Fruits of the Spirit

Sermon by Joe Kutter

November 18, 2007

Today, we are going to continue our reflection from last week on “The fruit of the Spirit”. We’ll begin with reflection on the scripture and then we’ll see if it has anything to say to our celebration of “Thanksgiving.” 

Paul writes, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” [Galatians 5:22-23 (NRSV)] As we said a week ago, if I wanted to describe the very best life possible here in this world, it would sound very much like “The fruit of the Spirit”. Can there be anything better in this life than the experiences of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”? 

And to repeat from last week, if you want to enjoy the fruit, you must pay attention to the root. If you want the experiences of the fruit of the spirit, if you want to experience love and joy and peace and the rest, then you need to pay attention to the source of that fruit and the Apostle says in The Bible that the source is the Holy Spirit of God. You must give your attention to the Spirit if you want the fruit of the Spirit.

There is an ancient rule in Bible study that says, if you want to understand the text, you must understand the context. Today, I want to give more attention to the context within which Paul talked about the fruit of the Spirit. Last week, we talked about the inner conflict between “The desires of the flesh” and “The fruit of the Spirit.”

If you read the fifth chapter of Galatians, indeed, if you will read all of Galatians, you will find another conflict and that is the conflict between the Spirit and “The Law.”

Here is the story.  If you knew the members of the congregations in Galatia, you would soon discover a great diversity and with the diversity, you would soon discover a powerful and unsettling controversy. 

Some of the Galatian Christians had Jewish origins and others had Gentile or non-Jewish origins. Among some of the Jewish Christians, there was a strongly held belief that in order to be a good Christian, one had to first become a practicing Jew. The reasoned that since Jesus was a Jew, all Christians should be Jewish. Since the foundation or the Christian faith has been laid by God within the history of the Jewish people, then the Christian movement was a part of the Jewish movement and therefore in order to be Christian, one should be a Jew.

What did it mean then to become Jewish in the process of becoming Christian?  It meant obedience to the law. Specifically, it meant obedience to the Holiness Code as set forth in the first five books of the Old Testament.

• It meant keeping a Kosher kitchen; separating milk from meat and not eating one within several hours of the other, abstaining from pork, and certain sea-foods, and eating beef that had been slaughtered in only the prescribed way. 
• It meant keeping the Sabbath according the strict instruction of the Rabbis. (No, you may not watch the Chiefs this afternoon since your watching is possible only by their working.)
• It meant that women, during their monthly cycle, were to be regarded as unclean and that sitting on a chair or bench with them would render you unclean also and, therefore, women should be separated in a kind of religious quarantine at that time of the month.
• It meant that people who committed adultery should be executed by stoning.
• It meant that the clothing worn could have only one kind of fabric. (No, your fine wool blend does indeed render you unclean and you must remove the cotton or polyester or be banned from the synagogue.)
• If your child or spouse or someone you love has a skin disease, then you are no longer allowed to touch him or her and that person must be exiled from the community.
• There were more than 700 rules to be obeyed but the one that caused the most intense debate was….
• To be a Christian, the Gentile male would have to be circumcised!

According to this group, in order to become a Christian, one first had become obedient to “The Law” and follow the rules. To experience the salvation that God has to offer, then one must first obey the rules and then God will love you. So argued those who put the law first.

In response, Paul had a bit of a tantrum. Even though it is in the Bible, it is not something that we are comfortable saying in church so I will just invite you to read it for yourselves. Paul said, no, if salvation is a matter of following the rules, then the cross of Christ is of no use. If salvation comes by following the rules, then all of God’s grace has been rendered unnecessary. If it is a matter of obeying the law, then salvation is something to be achieved by our own efforts, our own works, and God’s gift is not needed.

He also seems to say that this firm adherence to the law seems to stimulate what he calls “The desires of the flesh.”  It is a little like trying to think about “not-eating.” Thinking about “not-eating” just makes you hungry.

Let me refer to one of my favorite verses in the Bible which says that we are saved by grace through faith. It is not our own works but is instead a gift from God. It is a gift from God, which we are invited to accept, a gift that we nurture by giving attention to the presence of The Holy Spirit among us and within each one of us. The Spirit then produces the fruit of love and joy and peace and all of the rest.

I promised a word about the Thanksgiving holiday.  With every person in this room, I give thanks to God for the United States of America. As a disciple of Jesus Christ, I am particularly grateful for the tradition of religious liberty that we enjoy. The first amendment of the constitution says that the congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of an official religion nor shall there be any law that prohibits the free exercise of religion. Thomas Jefferson talked about a wall of separation between the institutional church and the institutions of government. For what it is worth, I am all for that wall being in place.

Why is that?  Wouldn’t we all be better if the government just announced that we are a Christian nation and then established a few well-chosen laws and rules to guarantee adherence to the Christian faith?  Let’s just say that:

• In order to be an American citizen, you must profess to believe in God.
• In order to be an American citizen, you must obey the Ten Commandments – especially those about honoring the Sabbath and not bearing false witness or not coveting.
• Let’s have the government, called the school board, write a few prayers for the children.

What is wrong with that?  The salvation of Christ can never be experienced through the imposition of laws nor can it be found through obedience to those laws. Those well intended laws will inevitably get in the way of the relationship with Christ and that grace of God that comes to us through that relationship. Those well-intentioned laws will get in the way of the experience of the fruit of the Spirit.

It is indeed the job of the government to produce laws and rules for the well being of society. Some forms of destructive and bad behavior must be prohibited and punished. Murder, thievery, extortion, rape, assault, the list is long. Some forms of behavior must be prohibited and punished. It is the only thing that will deter bad people from doing bad things to the rest of us.

But that does not work in matters of the Spirit. And every government that has tried to establish the Christian religion as the official religion has, in the end, done serious damage to the Christian church.

Remember with me for a moment:

Germany was officially a Christian nation and it produced Hitler.

Italy was officially a Christian nation and it produced Mussolini.

Russia was officially Christian and it gave us Lenin and Stalin.

Great Britain was officially Christian and church attendance there is now about 6%.

We cannot ask nor can we trust the government to do the job that God has entrusted into the hands of The Church of Jesus Christ. It our job, and nobody else’s, to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our job to invite men and women to Christian discipleship. It is our job to nurture the life of the Spirit. And it is our privilege to nurture into being the fruit of the spirit, love and joy and peace and all of the rest.

The genius of the American constitution and the Bill of Rights is that the constitution knows that the government is not and cannot be a church. That is not its job.

The question for the American church and for the First Baptist Church of Topeka is this, do we know whose job it is? It is our task to proclaim Jesus and his gospel. It is our privilege to nurture the life of the Spirit. It is our great and glorious privilege to nurture into full maturity the fruit of the Spirit:

Love

Joy

Peace

Patience

Kindness

Generosity

Faithfulness

Gentleness

Self-control

Thank God for America. May she always be America.

And more, thank God for Jesus Christ and the Gospel of salvation and the life of the Spirit and may the Church of Jesus Christ always be the church.

Amen