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Back to Sermon ArchivesAugust 16,
2009
Rev. Judith Bither
Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness
July 12th we began exploring how to cultivate
the fruit of the Spirit listed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. So far we have
lifted up: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and goodness. We have three
more fruit to peel open: faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We
remember that the fruit of the Spirit cannot be achieved or earned. Rather it is
the result of following a Christ-centered life. The Fruit of the Spirit
are different from Paul’s Gifts of the Spirit. Gifts of the
Spirit are special abilities provided by the Holy Spirit to Christians for the purpose
of building up the body of Christ. The list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians
12:8-10 includes wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning
of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues. Similar lists appear
in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and Romans. So in a nutshell, Fruit of the
Spirit are available to each and every one of us—but they have to be cultivated
and harvested. Gifts of the Spirit are granted to us individually —such as
some a good at administration while others are gifted with healing or hospitality.
That will be a sermon series for another time!
So today we look at how to cultivate faithfulness in our
lives. Some of you may have mastered this already while others may be struggling
with it. As I thought and prayed about faithfulness, I had difficulty settling on
which scripture to use because so many came to mind:
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The story of Ruth and Naomi:
Where you go I will go and your people will be my people. It’s the story
of the faithfulness of two women, a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who became
very close after their husbands died. They had a covenant relationship to each
other.
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Which led me to other covenants
in the Bible:
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Signs of God’s faithfulness
are seen in the rainbow after the flood;
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Manna in the desert and
water in the rock on the way to the Promised Land;
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And ultimately the resurrection
of Jesus. But then there are also numerous parables that illustrate the faithfulness
of God:
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The prodigal son, the 10
lepers, and the parable of the talents.
It was when I looked
up faithfulness in the Concordance that I decided on the lesson for today.
My point in sharing the process of selecting the scripture is that it illustrates
how the theme of God’s faithfulness is fruitful…or abounding: Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see; all that I needed Thy hand hath provided;
great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.
Like each of the
fruit, the Spirit of faithfulness has its roots in the very character of God. When
we allow the Spirit to work in our lives we do not simply become more human, we
also become more like God, in whose image we are created!
The Greek word
that Paul used in his list in Galatians is the same as the root word used in
faith that can also be translated as trust. So the meaning here is more
like trustworthiness. When we are faithful we can be trusted. Can’t you see
how each word has the same root meaning?
Once we recover
this richer sense of faith we are better able to see God’s double claim on our lives:
God calls us both to trust God, and to be trustworthy. Trust requires steadfast-ness:
commitment, dedication, persistence.
Trust cannot be
fickle, but must be constant. Psalm 100:5—For the Lord is Good; God’s steadfast
love endures forever and God’s faithfulness for all generations.
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Reliability
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Steadfastness
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Constancy
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Fidelity
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Dependability
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Trustworthiness
We know these attributes all characterize God. God is not
a God who created the world and left creation to its own devices….thank God! God
chose to enter history in a certain time, in a certain place, with a certain people
and to be bound forever in a covenant.
So…as the church we are bound not only to God (one-on-one)
as individuals, but we are bound to one another through our vows of church membership:
prayers, presence, gifts and service. And as Don Barr reported to the Church Council,
the General Conference has added a fourth: witness.
As disciples of Jesus Christ we are called to be faithful,
that is to live faithfully. Several times in the gospels we are reminded that stewards
are called to be faithful with what has been entrusted to us. In the Parable of
the Talents, the master’s confidence in the first two servants proves justified.
They are rewarded with further responsibilities. In entrusting the third servant
with only one talent, the master had judged this servant’s business acumen less
reliable than the others. However, the servant’s failure lies not in being no-good
at business, but in not even trying.
The word talent is a biblical word and refers to a
huge sum of money. In the English language we have also taken it to mean skills
and abilities with which people are gifted. In our parable both meanings are appropriate,
because talent has to do with a disciple’s stewardship of all that God has given.
Again we’re describing the fruit of faithfulness. Which gets to the point of the
parable:
What should be done with all these abundant treasures that
God provides? As the parable suggests they should be invested responsibly. They
should not be hoarded or hidden away. They are not really ours to protect.
God is the giver and master of all gifts and treasures. God
is always in charge of the results of the investments we make of our talents. It
is no surprise that the servants who invested their talents received great return
on their risk. Will not God who gives us talents for ministry also bless them when
they are put to good use? Will not God bring forth fruit when our gifts are planted
as seeds for mission?
It is perhaps with this parable in mind that Paul tells the
Corinthians: Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s
mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.
There’s that word again! Faithfulness is so central to the character of the
Christian that when Paul commends to his hearers a fellow Christian, he routinely
described them as faithful: they could be trusted!
In our society there are many obstacles to faithfulness.
We live in a culture that tends to choke our convictions regarding commitment and
faithfulness with disposability. We have disposable everything—I don’t have to list
these for you! For a throw-away culture the obvious advantage of disposables is
that no upkeep is required.
Rather than service those things that serve us, we create
products that we can simply discard. They do not need to be washed, sterilized,
cleaned or repaired. But I wonder, does this thinking bleed over into our relationships,
jobs, churches and hobbies? If your needs are not being met, simply discard the
relationship, job, church or hobby and move on.
A disposable culture is the opposite of the fruit of faithfulness
and trustworthiness. To cultivate the fruit of faithfulness we are called to
endure, to be trustworthy and steadfast. In his book Life on the Vine, the
author encourages us to cultivate faithfulness in these ways:
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By celebrating God’s abiding
presence in worship.
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By immersing ourselves
in the stories of our faith.
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By making and keeping promises
to family, friends and faith community.
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By telling the truth. Here
he writes, Faithful friendships and marriages have a least one thing in common:
they need to be able to tell the truth to one another. If learning to tell the
truth can be understood as a way of cultivating and embodying faithfulness,
we must also realize that faithfulness helps to make truth-telling possible.
Friends are free to tell each other the truth because they don’t have to worry
whether such truth-telling will shatter a fragile or unstable relationship.
All of us have probably been in relationships where we felt as if we were walking
on eggshells, always fearful that if we spoke too truthfully, the relationship
would be over. By pledging to remain faithful to one another, regardless of
the circumstances, we help create and sustain conditions to truth-telling.
God is Christ has
told us the truth about ourselves: we are not yet what we will be. As John
Wesley said, we are moving on to perfection, but we’re not there yet!
We need each other in the church as we journey toward the goal. This summer we strive
to strengthen our walk with Christ by learning how to cultivate this fruit of the
Spirit. Like anything worthwhile, it takes prayer and practice.
I had this dramatically illustrated
in my last church when I brought a couple of large pots into the sanctuary and planted
a lovely vine in each one. There was a lot of light coming in through the front
stain glassed windows, so I thought they would do fine with a little watering. Week
after week they looked worse. Someone suggested I was over-watering them. Someone
else thought they weren’t getting enough water. A third person thought it
was the wrong plant! So I pulled them up and replanted with a seedling that could
take the heat of the sanctuary in the summer without a lot of direct light. Finally
they began to grow and thrive.
But the real secret of their success
was in the faithfulness of a guy named Roy who lived across the street from the
church and volunteered wherever he was needed. Roy was a retired truck driver who
just liked being at the church. So every morning he lifted these large pots and
wheeled them on a dolly outside; and in the afternoon he brought them back into
the sanctuary, eventually putting them back near the altar for Sundays.
There were a couple of lessons
for me here: one was that Roy was a good and faithful servant and without his devotion,
the plants would not have survived. The other was I had planted the wrong vine the
first time: be careful what you plant in your life! The wrong thing just may take
root; or it may take a lot of attention and never thrive. Be careful what we plant
in our lives.
But the greatest lesson for me
was to be faithful and steadfast: to pull up and replant. I was determined that
if the second plant had died, I would have tried a third kind, planting again and
again until something took root and blossomed, eventually bearing fruit.
The fruit of the Spirit cannot
be forced, but it can be encouraged and tended with love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness and faithfulness. Next Sunday we will look at cultivating
the fruit of gentleness in the midst of an aggressive world.
This morning let us renew our promise
to be faithful and trustworthy in all our relationships: with God, with family,
with friends and in the church…never for our own sakes, but always for Jesus’ sake.
Amen
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