whispers to us, and what
God’s creation sings to us every day, revealing the Creator’s deep love for us.
The Spirit filled life based in freedom is a life measured by a
love that sees responsibility toward neighbor as Jesus revealed in his story
about the Good Samaritan, our responsibility to the orphan and the widow, to the
outcast and the foreigner. Each of these
has stories and illustrations in further Biblical texts.
The great 20th-century religious thinker Reinhold Niebuhr put it
this way: “Basically love means . . .being responsible, responsible to our
family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward
the universe of humankind.”
Paul makes it clear that in the church there is to be no
division. Here we become a community of
flesh and blood where all the old barriers are finally, at last, overcome. Let us together, through the power of the
Holy Spirit, bearing fruit in our lives, proclaim to the world this gospel of
love.
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