Sixth Sunday of Easter
10 May 2015, West Camel
13 May 2018, Eldroth, Keasden
‘I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last…’
If you’re a gardener, or a farmer, or a fruiterer for that matter, you’re in a good position to understand how Jesus’ good news can impact on your life. Because when describing how his life, the life of God and our own lives intertwine he so often does it using the language of the fields - in the natural way that we find ourselves doing it too - I just said intertwine, without realising it.
And so in today’s readings we look back at the first disciples, receiving the Holy Spirit, and back even further at what Jesus said about the impact of living life in the Spirit, about how sharing in this life of God, Father, Son and Spirit, would look and feel and be for those who follow him, for us.
‘I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last…’ he said, like the horticulturalist he was, a strange thing to say perhaps, except just before that he had said: ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. … I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who live in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.’
From that we get an inkling of how Jesus sees our relationship with him and the Father. It’s organic. We belong to Jesus as intimately the branches of a vine belong to that plant; and being part of that plant’s natural energy we bear fruit in our lives.
I’m a fan of the poetry of Dylan Thomas and in one of his best-known poems he celebrates ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.’ It is an expression of natural growth, a way of describing the energy which creates life. ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.’ Grasping that image we might say that the force that through the true vine drives the fruit is the Holy Spirit, whose life and energy surges through us as we give ourselves to the life and service of God. It’s mysterious, but it’s natural, it’s Godly, but it’s green. Intuitively, we understand it.
So what does Jesus then mean, ‘go and bear fruit, fruit that will last’?
Maybe the best way to answer that is to consider people we know (or know of) who display some of the Fruits of the Spirit. You’ll recall that Paul in Galatians [5:19-23] listed the fruit of the Spirit as ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control.’ ‘There is no law against such things as these,’ he said.
Think on, and you’ll bring to mind someone you know or have known who are loving, who’ve shown you what love really looks like in practice; likewise, a joyful person, a peaceful, peace-making, peace-giving person; someone who has demonstrated real patience in their life; a kind, good, faithful person, someone who has done great things but always shown humility in doing them, a self-controlled person.
We bring these people to mind as our examples of those who have borne fruit, fruit that has lasted - because the power of their character still impresses itself on us today.
Can we follow where they lead? Can we obey Jesus’ call to bear good fruit in our lives? We have the best will in the world to do this, but being honest we know that it’s not always easy.
Take the fruit of the Spirit, joy, for instance The Christian writer, comedian and satirist Adrian Plass is known for taking a sideways look at the Christian life, acknowledging our humanness, giving us permission to smile at our inconsistencies and failings.
In a sketch you can watch on YouTube, which he calls ‘Pure Joy’, he questions the line in the Book of James which ‘makes the suggestion that we should regard all difficulties as pure joy’ - ‘how are you doing with that?’ he asks. And then the sketch begins with him standing in the kitchen, and his wife coming in through the back door with a delighted, open-eyed look on her face and saying, ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened.’
‘What’s that, Bridget?’ Adrian asks.
‘The car won’t start,’ Bridget says, looking delighted, ‘And it looks like the problem is going to be highly complex and really expensive to fix!’
‘Oh, fantastic!’ says Adrian, looking equally pleased with this news, and then reaching onto the worktop for a piece of paper he continues, in a wondrous tone, ‘Imagine that happening on the same morning we get a vast electricity bill we can’t pay! And did you know the ceiling in the front room’s coming through. Aaah - I must say, I consider all these things just pure joy.’
Bridget, seizing this precious moment, says, in increasingly excited tones, ‘It is the most wonderful opportunity for us to practice perseverance through the testing of our faith!’ [1]
Well, let’s thank God for voices like Adrian and Bridget Plass giving us permission to admit to the difficulties we have about ‘bearing fruit’ in the Spirit when we are so so often challenged by the circumstances of everyday life, which send us in other directions altogether.
How we can overcome these difficulties and ‘cultivate’ our fruits?
I suggest that we go back to God the gardener, Jesus the vine and the Holy Spirit, the
force that through the true vine drives the fruit. I suggest that as we live the rest of our lives organically, day by day, we can bear fruit by simply persevering in prayer, by gently encouraging each other in our life and faith by developing supportive friendships, relationships close enough to be positively critical in the sharing of suggestions and wisdom; we can create the conditions by which we bear fruit of the Spirit by spending our time reading stories or watching films about Jesus and his followers - bible stories; the gospels especially; biographies of Christians whose lives demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit to us so well; novels depicting people living with the struggles to bear good fruit in the complexities of their lives.
As the plant opens itself to take in the goodness of the soil, the substance of the air, the refreshment of the rain, and the energy of the sun, and its branches begin slowly to bear fruit, so if we open ourselves to these influences in our lives, we too can bear the fruits of the Spirit.
We need patience; we need to permit the Spirit of God to move in us to help us overcome barriers, in the world, in ourselves and in our faith.
I’m reminded of the story of a journalist in Jerusalem who, from his apartment overlooking the Wailing Wall, notices over time that whenever he looks at the wall he sees an old Jewish man praying vigorously.
The journalist, wondered if there was a publishable story here, goes down to the wall, introduces himself and says: "You come every day to the wall. What are you praying for?"
The old man replies: "What am I praying for? In the morning I pray for world peace, then I pray for the brotherhood of man. I go home, have a glass of tea, and I come back to the wall to pray for the eradication of illness and disease from the earth."
The journalist is taken by the old man's sincerity and persistence. "You mean you have been coming to the wall to pray every day for these things?"
The old man nods.
"How long have you been coming to the wall to pray for these things?"
The old man becomes reflective and then replies: "How long? Maybe twenty, twenty-five years."
The amazed journalist finally asks: "How does it feel to come and pray every day for over 20 years for these things?"
"How does it feel?" the old man replies. "It feels like I'm talking to a wall.”
Sometimes our intentions to bear fruit for God feel as difficult, pointless, frustrated as that old man’s prayerful intentions. [2]
But that is why Jesus always seems to want to point us back to plant life; to reflect on the dirty barren soil of our wintery spirits in the knowledge which he longs for us to embrace: the knowledge that this unpromising soil of ours actually contains everything necessary for new life to emerge. With a farmer’s earthy wisdom, with a gardener’s gentle patience, we can cultivate the life of our Lord in our lives; we can bear the fruits of the Spirit to the world.
Notes
[1] Adrian and Bridget Plass, Pure Joy, YouTube video also viewable on The Sacred Interview with Adrian Plass website.
[2] Lifted from a Facebook post by Duncan Beet, 7 May 2015.
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