I couldn't find it. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Maybe I’m misquoting it, or have mixed it up in the blender I sometimes call my brain. Or maybe we haven’t invented the search engine that works with the jumble of remembrances that occupy the grey matter of most normal human beings. And yes, I am counting myself in that number. So there.
But the “it” in question is a phrase, a saying, a cliche if you will. To find the best fruit, you have to go out on a limb. Or something like that. At least that is how I heard it. How I remember it. I found a quote from Will Rogers: “You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.” Same thing, mostly. Kind of. But it was the best fruit that I was looking for. We always want the best, whatever it is, that is built into us. Faster, Higher, Stronger. That’s the motto of the Olympics. Actually it is “Citius, Altius, Fortius.” Latin, you know. Sounds fancier. More impressive.
We want the best. However we are, we want to be better. Nothing wrong with that. We need to strive, to push, to become more. The question, though, is what is that more? What ought we strive to be? What ought we reach for?
The best fruit. That’s my argument for 2014. A year long answer to the question of who and what we should be striving to be. Wait. That’s it, for a whole year? A self-help program? A make-over for worship? Talk about the biggest loser! Talk about survivor, real housewives of the city of churches! A reality show each weekend here at Aldersgate.
No, no, no. Chill out dude. The theme for worship and discipleship at Aldersgate in 2014 is “You Were Made for This: Living the Fruitful Life.” This week is the launch and I hope to lay out the whole package in one go. And then we’ll back up and look at smaller pieces. Pieces of the pie, we might say, fruit pie. The whole year is based on these verses from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.
Galatians 5:22-25 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
The fruit of Spirit. Or as some mistranslate - the fruits of the Spirit. We think it must be a plural. I mean look at that list. Nine different words, nine different attributes, or behaviors, or traits. How could that be anything but plural? Fruits of the Spirit, it must be.
Except that Paul wrote fruit. Singular. Which, when you think about it, actually makes more sense. He was writing about one life. Your life. My life. Actually he was writing about Christ’s life. The life we are trying to emulate. The life we are trying to claim. To receive.
See, that’s what makes this something more than a reality show, something deeper than a self-help program. It isn’t what we are making out of the raw material of our lives, but rather that we are being made into by the transformation of the Spirit. It is not what we are doing, but what Christ is doing in us and through us.
Looking at this passage we might see a checklist of do’s and don’ts for being a good person. We might see it as some sort of personal inventory. If we ran across these verses in a magazine, we might expect there to be some sort of quiz that we could take to find out how we are doing on the fruit scale. Well, the results might tell us, you struggle with love and joy, but seem to have a good handle on peace. Your patience index is kind of low, but you score well on kindness and generosity. You’ve got faithfulness down pat, are ok with gentleness depending on the time of day and amount of sleep you received. But you might as well just punt on the whole self-control vibe, you aren’t getting that one at all. And we would nod our heads in wonder, smiling at how a magazine quiz could peg us so well with just a few random sounding questions.
In which case you would have missed the whole point of Paul’s writing. This isn’t an exercise manual, helping you work on your kindness and patience like on your pecs and glutes. Instead it is a road map, it is an observational guide to sites you will see, turns you will encounter on your journey with Christ.
Full disclosure, I had often been in the check list, spiritual exercise camp, chiding parishioners for their sagging generosity and flabby faithfulness like a pastoral drill sergeant. But last fall when I was on retreat preparing for this year’s worship theme I ran across an old book in a seminary library that I had never encountered before. Written by Evelyn Underhill, an English Christian writer of both fiction and non-fiction, this little book was not published until after her death in 1941. It appears to be either collected letters or a lecture series she gave at some time. Titled (oddly) Fruits of the Spirit, it presents her take on this famous passage. What is odd about the title given to the book is that her argument is that there is really only one fruit of the life of the Spirit, but that it manifests itself in this variety of dimensions.
Other commentators argue that Paul wrote fruit singular because his thesis is that the fruit of the Spirit is love. But this love (as he also argues in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians) is marked by joy, and by peace and by patience and by kindness and by generosity and by ... well you get the point. Love is the mark, love is the key by which all of our human encounters are shaped, or even attempted. Love is the core of the life of Christ and it is the core of the life of the one who seeks to live a Christ-like life.
Underhill suggests that the order of the attributes in Galatians 5:22 and 23 is intentional. She sees them as a progression. First, she writes, we find ourselves loved and then able to love in return. This is our embrace of Christ and the beginning of the transformation. What Wesley called sanctification or “going on to perfection.” What is being perfected in us is love. Not intellect or understanding, not wisdom or social presence, but love. We are being made into beings who can love like Christ loved.
Underhill says that Paul was telling us how this happens in our hearts and hands and minds as we give ourselves over to the Spirit. This love takes root in us and begins to grow (which is why Jesus compared it to a vine - come back next week for more on that!). As it grows we experience and live first joy and then peace and then all the other attributes in the list. Which explains why self-control is last. Not because it is the hardest (ok, not just because it is that hardest), but because true self-control is our only when we have completely given ourselves away to Christ through the Spirit.
It is a process, in most cases a life long process. As is the case with any long process, there are times when we want to give up, or when we think we aren’t getting anywhere. There are times when we think we are cut out for the journey or that even God has given up on us. Which is exactly why I decided to embark on this journey with the church in 2014. Not so much to help us do better in our striving to be like Christ, but to help us be better. To help us recognize these aspects of the life of Christ as they are seen in our own lives and in the life of the community of faith. To help us pray our way into the life Christ offers us. To help us live out loud a life we sometimes think is supposed to happened behind closed doors.
To help us go out on a limb with this faith thing, this life of Christ thing. To take a risk, a leap of faith, to dive deeper, to pray harder, to climb higher, to believe stronger. Out on a limb, because that is where the best fruit is.
Shalom,
Derek
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