Kindness is a choice we make over and over. Just as Jesus chose us, we must choose to be kind. We must choose our orientation toward others and ourself, our climate. If our climate is kind, we are more apt to be joyful and relaxed. Without a bone to pick, we’re all a lot lighter.

John 15: 9-11; Galatians 5:22-26
August 16, 2020
Rev. Terry Minchow-Proffitt

Paul’s Fruit of the Spirit are deeply personal gifts. There’s nothing abstract. Each gift can only be understood as we seek to live it fully. With Fruit of the Spirit we are what we desire: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We are being called to bear and share what we need most. Each fruit we hope to bear, is one we truly hope to taste for ourselves. Spiritual Fruit are a lot like cake. We’re being called to have our fruit and eat it too. Like the Hair Club salesman on TV, “I’m not only the President of Hair Club, I’m also a client!” Last week we explored the Fruit of Love. We could go on for a while about the four different kinds of love in the New Testament.

Fruit of the Spirit: Love
Galatians 5:22-26
Rev. Terry Minchow-Proffitt

Throughout the Season of Pentecost, we’ve been looking at different ways that God’s Spirit enables us to live a deeper and more free life. Jesus’ beatitudes, I trust, gave us a renewed sense of the kind of life Christ makes available to us. They stretch us. They’re a reach. But they also reveal to us how much deeper and farther our lives can grow in Christ.

This morning, we begin a new series of sermons that explore what the apostle Paul calls “The Fruit of the Spirit.” By fruit, Paul’s not referring to apples and oranges. He’s not setting up a roadside stand of the Spirit. If he were, then strawberries would surely be at the top of the list! Instead, Paul’s listing for us nine different character qualities of the Christian life. Let’s see, what are they? Love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Over time, with discipline, our lives can be marked by these traits as we root ourselves in and trust Christ’s Spirit. Just as importantly, our church can become a community known by such gracious qualities.

John 14:27; Galatians 5:22-26
Rev. Terry Minchow-Proffitt

The Fruit of the Spirit are kinda weird. They all grow from the same tree. We don’t expect to pick an orange from an apple tree, or, say, a peach from a plum tree. But that’s botany. And this is spirituality. Christ, as the Gardener of our Spirit, is a rather eccentric gardener. The Fruit of the Spirit are varied and abundant, but they all come to fruition from the same tree. And what is this tree but your one precious life that’s rooted in the Spirt of God in Christ?

…maybe now’s the perfect time for us to let go of all the usual ways of seeing ourselves. Now might be our season to deepen out our own self-images, to take a close look at and absorb who we truly are from the inside-out.

Read Background Text: Ephesians 3:14-21
St. Martin United Church of Christ
Rev. Terry Minchow-Proffitt

The Bible is a public book, or actually, the Bible is a public library of books. We’ve got all sorts of literature in Scripture, such as poetry, parables, hymns, and history. If we’re not careful, we act like it’s all one genre. We take a hymn, like one of the psalms, and forget to read it as a devotional song. Or we read something poetic as if it’s history, or even science. But what we have with the Bible is not one book, but one library of books of multiple genres that the church has said we can trust as a guide and rule for our faith.

For example, it’s easy to forget that today’s passage is a prayer. A prayer contained in a letter that Paul wrote to a church he once served. He begins with, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, . . . “ In other words, “I pray . . . “