Stay The Cause (Pentecost 3C)

This is the text of the message I prepared for Kaniva Shared Ministry and The Serviceton Church for Sunday 26th June 2022.

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

Last week I didn’t quite share some bad news with you. I told you that I had received an unwelcome story in the mail, and that it had upset my apple cart a bit. This week in our reading from the gospel we get a lesson for such a time as that: maintain your focus no matter what the cost. In Luke 9 we read how Jesus was denied entry and accommodation to a Samaritan town because he was going to Jerusalem. In the next paragraph Jesus warned those who would follow him to Jerusalem that they too would face sleeping on the road. Then he invites a potential follower but that man was too busy trying to get his inheritance. Similarly a man who wants to join the progression on his own terms is told to not wait but follow immediately.

This is not just another a travel journey, it’s a major shift in focus for Jesus and for world history. Unlike John where Jesus is in and out of Jerusalem quite a few times in his three and a half years of active ministry, in Luke (as in Mark and Matthew) Jesus is only on the road for a year, and he only goes to Jerusalem once. He begins in ministry in Galilee, and then (at Luke 9:51) he turns toward Jerusalem and spends the next ten chapters walking toward his death and his glory. So that’s what’s going on here, Jesus has just turned his face and begun the big walk South; he’s a man on a mission and he’s spruiking that mission to the people around him.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, writes Paul to the Church in Galatia, because those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit let us also be guided by the Spirit. (Galatians 5:1, 24-25). There are many sermons that can be preached on these verses, and it wasn’t so long ago that I spoke to Kaniva’s combined churches about the fruit of the Spirit. I hope you remember that an orange that is sour is a bad orange, it cannot self-identify as a grapefruit; and that a Christian who is loving and kind but not self-controlled similarly cannot say “well I’m a 7/9 in the fruits and that’s okay”. One fruit, nine characteristics. Today let’s take a different look at the same verses alongside what we have just read from the Jesus Tradition. Discipleship requires us to persevere, with the fruit in all of its character, but with a focus on the goal. The freedom you have in Christ is not a lack of control, but liberation from all of the stuff that is not Christ. You are freed from sin and guilt and habit, released from a yoke of slavery to follow Jesus. As was Jesus departing Galilee, so Paul sees each Christian as a woman or man on a mission: Paul commends to us a similar determination and strategy to stay on course, and on cause. Yoke yourself to Christ, be the bondservants of each other in The Church, and let your self-indulgent flesh-life go the way of all flesh to the grave.

In our story from the Hebrew Traditions and 2 Kings 2 today we get another reminder of the call to stay focussed, and to ignore the voices of distraction. I like this story a lot, it makes me laugh how determined Elisha is to shut out the voices of the doomsayers. “Yeah I know, just shut up would youse” he says to the bands of prophets at a distance. For the second week in a row the Lectionary has cut out the good bit so we didn’t get to hear that today; although we do get to hear Elisha speaking just as much Strayan when he tells Elijah to “stop telling me to stop, I’m coming alright and you can’t make me stay here.” Elisha is staying the course and the cause; he knows what he wants, he know where to get it, and he’s not stopping until he gets to the place and gets what he wants, despite what Elijah and the bands of prophets at a distance are telling him. And he does get it: Elijah’s mantle is powerful in Elisha’s hands, doubly so when you read the whole story of Elisha.

In the various translations and commentaries I referred to this week I found that in Luke 9:51 Jesus is described as resolutely determined, or in words similar. He hasn’t just turned left or faced south, he’s done more even than set the satnav for The Church of The Holy Sepulchre, Jesus had decided to be unstoppable and unwavering in his walk to Jerusalem.  Jesus takes the fullest notice of the time and, understanding that the fulness of time has come, he sends messengers ahead of him at each point to prepare for his arrival at the next point. It is while they are underway and travelling that they come across the recalcitrance of this Samaritan village; but we are told that Jesus takes it all in his stride and simply seeks alternative accommodation. He’s on a mission from God, he’s here to save the world, he hasn’t got time to waste on petty squabbles with petty foreigners. Jesus is a man on a mission of salvation, so he’s not interested in pausing to call down destruction upon anybody, no matter how personally insulting they were to him.

I wonder how we go as disciples with this model of diminishing self-interest. Jesus doesn’t acknowledge the hurt of being denied accommodation, even though the hurt is fully recognised and displayed by the Boanerges brothers. Elijah had indeed called down fire upon people who insulted him, (you see it in 2 Kings 1:10-12, just before the Elisha story we read today), and not only did God send the fire in answer to Elijah’s prayer God also honoured Elijah with a glorious and spectacular ascension. But Jesus doesn’t do that, Jesus rejects anything that distracts him from his goal; Jesus rejects the threat to his majesty by travelling the path of humility and forgiveness against rudeness and rejection, and he sets an example for his companions on the road. Do we follow Christ along the way with such unconditional love for the world he saves, and uncompromising attention to his call? I think the answer is actually “mostly, yes” rather than “no”; we are Christians here and most of us get it right most of the time, thanks to Holy Spirit for guiding and teaching us as we walk.

When Jesus decides to pass through Samaria with a determination to reach Jerusalem he has changed his lifestyle. I’ve already said that he’s leaving local ministry around Galilee to go to Jerusalem, but this is not only a geographical change. Jesus used to pop up in a new Galilean town every now and then and hang around a bit for ministry. Now he’s in transit and he stops only to sleep and eat. Maybe the Samaritan village took that as a slight, an offence to them in the sense that “well he stayed in Capernaum for months, but he won’t even stay a second night in our town,” grizzle. “Fine then, if you’re not gonna stay here and take a few photos of our plastic sheep then you’re not gonna stay here at all!” When you choose a nomadic existence in life and live “only passing through” you cause offence and you attract opposition; and when you, choose to prioritise vision and purpose for the Kingdom’s cause over domestic obligations you cause offence and you attract opposition, even when you are not intending to be rude.

Even if you can set aside self-interest and the yoke of sin, and you live within  freedom for which Christ has set you free, how do you deal with the life-interests of others in you? How do you live by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the flesh when Jesus seems to be saying that you can’t even delay your departure from the old life long enough to kiss goodbye to your parents, spouse and kids?

Discipleship is painful, and from the outside it might look hurtful; but it is never to be spiteful, nor is it to be arrogant. Paul reminds his disciples to not become conceited, competing against one another, (Galatians 5:26a). There are no Frequent Martyr Points for the ones who shun their families the hardest. No, be resolutely determined to live by the Spirit, bearing fruit with nine flavoursome characteristics, and submitting to one another in love, delighting in the service of others and their service of you. Discipleship is a radical change; Jesus might not have been killed if he had stayed in Galilee, but then he wasn’t born just to die of old age in Sepphoris, was he? No, Jesus was resolute and determined, but he also was provided with meals and naps and friends, and with the salvation of his family through his consistency to the cause of the Kingdom and course of his ministry under God.

Maintain your focus, and like Elijah beneath the broom tree last week let God maintain you.

Amen.

Being People of Spirit

This is the text of the message I prepared for the people of Kaniva, gathered together in a combined churches service at Church of Christ on Sunday 23rd January 2022.

Galatians 5:19-23; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissentions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these….By contrast, the fruit of The Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is what we read in Galatians 5:19-21a, 22-23a and this is what we are going to think about this morning.

But first, first there is a quiz and there is an actual prize for the first correct answer to this question. Are you ready? Okay, great, so here is the question, hand up if you know, first hand connected to a mouth with the correct answer wins. How many fruits of The Spirit are there? Now, before you answer let me warn you; it is not a trick question because the answer is right there in the Bible, but the answer is not “nine”. If you were about to say “nine” then lower your hand because you are wrong, R-O-N-double-G, rongg. Any takers?

One: the answer is one. The Bible clearly reads that by contrast, the fruit of The Spirit is…. Right? It reads that the fruit of The Spirit is, not that the fruits of The Spirit are. Singular noun “fruit”, singular verb “is”; one fruit, without plural grammar. Yes I have a degree in Sociolinguistics, I am a linguist and I know how to do grammar muchly goodliest. In fact I am a Sociolinguist so “muchly goodliest” works. There are more than fifteen works of the flesh but there is only one fruit of the Spirit.

Sticking with fruit, think of an orange. You don’t have to close your eyes, just think about an orange. Now, think about the perfect orange; the best orange ever grown, an orange that grows in Heaven, in God’s own orchard watered by the River of Life. Think about how there was one apple in the Garden of Eden (and there wasn’t; just go with me here), but this orange is the one orange in the Garden of Heaven. Got it, perfect orange? Brill, now, think of how you would describe this amazing orange if you had to describe it is Bible prose. The fruit of the orange tree is (count on your fingers) bright in colour and spherical to the eye, fragrant to the nose, juicy to the mouthfeel and firm in the hand, and sweet to the tongue, filled with vitamin-C and healthy to the body, useful to the dehydrated, and separable to the sharing with others. How many oranges are there (nine fingers)? One! One orange with nine characteristics.

How many fruits of The Spirit are there? One! One fruit with nine characteristics.

Now think of an orange you might find at the back of your cupboard. This one is manky, it is dull and maybe even brown, it is squishy and maybe even soggy in your hand. It is not a perfect sphere, it’s an imperfect blob. Is it still an orange? Yes.

Now let me tell you about another orange, in fact lots of oranges. When I was in Spain in 2004, (excuse me while I pick up that name I dropped, I was in Spain in 2004), anyway when I was in Spain in 2004 I passed through a place called Valencia. Has anyone heard of Valencia? What is Valencia famous for? ¡Si, naranjas! When I was in Spain it was August, summer, and the oranges, thick and big on every tree. And how do you think those oranges tasted? Bitter! The oranges that are grown beside the streets in Valencia are selected to be bitter, to stop tourists pinching them and eating them. They look amazing, they smell wonderful, they taste bleugh. Is an orange grown on such a tree still an orange? Yes.

The manky orange from your pantry, the bitter orange from Valencia, they are both oranges. They are. But are they useful oranges? Meh. Now you’d likely avoid and/or bin the manky one, but the Valencia orange is round and orange, it looks wonderful on the tree and it smells sweet. No doubt it would feel great in your hand, it would quarter with a knife, it would be juicy in your mouth and it would be full of vitamin-C. That’s seven out of our nine characteristics of the Heavenly orange, and we have already said it is an orange. But it does not taste sweet, you’d probably spit it out if you tried to suck on it, and therefore it would be useless for re-invigorating your mates at footy or netty even if you can quarter it, because no one will take more than a mouthful. More so, because that orange was yuck you’d likely not want to try any of the others on offer, so you’d avoid the entire tray, and you’d actually walk away in worse shape than you walked up because your mouth would be full of sour. Bleugh.

This orange from Valencia is one fruit with nine characteristics: seven of these characteristics are attractive, another characteristic is potentially beneficial, but the characteristic of taste is so unattractive that the whole fruit is wasted as a food source. This glorious fruit, this globally renowned Valencia orange, is useless other than as an ornament. If this fruit tree were a fig tree the hungry Jesus would curse it dead where it stands, even with eight out of nine of the characteristics of perfection in place.

So, that’s enough about fruit, you came here for theology not botany. There is one Spirit and one fruit of the Spirit, how are you going Christian? What’s your score on the characteristics? This is not a question about an orchard, you don’t get to say, “well I’m good with different breeds of citrus but I can’t do tomatoes”. One fruit, in this case oranges, in this case disciples. With the singular metaphor Paul is using you don’t get to opt out and call yourself an apple, you don’t even get to self-identify as a lemon “and that’s why I taste bitter”. If you are a Christian then you are an orange; so what sort of orange are you? Being green doesn’t make you a lime, it makes you a rubbish orange. Maybe you are green because you are not yet ripe, that’s fine, keep growing. Or maybe, just maybe you are too ripe and starting to get furry with your greenness. That is not fine, if you are green and furry you are a wasted orange and you are still a wasted orange as much as you want to say you’re a Kiwifruit. The oranges in Valencia are bitter, they are bitter but pretty oranges, they are not small grapefruit.

The fruit of The Spirit is not a spiritual gift. Okay, in a way the fruit is a gift of The Spirit because the fruit of The Spirit is the evidence of The Spirit working within you to grow you, and the evidence of The Spirit growing in you as you develop and display the characteristics of God in whose image you are made. But in other ways where there are varieties of gifts…and there are varieties of service…and there are varieties of activities…[and to] each is given the manifestation of The Spirit for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:4-7) everyone is supposed to have the character of Christ. In other words, where to one is given through The Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8) so each is equipped by The Spirit with gifts effective for his or her unique ministry, no-one is excused from the responsibility to show generosity, kindness, self-control, and love. Even those with the gift of faith, those with the gifts of healing, and those with the working of miracles, everyone should bear fruit which is good in every characteristic.

So, what about you? You are a Christian, and as a priest amongst the priesthood of all believers where everyone gets a set of gifts and a call match you are also a minister. How effective are your ministries? What effect does your character have upon them?

Last year I spoke with a man whose wife had left him years ago, after she had joined a Pentecostal church. She had prayed earnestly for the conversion of her husband, but in the end her leaders convinced her that she was unequally yoked and that God desired that she divorce this man. “Yeah,” said this man in our conversation, “she spoke in tongues and everything, she was very spiritual.” I answered him, “well good for her, but with all of her speaking in tongues and so forth, was she capable of showing kindness in English?” The man smiled and began to tear up. “No,” he said, “no she wasn’t. I loved her, I still love her, but she became arrogant and snappy with me when I couldn’t keep up with her faith.”

I don’t care what gift you have, or what ministry or accompanying service. If you can’t be kind or generous, kind and generous, then maybe you need to ask how much of your activity is The Spirit and how much of it is you. As some of us heard last week about Isaiah, oftentimes prophets must be blunt. As you may have heard from me yourselves, sometimes and preachers need to wield the Sword of the Spirit (which is the Word of God) as a double-edged blade. But there is no excuse, ever, no matter how sharp or blunt God has called you to speak, for a Christian disciple to be mean. In scripture we consistently find that even God’s harshest words of correction always came tempered with grace, and with the sorrow of “oh my dear people, if only you would turn to me and live,” and with the self-control that God never once wiped-out Israel or Judah even as they (and we) deserved it.

Even a bitter orange is an orange: but those bitter oranges of Valencia were only of ornamental value, they were useless as a source of nutrition. Other than that one fruit in Eden which was to be avoided, whose purpose was to stand in evidence of God’s generous provision that there was more than enough in the garden, the job of fruit in the Bible is to be food. When God wanted decoration God directed craftsmen to make models of food out of gold or wood, real fruit was made to be eaten. An orange in Valencia, an ornamental piece of fruit, is still an orange but it is a wasted opportunity. A beautiful orange which is bitter is an orange that has lost its ability to serve.

Even a bitter Christian is a Christian: but if that Christian looks good, smells good, feels good, but is bitter, (or unkind, or arrogant, or untrustworthy) even if it is only that one characteristic that is out of place, then that Christian is only of ornamental value. Even if a Christian is filled with The Spirit, equipped and gifted by God for acts of service, and is loving, and joyful, and peaceable, and kind, but cannot be relied upon to arrive on time, or to arrive at all, and who lacks the self-control to make him or her reliable, then such a minister has little ministry value and is perhaps only fit as an ornament. That person may be a great communion steward, but her or she will never serve on the door, or in the streets, or in the pulpit.

You cannot be filled with The Spirit if you are not a disciple of God. But you can be a Spirit-filled believer and be ineffective in ministry if you are not bearing the fruit of The Spirit in all of its nine characteristics. This may be a word of correction for you, but it is never a word of condemnation: if you are honestly a seven out of nine on the checklist then ask God (who is a nine) to minister to you and to teach you. If you are a four out of nine, then God also welcomes you to come and sit and learn and grow. You may have to sit out of ministry for a while, but if you are sitting in God and for the purpose of learning from The Spirit to be more like Jesus, then that is where you should be.

Do you want to be effective in your service of The LORD? Check your fruit.

Amen.