So, I have to admit that I have been struggling to fully wrap my head around our sermon series “The Fruit we Bear.”
I love the imagery we’re using, about the vine, about being connected to Christ and to God, about having deep roots in our faith and have had no trouble with any of that but where I have been falling short is when we get down to the business of growing fruit.
I think this struggle came out the last time I preached. I was preaching about the fruit of “Joy”, I shared that I felt the Christian fruit of “joy” is not something that we can produce for ourselves, but its something that comes from the knowledge that God is always reaching out to us in love, its a fruit that God produces in our life. In essence I was disagreeing with our sermon series “The Fruit we bear” I was saying that fruit bearing is not our job.. Our job is to stay connected to God and let God bear the fruit in our lives.
After I shared this message I got a lot of feedback (which we pastor’s love, its so good to know folks are following your thought process, and the sermons are starting conversation).
Anyway, a number of you disagreed with me, you felt that joy is absolutely something you can create in your life, that God is involved in it, and indeed joy comes from God but you felt we all have the ability to create joy, or to choose to be joyful.”
I think I probably courteously responded
you raise a good point but that isn’t what today’s scripture inspired in me
Even last week when Karen preached about how we are shifting our focus as a church, how we are thinking more about how our staff and leaders, our programs and our church, how every piece of who we are and what we do as a congregation should be focused on how we create people who produce luscious and rich god-filled fruit in their lives and in the world.
Even THEN I still found myself struggling… “yeah… buuuut is it really us who produces fruit? Is it really us who creates that kind of church? or is it God at work through the Spirit?”
Are these fruit, these virtuous signs of a faithful life something we are supposed to create for ourselves, or are they things we notice God creating when we are connected to the Christ vine?
When you boil these questions down you are left with the centuries old question that faithful christians have debated for Millenia, is it God’s action that matters? or is it how we choose to act that matters?
After weeks of scriptural reflection, and prayerful thought, God brought me to a place where I could reconcile these two sides but it came from the most unlikely place…
…a video on youtube by a blog called “The art of manliness”
I found the video amid a list of videos like: “How to cook a steak on a shovel” and “How to shave with a straight razor” but it stood out because the video was titled “How to feel like a man” (you can find the video embedded at the end of the sermon)
It seems like an odd thing to make a video about but it turns out that the creator of the blog a mustachioed guy by the name of Brett McKay had heard many comments from men over the years confessing to him that even though they were well into their adulthood they never felt like men. That despite their age they still felt like teenagers walking around in a man’s body. In the video, the creator of the site says this:
Because they don’t feel like mature men, many of these young men are putting off adult responsibilities like careers, families, and civic involvement until they can look at themselves in the mirror and say: “I’m a man.” In the meantime, these young men drift insecurely through life, wondering when they’ll finally start feeling like grown men.
Now talking about becoming an adult or becoming a man may seem way off topic from stewardship season and our scripture today. But I promise the next part of this “how to feel like a man” video is what will make the connection.
McKay moves the discussion from being specifically about how to feel like a man to a deeper, more philosophical question… How do we …become anything?
He says:
Conventional wisdom tells us that before we do something, we first need to feel like doing it or feel like the kind of person who would do that sort of thing. And in order to feel like doing something, the thinking goes, you need to get in the right mindset, “find yourself,” or discover your “deep inner truth… … But the problem with conventional wisdom on how a person “becomes” is that it doesn’t work. At least not very well. Nine times out of ten you won’t magically start feeling like a man by simply thinking about becoming a man.
McKay isn’t just talking about becoming a man, he’s considering the question, how does someone become virtuous? How does someone live out a vision for themselves? How does someone bear fruit…”
He then goes on to argue his answer to how to feel like man in fact its the name of the blog post that accompanies the video: “Want to feel like a man? Then act like one.”
In his argument he uses quotes from The Old Testament, The ancient philosopher Aristotle, Teddy Roosevelt, and Modern Adult Developmental Psychologist Meg Jay, But I like the quotes from Aristotle and Teddy Roosevelt the best… I’ll let you figure out which quote belongs to which author..
But we get virtues by first exercising them… For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g., people [men] become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
and then this quote:
There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.
God’s action is crucial because it is the first action. Without it we wouldn’t even know we had the ability to be virtuous, the ability to be redeemed, the ability to bear fruit. But God’s action is not the end of the story… in order to actually become fruit bearing as Christians or as God’s church we have to practice it in our lives at every moment.
Which brings us to today’s scripture.
Timothy is part of a group of scripture known as the “Pastoral Epistles” or Pastoral Letters which includes 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus, and sometimes Philemon. They are called Pastoral Epistles because they are all addressed to individuals who are pastors of churches and discuss issues of Christian living, and leadership.
In the scripture today it is obvious that the pastor of this church is having trouble because within their community are people who have money and not only that but they who wish they could have even more money.
These are people who feel that all of their problems will subside if only they just had that little bit extra. These are people whose mood changes based on the stock market dropping a point or going up a point. In other words, these people have lifted up financial wealthiness as a virtue. And it is causing enough trouble in the community to seek advise from a friend.
And his friend’s advise is pretty clear and almost explicit. Nothing good can come when people make money their goal, in fact it is the root of evil and leads people away from their faith causing them pain.
His suggestion to Timothy is almost more direct and I love the way the Message interprets it:
But you Timothy, you man of God: run for your life from all of this: pursue a righteous life-a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, and courtesy… seize the eternal life, the life you were called to, take hold of what is Truly life.
I want to be clear about something, I don’t think the author of this letter is saying that wealth, whether in money, talents, or time is inherently evil. But what I absolutely know this text is saying is that the goals you create for yourself, the virtues that you try to live out, the fruit you choose to bear absolutely. matter. And how you choose to use your excess absolutely. Matters.
The author doesn’t chastise people with money but helps them redirect their focus. He tells Timothy to tell them not to put their hope in finances, instead they need to put their hope in God, to start living out the virtues that come with a faithful life, to start bearing fruit by doing good, by being rich in the good things they do, by being generous and sharing with others.
He tells Timothy to tell his people to put their hope back in God and to start acting. To start using the gifts that they have in abundance, their wealth to bear rich fruit in the world.
Every moment of everyday we make choices that determine the people we become. Every moment, we choose where we place our roots, we choose the fruit we bear.
God calls us to pursue the eternal life, to connect to the Christ vine and sow our roots deep into rich God soil.
I am charging you in the presence of God who gives life to all things… Don’t just sit idly by, talking about living a faithful life, talking about bearing fruit, and don’t put your hope in finances or money… in fact run from your life from all of these things.
I challenge you to practice… to practice a devout and faithful life with Christ at the center, to try little by little, moment by moment, to grow the fruits of the spirit for yourself and for those around you. Because when we start to act, we start to become the thing we hoped for all along.
May it be so…
Amen
granpresblog 
Another winner Trip. Thanks