Sermon for May 23rd (Fruits of the Spirit)

“Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.” Have any of you read the book, Lord of the Flies, or seen the movie. That iconic story portrays what happens when people are left up to our own devices, without guidance or rules. They end up trying to kill each other. It’s in our nature, what the apostle Paul calls our sinful nature. God created us good, but we choose to do things that are not good. It’s not that we aren’t able to do good, but each one of us is driven, compulsively, to follow our own desires rather than to follow the desires of God. We want what is best for ourselves—not others.

Paul says that our sinful nature and God’s Holy Spirit, are in conflict with one another. There is an ultimate fight going on within each of us, all the time. Some of you might experience this as anxiety, or guilt, or just plain indecision. God sends us his Holy Spirit in order that we might follow God’s will despite our temptations to do just the opposite. When the Holy Spirit starts working in your life, the effects are what the book of Galatians calls the fruit of the Spirit.

The apostle Paul gives us nine examples of this fruit in Galatians chapter 5. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I will be focusing on three of them this morning. I want you to better understand both how God creates these fruits in you and how you and I can cultivate this fruit in our lives. I intend on planting seeds this morning, seeds of faith, so that you might realize that this fruit comes from God alone for, as Jesus put it, “Apart from me (apart from God) you can do nothing.” But I also want to equip you with ways to nourish this fruit in your life.

Today I will focus on just three fruits of the Spirit, namely: peace, generosity and self-control. So let’s get started.

The fruit of Peace

In the movie, “Under the Tuscan Sun”, the main character, Francis, has recently gone through a bad divorce and is trying to put her life back together. She is struggling especially with how to deal with romance and finding new love. Another woman speaks to her about being at peace in her life until the time is right for love to come her way. She explains, “Listen, when I was a little girl, I used to spend hours looking for ladybugs. Finally, I'd just give up and fall asleep in the grass. When I woke up, they were crawling all over me.” The fruit of peace grows, and it’s impossible for us to know exactly how. Many a couple has explained the fruit of peace in this way when it comes to finding love, “When I stopped looking, love found me.”

Psalm 46 puts this a different way, “Be still and know that I am God.” The fruit of peace starts growing without any effort on your part. People often find peace only when they stop working so hard at finding it. You already have peace with God because of Jesus’ death on the cross. No matter the battle you are fighting in your life right now, Jesus has already defeated it for you. One day you will see that victory face to face. The stress in your life doesn’t get the last word. God says, “My peace I give to you.”

So then, how do we cultivate this peace? Well, to start, it is very difficult to find peace when you are always striving for it. I believe that this fruit is constantly trying to grow on us, but, instead of enjoying it, we find some way to ignore it. I often create stress for myself. Are any of you like that? What I do is, instead of enjoying my life, I keep striving for more. I’ll be sitting at home enjoying my family and then, suddenly, I am in angst about whether I am REALLY doing enough with my kids to be a good father. Am I playing with them enough? Should I be home more? And, soon enough, I’ve got myself and my kids upset about whether I am a good dad or not. One moment I’m enjoying family time, but because of my selfish ambition to be super-dad, our peaceful home becomes miserable.

Cultivating peace is your life is often about just letting God take care of your problems without trying to do his job for him. You’ve no doubt seen the signs in mechanics garages that give the price for labor per hour and then higher prices if you want to watch or if you want to help. God is the master mechanic and cultivating peace often means letting go and letting God do his thing. In the gospel of Matthew Jesus says, “Do not worry. Do not worry about what you will eat or what you will wear, for your Heavenly Father knows that you need these things. But, seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

What are some practical ways to cultivate peace? Take time out at the end of each day to pray. Use one of the Portals of Prayer books or just say the Lord’s Prayer. You could write down your worries on a piece of paper as they come into your mind and stick them in your Bible next to a passage about God’s power and leave them in God’s hands. You might be amazed at how well he does with your problems without your help. Don’t make finding peace into another goal; focus on how God has already given you the fruit you seek.

The Fruit of Generosity

Dave Ramsey, a Christian financial planner explains that the amount of money one has does not affect how one wants to use it. If you are a jerk when you are poor, you will be a jerk when you are rich. Money doesn’t change the heart. In fact, all that will probably happen when you have more money is that you will become MORE of whatever you already are. This fruit of generosity, like the fruit of peace, comes from the Holy Spirit, not from the amount of money you earn or how hard you work for it. AND generosity doesn’t come from being told to give more, but from having a change of heart.

For many, the world seems based on a rule of scarcity while God promises that the world is actually full of God’s abundance. A worldview based on scarcity leads to desires such as jealously and envy. When it appears that the world does not have enough money, or food, or housing, or love to go around, it makes us believe that we must take what others have or horde what we have before someone comes to take it away.

Perhaps that is why being rich in today’s society is viewed as a sin to many people—a sin that needs to be punished. Instead of seeing one’s money, no matter how much or how little, as a blessing given by God, wealth is seen as an unequal distribution of limited resources. And so we are tempted to all kinds of sinful behavior when we believe others have what should be rightfully ours. However, the fruit of generosity is planted when you start realizing that all that you have, and all that others have, are gifts from the same God. And he is a God of abundance. God uses all people, rich and poor, to care for his creation.

But how might we cultivate generosity in our own lives? One of the best ways, I believe, is by doing something as simple as making a budget. As the motivational speaker Zig Zigler puts it, “If you don’t tell your money where to go, you won’t know where it went.” Even if the fruit of generosity has been planted in our hearts, it can often seem like we CAN’T give like we want to because we never have anything leftover at the end of the month! But once you see where your money is going, you have the opportunity to cultivate your generousity.

You can decide to spend more time eating at home with the family for instance instead of going out. Or, you can plan to build up money for Christmas gifts all year long instead of putting it all on a credit card as if it were an unexpected emergency the night of December 24th. Most people who want to give 10% to their church can’t find 10% leftover at the end of the month, but, by using a budget, you can plan to give before the month even starts. Often, a simple step like planning a budget can help you cultivate the fruit of generosity that God has already placed in your hearts. It’s a tool that helps you live out your faith.

The Fruit of Self-Control

Richard Wurmbrand wrote this in his book, “Waiting on God’s Will” about his 14 years in a Romanian prison being persecuted for his faith in Christ. He wrote, “I remember the chill that went down my spine when I read the secret formula disclosed only to initiates during the third degree of Masonry, “Let my will happen in all things.” The formula was not new to me. It tapped the huge drive for self-assertion which we all have in us. It is just the contrary of the teaching of our Lord: ‘Whoever desires to come to Me, let him deny himself.’

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray to God, “THY will be done.” When in all things OUR will is the most important aspect, life becomes all about our wishes, our dreams, our desires. It feels so good to do whatever we want! By ourselves, we are slaves to sin, but when God makes us new creations, He sets us free. When God gives you faith, he also gives you hope for self-control. Not by trusting in your own power to resist but in God’s power to strengthen you.

Self-control is cultivated in two particular ways: learning God’s will for your life and waiting for God to act in your life. You may have heard the story where a little boy gets in trouble again and again for leaving his bike in his parents’ driveway. After being chided one last time for his lack of self-control, the little boy finally cries out, “OK, I’m sorry, but what’s a driveway!” When you read the Bible, you find out how God wants you to live your life and that gives you an idea of where you need to control yourself. If you have never heard God’s laws, it’s tough to follow them.

The second way you can cultivate self control is through prayer. When temptation comes your way, ask for help from God himself, “Commit your way to God, trust in him until he acts on your behalf.” If you’ve ever been to an AA meeting, Alcoholics Anonymous, you’ve heard this exemplified in the opening steps, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. Step two: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Everyone’s temptations are different, but cultivating self-control is a fight that we all must take one day at a time.

“Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.” The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When God gives you faith, the Holy Spirit plants the seeds in your heart; however, as long as this sinful nature of ours exists we will have to contend with the temptations to let these fruits die on the vine. But you are not alone.

My prayer is that, as a community, we might cultivate these fruits in one another. There are portals of prayer books and a sign-up sheet for more in the parish hall if you are struggling with finding peace in your life. There are copies of a budget that you can work through to help you live our your generosity. Finally, there are Bibles to take home if you don’t’ have one and Bible studies between services as well as a list of support groups for those struggling with self-control. Most importantly, as you continue to cultivate these fruits in your life you may trust that God is at work within you, enabling you to both will and work for his good pleasure. He who has called you is faithful and He will do it. Amen.

Sermon for July 12th

Peace. Peace. It’s a fickle thing to hold onto, isn’t it? We’re all for peace, but we seldom find it. Sometimes, we don’t even want it, for the moment at least, but, even if we are fighting, we’re often doing it for peace, right? Doing it for a good cause. For our peace of mind. Fight for peace! How many times have I heard that said, or read it on a sign somewhere within a peaceful demonstration—against fighting. Peace is truly hard to come by. In our world. In our community. Even, and especially, within our hearts.

We need peace right now. Especially right now at Saint Peters. Our peaceful lives were interrupted by tragedy just a little over a week ago. And now we are trying to find our way again. A good friend of ours is at peace with the Lord, but, for the rest of us, well, it is a little harder to come by. Even those of you who are our honored guests this morning know what I’m talking about even though you may not know the exact details of our tragedy. You’ve had your own along the way, maybe you are having one right now. Peace is a fleeting wish so often in our lives. We want peace, but how to get it is another thing entirely.

The writer of psalm 85 was also in the midst of a crisis when he wrote the words we read today. The Psalm, this prayer, begins by telling about what God has done, those marvelous things done in he past when their community was under stress. Let me read for you what was said since it’s not typed out for us in the insert, “Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin. You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger.”

You see, this community had also seen its share of devastation and wrath. Both this community so long ago as well as ours. The question is, “Was God faithful?” Through those times of trial and tribulation? You’ve all had your times of burden and despair. What happened next? What did God do with that despair? What did God do with those burdens? On the back of our church’s card, it is written that Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” What did he do with yours? With your heaviest of burdens. Why do you continue looking to God for peace? Because he has given you peace before.

Today’s Psalm continues by explaining that tragedy has struck the community again and the writer cries out to God for help, “Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard in the past week, “Cornwall has had enough!” I think that there is both frustration and fear behind these words. We’ve had a lot of sadness in the past several weeks, too much for us to take. And we are scared because we know that at some point in all of our lives, we’ll each be going through tough times like this again. Not just here, not just with friends, not just with death, but with finances, and with our children, or with our cars, or with our nation. It’s just a matter of time—and that’s kinda scary. We want peace now and we want it to stay. Peace for our hearts. Peace for our world.

Peace is more than just the absence of war or the absence of fighting. The Hebrew word for peace is Shalom and it refers to one’s whole well-being. There are times in my life when the world seems at one and peaceful yet within myself, my own heart, the world is shattering all around me. The sun is out, the breeze is calm, but there is a gray cloud over my spirit. Shalom seeks to speak of that time when the fullness of God’s presence fills your heart, your mind, your household and the world. All of it. As you can see, we may seek peace ourselves, our country may seek peace, even the world may become peaceful, but “Shalom,” true peace, only finally comes from God.

And that’s I guess why we are all finally here this morning. Because peace is so fleeting, so fickle, so far from us at times. We come here to seek peace from its only source and pray that God creates this peace, promotes peace and does peace even through us, using our hands, our feet, our hearts and our voices. It is why we come together and continuing grieving ones we love while at the same time promising life and salvation to the little children in our midst.

In baptism, God gives life, peace and salvation. We can trust that little Charlie here this morning has peace with God not based on how much or how loudly he cries, but because his sins have been washed clean away in God’s sight. We find peace through trusting God’s promises. Remember when you heard the promises spoken and watched water poured over him? Charlie’s baptism today is an example of how God “does” peace to us. We can all fight for peace or pray for peace, but true “Shalom” only comes from God. He’s got to GIVE us peace and DO peace to us.

The last part of Psalm 85 expresses this: What is God doing to create peace, “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.” Sometimes I think that we all have the tendency, myself included, to believe that, somehow, being faithful and having peace are contradictory. Perhaps we get that false impression from stories about Martin Luther and the Reformation. We believe that in order to reform ourselves and the church, to be faithful to God’s Word, we must also be at odds with others and not at peace. The same is true of tolerance which also gets a bad rap so often. But tolerance means to be at peace with others, no matter how different from you they are or how different your opinions are than theirs'. Tolerance doesn't mean "compromise" but being at peace with others--loving others-- even when fighting might be easier. To be faithful to God’s Word means to desire and move toward peace with others always and in all ways.

God’s righteousness and his faithfulness are notsimply adjectives describing God they are so much more than that! God’s faithfulness DOES something. It’s an action word. God is always creating peace; He is always desiring peace. God’s faithfulness creates peace in your heart by never abandoning you even when the earth is falling apart around you. Finally, God promises to create peace in this community and in this world by staying faithful to it despite our social injustices, our wars and our hatred. He will not abandon our world to fall in upon itself; instead, he comes deep down into your life and is faithful to you and your struggles.

What is the result of all this talk and promising of peace, love and righteousness? The Psalm says that “Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.” And smack, when the two meet, when they kiss, the world won’t collapse on itself, it will become whole. The place between my hands isn’t the world, the whole world is all around them.

What might this faithfulness look like, springing up from the ground? For those of you at the funeral yesterday, it might look like God creating a celebration out of a tragedy. We came in sadness and perhaps, even for a moment, you found peace. What might faithfulness look like, springing up from the ground? Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, that little children of every color, race and creed would not just hold hands but maybe even change the world, their institutions and the content of their character. We're called to continue that dream and work for tolerance that is a part of peace. What might this faithfulness look like, springing up from the ground? When a sinner comes to hear God’s promise, gets water splashed on him and finds himself at peace with God forever. This happens both at baptism and when you hear that your sins are forgiven on account of Jesus Christ alone. Peace, Shalom is difficult to find. Peace, it's hard to find because it doesn’t happen just through your efforts, but because God is faithful to you. He has been before. And he will be again. Amen.

Sermon for July 6th

“Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before. Christ, the royal master, leads against the foe; forward into battle, see, his banners go. Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.” Many Christians have a love/hate relationship with this song. They like the tune, but they don’t like the implications of the song. What it might mean for thinking about God. What it might mean for thinking about ourselves.

Christians, in American culture, are often portrayed as peaceful, weak, quiet, bland sissies. Many Christians themselves believe that when you come to church you have to leave your passion, your strength, your assertiveness and your intelligence at the door. Church is considered to be mainly for women and children, the older the women and the younger the children, the better. Talking about soldiers, wars, battles, kings and banners flying sounds more like an action adventure movie than a Sunday morning sermon.

So, this song, “Onward Christian soldiers,” is an anachronism, full of ideas that seem out of place for our time. Today, Jesus is talked about as loving, tolerant and peaceful, not, as the song puts it, a royal master, leading us against enemies, forward into battle with banners blazing behind and before. Does this song belong in our church hymnal or have we finally outlived the usefulness for these types of metaphors when describing God in our civilized peace-loving day and age?

God’s Word is sharper than any two edged sword, that is, it cuts both ways. It cuts to the right and it cuts to the left. For those of you who imagine Jesus as simply a non-violent pacifist, he brings a sword! He is the same God who led the Israelites in countless wars against their foes. He doesn’t pray for peace as we do, in quiet prayer groups or at night before bed, he commands it! He is assertive! He doesn’t stay a baby in swaddling clothes forever, but as the reading from Zechariah says, he comes as a king, triumphant and victorious.

Jesus Christ cannot be labeled as purely an anti-war flower child. As Jesus said a couple of weeks ago in our gospel lesson, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Jesus is a peacemaker, this is true, but he is also not the namby-pamby many people make him out to be. He is a king, a warrior, a prince. In our reading from Zechariah today, the author uses the symbolism of war and battle, of fighting and arms to express God’s deeds of power, his glory. However, the glory that is expected, the glory is not what we had imagined. The glory is that of peace and humility.

God’s word is sharper than any two edged sword. It cuts both ways. The Jews imagined their Messiah as a victorious warrior king. If Jesus was this Messiah, their Savior, many Jews figured it was time for a little payback against the nations that had power over them. They expected Jesus to destroy their enemies and trample the bodies into the dust. For those of you who imagine Jesus as simply a battle-hero, an awesome warrior king!—he comes humbly riding on a donkey. He doesn’t take prisoners of war, the reading today says he sets free the prisoners of hope. He doesn’t pillage neighboring towns for retribution for his people, he restores double to those who were exiled from their homes out of his own kingly coffers.

Jesus undermined the symbols of glory and power for those hungry for destruction and dominion among the Jews. With these same symbols, he offends the civilized sensibilities of those of us hungry for comfort and tolerance in our day. God’s word cuts both ways, to the right and to the left.

We worship the God who freed the oppressed Israelites from their slavery to the Egyptians. Yes we do. But we also worship the God who drowned Pharaoh and his army in the waters of the Red Sea in order to seal this escape. It’s the same God. We worship the God who gave us eternal life through Jesus Christ, and the God who sent his only son to death on a cross. It’s the same God. We worship the God who commands peace, but brings a sword. It’s the same God. God is not the battle hero we all want him to be nor is he the pacifist we all want him to be.

We are in the midst of wars across the world in Iraq and Afghanistan. You are all intelligent citizens and can make up your own minds about how you think and deal with these things politically. I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m not going to tell you what to believe or that God is on one side or the other because he is on both. God knows the necessity of war and the pain of war. God knows the sins of war and the righteousness of war.

The more you hear God’s Word, read it at home and converse with others about it, the more it affects your understanding and beliefs. However, as soon as you or I try and wield it like an axe against others either to lead the war charge or to cut off an olive branch, the axe head falls off and stubs our toes. This doesn’t mean that we aren’t to judge based on God’s word. It means that God does the judging—with his words—and that he always judges you and me with his words before we can see start swinging at the log in our neighbors’ eyes.

Today’s reading from Zechariah was not written as an oracle about the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was an oracle for the Israelites coming out of exile. This reading strengthens our faith in God and informs our understanding of how to faithfully live our lives during these wars, but we cannot take these verses and chastise our neighbors or government without taking at look at ourselves first. The words interpret us first, pointing out our sins and then pointing out our hope. God knows that war and peace will come and go. We are driven to seek hope in God’s righteousness and not in our own.

You have a God who is not unfamiliar with wars and battles. He has led the charge, he has healed the wounded and he has buried the dead. He has even died on a cross. He knows what it is to suffer, to be despised, to be punished and to be struck down in a battle. Not just against evil but against the devil himself. There are people we love at home and abroad who are fighting for this country and being placed in harms way. We can trust that God is there with them, fighting with them, suffering with them and protecting them from harm. And when death happens on the battlefield, from friendly fire or from a road bomb or from an ambush, we can trust that their Lord and Savior will not leave them or forsake them just because they are part of a war. He has been there before.

You also have a God who is not unfamiliar with the struggle for peace and the end of war. He has promised long ago to judge between many peoples and nations, that they will beat their swords into plowshares and use their spears for pruning hooks. There will come a time when nation shall not lift up sword against nation and not learn war any more. He has not only called us to peace, but has taken it on himself to command peace to nations. Peace is finally God’s responsibility even while we do our best to pray for that peace to come. You can trust that God is listening to your prayers for peace. He doesn’t want any soldiers from any nation to die whether they are Christians or not, for as the book of Ezekiel proclaims, “God finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” Instead, he is always seeking those who are lost so that they might turn to him and live, not only happily on this earth but also eternally in heaven.

God loves you. When you are in the midst of wars and battles, he fights alongside you with the goal of giving you peace as the prize. When you are praying for peace, he will do battle with the forces of evil, apathy and destruction and command that peace as a triumphant and glorious king. His love is not based on your political preference. You are made right with God by faith alone. You are loved by both a peaceful and a powerful God. Amen.