Summer of the Spirit // Fruit

 

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 07/20/2014

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Recently, the podcast Radiolab featured a fascinating story called 9-Volt Nirvana about the surprising effects of electrical stimulation to targeted areas of the brain. Seemingly without effort, people were able to learn markedly faster, entering a state they describe as "flow." Like learning to be a sniper. Or to see those 3d pictures where you have to focus your eyes just right. And there were other effects as well, maybe even more interesting. Sally Adee, an editor at New Scientist who underwent military simulation training with an M4 assault rifle using this technique, describes what she experienced afterwards….

[full radiolab program here]

Of course, this is a relatively unexplored field of study – there’s a lot that hasn’t been verified, and a ton that isn’t understood about it; if you’re skeptical about all of this, you’re probably in very good company. But I think Sally’s experience might shine some remarkable light on some things we’ve been talking about when it comes to the way the Holy Spirit works in us, when it comes to growing to experience more life, as we’ve been talking about in our Summer of the Spirit series. In particular, there are a couple of things I’d like to draw out of this account, to point our attention towards as we move in a few minutes to the Bible passage that will be our primary text today.

“I was just this person that I hadn’t experienced before…maybe this is just the actual core person who I am when all my baggage isn’t weighing on me. It was like someone had wiped a really steamy window, and I was able to look at the world for what it was.”

The first thing to note is the variety of interesting parallels between what this electrical stimulation did for Sally, and what the scriptures teach us about what the Holy Spirit does.

The experience of being set free from anxiety.

The real Sally emerging.

Being able to see reality as it really is.

All three interrelated, working together for freedom, for joy, for life. Just like we’ve talked about with the Holy Spirit, nothing had changed in Sally’s external circumstances, and yet all of sudden, her experience of life was radically altered. She was free, clear-eyed, alive.

Of course, the effects of the electricity wore off, so it was only temporary, but perhaps even that is illuminating – the Holy Spirit, the non-material, energetically animating, person presence of God, seems to be the sort of thing Jesus’ followers are to ask for day after day, like we ask for food.

And even the power connection might be revealing. The Holy Spirit is referred to over and over with the Greek word dunamis, meaning power – it’s where we get our English word dynamite.

The second thing to note is that all of the good results Sally experienced were not the product of her strenuous efforts. She didn’t try harder to learn. She didn’t try harder to not be anxious. She didn’t try harder to see her actual core self. She wasn’t even the one who’d wiped the really steamy window clearer.

Don’t get me wrong, she’d really exerted herself in different ways along the way. She’d gone through quite a bit to fly from London to L.A. to get hooked up to the tDCS (trans-cranial direct current stimulation) equipment. It had taken courage and vulnerability to allow herself to be hooked up to it. She’d cooperated with instructions she was given. But at the end of the day, her efforts weren’t directed towards the positive experiences she was having. Those good things were the happy result of the other things to which she’d given her energies.

And this dynamic, too, seems to be the case with the remarkable transformation that the Holy Spirit brings about in us as we follow the way of Jesus together.

Let’s look at Galatians 5 to see what I’m talking about.

¹⁹The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. ²⁵Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Big picture, what’s happening here is that Paul is explaining to the people following Jesus in Galatia that there are two competing approaches to life, one of which has all kinds of negative outcomes, and another which has all kinds of positive outcomes. And Paul, obviously, is advocating for the one that results in love, joy, peace, etc.

The first approach Paul describes in Greek as the “ergon ho sarx.” Literally, the work of the flesh, translated in our bibles as the “acts of the sinful nature.”

Basically, he’s saying that when we are living in a world ruled by fear (you may remember how we saw Jesus describing it last week, “beginning under evil”), when we buy into the story that fear tells, we learn to play by fear’s rules. We think we are on our own, that our survival depends on us, that we’ve got fight and claw and get whatever we need in competition with everyone else around us. Sure, maybe we get civilized about it all, so it doesn’t look so primitively violent, but even then we are just masking our vulnerability so that others can’t see our weakness, trying to win the approval of others so that we can be more secure around them, gaining their help in surviving. Either way, it’s a lot of work, constantly being on guard, constantly fighting through anxiety and protecting ourselves from perceived threats. All of that shapes our embodied selves (our flesh – brains and emotions and reflexes and bodies, even our social structures) in such a way that what living from that approach results in – the work or acts of that flesh – is sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. Paul’s not actually saying anyone living in the world ruled by fear has put all their energies into doing those things, but rather that anyone living in the world ruled by fear who puts their energies into trying to survive by playing by fear’s rules, buying into fear’s story, will find that those things are the end result.

Perhaps we can identify with that. Perhaps that’s what life ends up looking like when the anxiety gnomes get the last word, when there is so much steam on the window that we can’t see clearly anymore. Perhaps it’s hard to even see who we are, at core, anymore, so dis-integrated are we from all the masks we’ve had to put on in one setting after another, just to survive.

But then Paul contrasts that approach to life with another approach. Not life that springs from the flesh, but life that is driven by the wind of the Spirit. A wind that blows not from the world ruled by fear, but rather that blows from the heavens, from the world ruled by Love, the kingdom of God.

When we are living by the Spirit, we are living surrounded by the living, breathing presence of God. A God who favors and forgives us. A God who announces, through the incarnated witness of his beloved son, Jesus of Nazareth, good news. Good news that fear has been telling lies. Good news that our vulnerability isn’t something we have to cover in shame, but rather something that he enters into with love. Good news that our needs don’t put us on the outside of his favor, but rather draw us into relationship with him in the way that the needs of children draw them into relationship with their parents. Good news that he is doing something about the evil that we began under, that he’s defeated it, putting it on the run, and that he’s going to have the last word. Good news that we don’t have to fight for our survival, but rather bring our needs to him in trust, and wait for him to act on our behalf. Good news that is evidenced by the presence of the living God, right here with us now, in the person of the Holy Spirit.

Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Notice that fruit is a very different word than work. The world under fear is full of laborious, back-breaking work. The kind of labor into which slaves are forced. But the world under Love is full of a different kind of labor – the labor of organic growth. The kind that a plant does when it produces fruit. (And not surprisingly, a lot like the kind of work involved in the other ways Jesus describes God’s kingdom growing: yeast working through dough, a seed buried in the ground and growing into a tree.)

After all, what is fruit?

fruit / froot / (n) the ripened ovaries of a flowering plant, often sweet

Fruit looks beautiful, seems to come out of nowhere as delightful surprise, often tastes sweet, brings nourishment and energy, and carries seeds of life in it.

Isn’t that like love? Joy? Peace? Patience? Kindness? Goodness? Faithfulness? Gentleness? Self-control?

Which is astounding and beautiful and wonderful all by itself. Lending some appeal and credibility to the story that Jesus tells about the world and the salvation he brings.

But where does the rubber meet the road? How do we get in on this fruit? How do we live by the Spirit instead of the flesh? What does that mean, practically speaking? Tomorrow morning, for example, what do we actually do?

The temptation is to say that what we actually do is resolve to work hard at doing the things in list 2 and avoiding the things in list 1. To strive to love, and have joy, and be kind, and faithful, and self-controlled, and so on and so forth. To strive to avoid sexual immorality and hatred and selfish ambition and envy and so on and so forth.

No! Say “No!” to that temptation.

That’s the flesh talking. Our brains and bodies and emotions and social systems and all the rest have developed, grown up in, been shaped by this world under the spell of evil, and what the flesh drives us to do is to strive for the wrong things with good motivations. The flesh knows it can enslave us just as well that way as it can by getting us to strive for the right things with bad motivations, or for the wrong things with wrong motivations.

What the Spirit drives us to do is very different. It nudges us awake with the awareness that God is near, with favor and forgiveness. It nudges to open our eyes to the reality of our neediness, and helps us see God’s longing to meet us with help. It nudges us to courage to bring our needs to him in faith. It waits with us as we wait for God’s response, sharing with us in, and empowering us for, the hard, hard work of waiting. It helps us see his goodness all around us in the gift of life right here right now, building our faith in his promise of future provision. It tells us a truer story about our lives to date, revealing to us God’s hand along the way, showing us that we were, in fact, never alone, and that Fear is a liar, a fraud, and a cheat.

As we receive the Spirit’s presence (by which I mean, simply, that we say yes to him, that we give him permission to be present), and respond to the Spirit’s nudges (by which I mean, simply, that we bring our needs to God to address, every one of them, as we become aware of them), and fill our eyes and minds with the truth the Spirit shows us (by which I mean, simply, that we discipline ourselves to give attention to the stories around us that Love is telling), it’s like someone has sent an electrical charge through our cranium. The anxiety is diminished. Our true selves, in Christ, emerge as the weight of the baggage is lifted. The fog and confusion around us are wiped away.

And then, lo and behold, what starts to show up…surprising, sweet tasting, nourishing and energizing, loaded with life-carrying seeds?

Fruit.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

All the ways of living that make perfect sense in light of the good news of the kingdom. All the ways of living that bring life to the trees rooted by streams of living water which are bearing the Spirit’s fruit.

The organic, (super) natural result of the Spirit. Not the result of effort or striving – except the effort of trusting in God, of asking him for help with our needs.

Which suggests an important clarification.

Have you noticed how you can spend extraordinary amounts of energy in both work and play? How you can have the bad pain of broken muscle and torn tissue that threatens to keep you from working again? Or the good pain of hard play and exercise that strengthens you for a lifetime of joyful exertion? And how one kind of expenditure of energy can drain you of life and one can fill you up?

Life lived by the Holy Spirit can be just as demanding and strenuous and filled with suffering as life lived by the flesh. Perhaps even moreso, if Christ Jesus’ example is any indication. But that’s where the similarities end. Because a life lived by the Spirit directs its energy into asking and waiting and obeying in trust, not into trying to survive on its own. A life lived by the Spirit is like an investment of energy with an incredible rate of return, rather than a spending of energy on a cheaply made product which proves unusable and toxic to boot. A life lived by the Spirit produces fruit that brings life and growth to everyone in its orbit, rather than sucking the life out of everyone with the misfortune to rub shoulders with it.

It’s because energy expended in slavery squeezes the life out of a person. But energy expended in freedom brings growth. The way of freedom is the way of the Spirit. And the way of the Spirit is the way of Jesus, the way of courageous vulnerability, bringing one’s needs to God for him to address, day after day after day. You want to be loving? Start by asking God for the Spirit, and for help with your needs. You want joy? Start by asking God for the Spirit, and for help with your needs. Peace? Same thing. Patience? Kindness? Goodness? Faithfulness? Gentleness? Self-Control? Start by asking God for the Spirit, and for help with your needs.

Practical Suggestion:

3 Minute Spiritual Exercise.

Minute 1: Ask the Holy Spirit to help you see the connections between fear and the works of the flesh in your life. To show you the needs you have that the enemy suggested to you that you had to meet on your own, because if you didn’t take care of it on your own, your needs wouldn’t be met.

Minute 2: Ask the Holy Spirit to make you aware of his presence right now, here, in this place. To make you aware of God’s love for you. His favor towards you. His forgiveness for any and all of your flaws and failings and shortcomings. Ask the Holy Spirit to remind you of the good news that Jesus gets the last word on everything, and that the last word sounds like resurrection, not death.

Minute 3: Now ask your Dad in the Heavens for more of his Spirit. And bring your needs to him – especially the ones that fear likes to tell you bad stories about. One after the other. Dad, I/we need ________________, and I/we need your help with it.

Now close with this prayer of faith: Father, Jesus told us that you know what we need before we even ask. And he told us that we are your children, and that you know how to give good gifts to your children. So we wait now, trusting that you will address our needs with your good gifts. Thanks, Dad.