Fruit That Will Last

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
St. John's Lutheran Church, Alexandria, VA
Galatians 5:16-25

“Bearing Fruit for Jesus: Fruit That Will Last”

Take a moment right now and see if you can remember one of the best gifts that you’ve ever received. It doesn’t have to been something that came in wrapping paper and a bow, though maybe it was. The gift you’re thinking about might have been an experience, a time, or token. What was it? Was it something that just sprang to mind? Do you still have it? If it was someplace that you got to visit, or someone who you were able to spend time with, do you still recall the details? If you were to tell the people sitting around you about that one gift, even though you wouldn’t have thought of the same item or experience, most gifts have something in common: they don’t last. Memories can fade with time. Toys and clothes can get outgrown. Once-needed tools or nostalgic trinkets can may be swept aside to make room for the new or let go when you need to move on. In 10 years, will that particular gift you’d thought of –or the memory of it – be around? In 50 years? 100?
So much of our human experience is fleeting. You and I spend time, skills, and wealth on things and experiences that don’t endure. Consider how much money and energy is being put into the upcoming state and national elections, all to sway voters and craft perceptions. The people and organizations who are giving to support their candidates do so, in part, in the hope making a lasting contribution, and yet, we’ll be seeing this all come around again in four years’ time (or even less, for a number of offices)! To be fair, though, most of our days aren’t focused on making a lasting contribution to the world. Our choices tend to reflect the more immediate situations of regular life, and we’re often just moving from one day or week to the next. The ways in which we use our time, talents, and treasure tend to serve the immediate, rather than going towards something that will last.
The apostle Paul puts forward two opposing postures in his letter to the Galatians, contrasting the works of the flesh with those of the Spirit. The lists that he presents aren’t meant to be exhaustive; rather, they’re examples of what comes out of those ways of living. If you follow the desires of the flesh – our human nature that is corrupted by sin – then you’ll go from day to day looking for something that will last in works that are ultimately self-serving and destructive. The desires of your fallen nature can only lead you to things and experiences that are fleeting and failing. You can take and take and consume and consume, but you’ll always be left wanting more. Considering the works that Paul lists as those of the flesh, which can bring anything beyond a passing pleasure? And those aren’t about giving, but taking. The desires of the flesh are centered in the self and what we think we need right now.
The desires of the Spirit, by contrast, come from an entirely different place – and take us to an entirely different destination. Those works of the Spirit – fruit, as Paul calls them – are not centered in self. They aren’t driven by our need to consume or take; instead, that which the Spirit brings springs from the cross of Christ. Take a look at Paul’s listing of that fruit: we don’t have the desire for those good things naturally bubbling up in us. These works of the Spirit push back against self-centered desires. When you walk in the Spirit, God is at work to fill you with gifts that last. That’s what God does on the cross, giving Himself up in a gift for you that doesn’t end. Through the gift of faith, the Holy Spirit connects you to Jesus, who connects you to the Father’s gift of lasting life. Walking by the Spirit, then, is walking with God. You receive the fruit of the Spirit as you walk by the Spirit from day to day, looking to God in Scripture and prayer. Through the Spirit, you can resist the desires of our corrupted human nature, always looking to the cross for the fruit that will last. That is fruit meant for sharing.
As we arrive at culmination of our Fall stewardship focus, I think that there might be a more appropriate name for how we manage God’s gifts: we don’t bear fruit for Jesus so much as we are bearing fruit from Jesus. What we have to give – our time, our talents, our treasures – comes from our Lord, as does the desire to use those gifts in lasting ways. When we give lasting gifts by living out the desires of the Spirit, centered not in self but in the cross, you and I are bearing Jesus’ gifts to the world. God’s gifts, freely given in and through us, that is fruit that will last.
Amen.