stfrancischurchtairuanz

Fruit-bearing

by Ken Francis

(Based on John 15:1-8 and I Cor 3: 5-14)

This Gospel passage about fruit-bearing set me a-searching – not for the first time, I might say – for evidence of fruit in my own life. This passage clearly says, if you abide in me, Jesus, you will bear much fruit. Ok, Ken … where is the fruit?

My first stocktake wasn’t promising. Presumably ‘fruit’ means healings and miracles and souls saved, right? Well, if right, my life is pretty well fruitless. In fact, I’ve had some big fails. Just recently I asked a friend to men’s breakfast – but he said, no, I’m not into that sort of thing. Actually, in the ten houses – I did a count – we have lived in over time, I’ve never even managed to get a neighbour along to anything.

So, I’m thinking, not much fruit to show … Ergo, according to these verses, I am a branch to be cut off and discarded.

But deeper reflection doesn’t accept this. I know God won’t discard me just because I haven’t brought many souls to salvation, or healed anyone. How do I know? Well, there are plenty of other Scriptures that say different. For example,
Eph 2:8, 9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —not by works, so that no one can boast.” So the fruit in John 15 can’t just be good works – things I can point to and say, ‘Look what I did!’
Also, you heard St Paul saying, in I Cor 3, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”

Then there’s the whole life of David. David did some awful things once he was King, and could really be judged a complete failure as a Christian! What fruit do you see resulting from David’s adult life? Apart from his Psalms, it’s hard to find. And yet he wasn’t discarded … “cut off”. On the contrary, Acts 10 describes David as “a man after [God’s] own heart, [who] shall fulfil all my will.”

Enough, on what Jesus didn’t mean by fruit bearing. What did he mean? This is the critical thing. What is he telling us here? What fruit is Jesus looking for from us?
There are clues in the passage. For one thing, Jesus is not telling us to “bear fruit”. He’s telling us to “abide in him”! “Abide” means to dwell, hang around, remain, and carries the idea of resting, enjoying, soaking it up … “Anchor yourself in me,” Jesus is saying, “and watch what happens!”

Then, in the verses just following the ones we read, Jesus talks a lot about love – his love for us, our love for him, our love for each other … so it’s reasonable to infer that one of the fruits he’s talking about is love – for him and each other. Do we recognise the fruit of love in our life? A love grown in us through abiding in him? Godly love, that is? With its sisters compassion, charity, mercy, etc. Are we bearing such fruit? “Abide in me,” says Jesus, “and you’ll find love flowing and outworking all over the place!”

The idea of love and compassion being fruits leads us to another prominent statement in the New Testament – Galatians 5:22 – which lists “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” as fruits of the Spirit. Do we recognise these things flowing in our lives?

And a few other things occur to me, which might be considered God-produced fruit: how about forgiveness, encouragement of others, promotion of justice, wisdom …? Any of these fruits in your life?
Is prayer a fruit? Especially intercessory prayer? Why not? I’ve been moved to pray for the last ten days for India, overwhelmed by the coronavirus. ‘Moved’, I say, because it comes of abiding in Christ. Fruited.

Matthew Henry is helpful, in his commentary: on these verses he says, “From a vine we look for grapes; from a Christian we look for Christianity. That is, a Christian temper and disposition, a Christian life and conversation. We honour God and do good as best we can, and this is bearing fruit.”

CS Lewis floated the idea of compound interest: He wrote, “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.” The little things can have exponential outcomes that we are probably not even aware of.

There’s a corporate aspect too. We are the church. Or part of it. Acts 2:47 describes how the Christians “devoted themselves to the … teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe … All the believers were together”, giving to anyone who had need and “praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people.” And as a result – and here’s the fruit, folks – “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Wouldn’t we like to see that.

The thing is, is it God-produced, because we abide in Him? That’s the key. We can do these things on our own, of course – in our own strength. We don’t need God to be able to encourage others, or be compassionate, etc. But that doesn’t count here. Because Jesus says, “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me … apart from me you can do nothing!” There are many people doing great things around the world, and good on them. But unless they are “abiding in him”, they are not bearing fruit in this way. Those endeavours are not to God’s glory. “This is to my Father’s glory,” says Jesus in verse 8, “that you bear much fruit.”

The Christian walk is a tricky thing. It’s simple, but it’s hard. We need to strike a balance between doing our best and, simultaneously, leaving things to God (the actual gardener) (the actual fruit-producer).
I argue that the fruit lies in the attitude (disposition perhaps a better word), not the outcome, because the outcome is God’s responsibility. Ours is the availability, His is the responsibility.

So, let’s be available, let’s be intentional, let’s be obedient to what seem like Godly impulses. (Which can lead to awkward mistakes, but, hey, let’s be willing to take chances, as we abide in the vine.)

When a man in the Old Testament, Micah by name, asked what the Lord required of him, God’s response was, “Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) We can do that. Let’s do that. And let’s learn to abide in Him as He abides in us.

Amen

Musing on Trees and Gardens

Trees (and gardens) are on my mind this fortnight.

Liz Young, fellowshipper and worshipper at St Francis Church, and enthusiastic appreciator of all things pastoral, writes, “As I counted the number of trees around my garden this week, I found that, twenty years ago, I had planted twenty different native species and varieties: four different pohutakawa from the Pacific (Lord Howe Island, Hawaii, the Kermadecs and Tahiti) and sixteen different New Zealand native species. As I expressed this with some pride to my brother in Canada, it occurred to us that in the garden that we grew up in, a centuries old ‘monastic’ house near Glastonbury Abbey, they had planted ten different English species there. The chicken run in which I played was under a yew and the swing was hung from a walnut tree. Impressive to me, but I was awed to read in JT Salmon’s book of NZ trees to learn that New Zealand, with its more temperate climate, has more than a hundred different species of tree. Thanks be to God the creator.”

Certainly.

Speciation is a fascinating topic that I won’t go in to, but few of us would be so blasé as not to recognise with wonder and awe the huge range and variety and complexity of plants around us here in the Coromandel. Without even reaching for a microscope (which I don’t have anyway, so I’ll change the image …) Without even leaving my seat, I can count ten different types of tree beyond my window, of multifarious shapes and colours and design. They’re nearly all green, but a closer squint brings notice that they are ten different shades of green. Awesome. No two species are the same, and, actually, if you look really closely, with or without a microscope, you’ll observe that every leaf on every tree is different.

I’m moved to muse languidly and perhaps not so insightfully that trees are amazing. Plants (and animals) are amazing. And gardens – nature generally – all amazing. Thanks be to God the creator, plagiarising Liz’s (hopefully non-copyrighted) line.

Which reminds me: there’s heaps about trees and gardens in the Bible; it’s a general theme, if you care to look for it. In Genesis 1 we’re already in a garden (with some rather strange trees and a talking serpent), and in Revelation 22 we’re again in a (very different sort of a) garden: one with a “river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing … on each side of the river [stands] the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city …”

And in between that first and last chapter, gardens pop up all over the place, most dramatically and compellingly in Gethsemane, the night before Jesus’s crucifixion.

Thematic, yes. Fanciful? Allegorical?

Maybe to some. But gardens are clearly important to and valued by the Creator, and we carry a hint and shadow of that value in our own chests as we look on his creation around us and marvel.

Liz Y and Ken F

We Remember Them

by Pat Lee

(Based on Mark 15:33-37)

The Mark reading is the story of Jesus’s death. Usually a Good Friday reading, it relates Jesus’s last moments before he died. We know that this was not the final chapter in his life though. He had told his disciples several times that he was going to die, but that he would be raised on the third day, and it was so. We have just recently celebrated Easter and his resurrection.

Today we commemorate the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. But we also remember all the military personnel who served and died in not only the First World War but also the Second World War, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, and other conflicts that our soldiers have been involved in in more recent times.

Many of us here today, if not all, have lost someone special in one of these wars. My father’s youngest brother died just a few days before the war ended in Europe in 1945, and my husband Michael’s father, who flew a Wellington bomber, died when his plane was shot down. He was able to save his crew, but not himself. He left behind a wife and a 5 month old son.
My son went to the Gulf War, so I and my family have a personal experience of knowing the kind of stress and anxiety that families faced with a loved one serving in a futile conflict. He came back, and today he will wear his grandfather’s medals, and his own, with pride.

All these young people died serving their country. Many of them went off to war thinking they would be home again before long. Sadly, not so. They found themselves in frightening, horrendous situations, cold, wet and muddy, and ill prepared. Most of them didn’t really understand what they were fighting or dying for.

One of the things that helped many of them cope with the situations they found themselves in was their Christian faith. They knew their risen Saviour. The Lord’s prayer and the 23^rd Psalm would have been of great comfort to them. Today is also Jesus, the Good Shepherd Sunday.

Jesus died knowing that he would rise on the third day. He is alive. They are not. We will remember them.
Amen

Colour the sky …

Why is the sky blue?
Who cares? is one answer.
It’s not always, is another. Sometimes it’s grey, or red, or black.

Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Blue sky at night, it’s morning.

In the Antarctic the sky is perpetual blue – day and night – from October till February, because the sun never sets in the summer months.

If the question is a serious one, the answer is, Because of sunlight scattering in the atmosphere:

Sunlight (white light, made up of seven primary colours) hits the atmosphere and is scattered by atmospheric particles (nitrogen and oxygen molecules).
Blue light is scattered the most, due to its shorter wavelength, ‘colouring’ the sky we see. The other colours pretty much come straight on through, still essentially combined as white, illuminating what we see all around us.
At sunset (and rise) the obliquely incident white light has much further to travel through the atmosphere.
Now the blue wavelength is scattered over and over, and loses its intensity.
The reds and oranges, which scatter less, become the dominant hues, and the sky seems red/orange. The effect is even more marked when there are larger scattering particles in the air like smoke or dust .

In 1815 the Indonesian mountain Tampora blew up. A hundred thousand people were killed by the blast and associated tsunamis. A similar thing happened in 1883 when Krakatoa blew (again, in longsuffering Indonesia).

In both events the smoke, dust and ash from a volcano on the opposite side of the world diffused into and through European and American skies – travelled right around the world, in fact, shielding much of the sunlight, cooling the planet, and portending what were termed ‘years without summer’ in 1816 and 1884.

In 1816 (Bill Bryson writes in his A Short History of Nearly Everything), “Crops everywhere failed to grow. In Ireland a famine and associated typhoid epidemic killed sixty-five thousand people … In New England … morning frosts continued until June and almost no seed would grow … livestock died … .” And so on (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer).

Imagine.

Similar consequences after Krakatoa.

The first Europe heard of the Tampora event was about seven months after, news being slow to travel in those times, but even by then, artists were using different pallets to colour their skies. Browns and oranges more prevalent. Without knowing why, artists recorded the changes before newspapers did.

News travelled more quickly in 1883 (and, indeed, the Krakatoa eruption was heard up to three thousand miles away, and ‘barographs’ recorded the shock waves rippling around the earth four times), but European artists again painted their skies differently. There were no colour cameras then, so no ‘hard’ record of the events, but even today we are able to ‘see’ them in paintings of the time. Immerse yourself in the following paintings by William Ascroft, 1883, and feel the bloated, oppressive English sky.

Nature, in all her awesome, sinister glory.

So, why is the sky blue? Well, sometimes it’s really not.

Ken F