Satan's Curse or God's Caress? (2 Cor. 12: 7-10, Job 2: 7-10) 10/28/12

A neighbor of mine spent 45 years as a paraplegic. The accident happened when she was returning from a beach trip following her high school graduation with distinction. She was on the way to college. Her little sister was in the same van and wasn’t hurt. A church friend lost his only child to drug related suicide and his only granddaughter to a fatal auto accident at the age of 14. Famous people are not exempt. The actor Christopher Reeves, in the prime of his life, took a tumble on a horseback ride, and spent the rest of his life as a quadriplegic. Why is that? Why do such bad things happen to such good people?

           It happens to us as well. I’m betting that you, or your brother, or sister or mother or cousin or friend…have been there. When I was sixteen, my wonderful mother went into deep depression. Over the next 18 months, she spent 12 of them in a mental institution. My father lived in denial to get through it all. He coped by diving into his work. Since I was the oldest still at home, I became the head of the household by default. Why is that? What did I do to deserve that? What did my mother do to have to undergo such an experience?

            When you see someone at the bottom or you think that maybe you yourself are going there, it’s a very scary place, not just for the one who suffers, but also for the caregiver involved. It will change the way you look at life. It will change the way you live it.

          The Bible is full of such stories. Two of the most familiar are about Job in the Old Testament and Paul in the New Testament. Let’s take a few moments to look at these two men, as well as Sarah, Ruth and Barnabus, three of the caregivers in the Bible. Each has a story to tell us about why bad things happen to good people.

          First, the Scripture.  Several books and part of the Psalms comprise a collection of Old Testament books commonly known as wisdom literature. Prominent among this small collection is the Book of Job, a story of a righteous man upon whom Satan is loosed with God’s consent. Satan visits a series of misfortunes upon Job, any one of which would destroy most people. As Job labors under the strain of devastating loss, from fortune to family to health, he perseveres in his faith. His righteous example is held up for all to see. In Chapter 2, after having already lost virtually everything, he is beset with boils. He scrapes his skin with a flat stone, continually re-opening the wounds. His wife, who has “had it”, challenges him: “Are you still holding on to your integrity?” she asks. And she follows with: “Curse God and die!” Job responds: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

          In the 12^th chapter of Second Corinthians, the great apostle Paul refers to a thorn in his flesh. He says that on three different occasions, he prayed that he would be delivered from this unknown, but terrible, affliction. God’s answer is to rely on His grace; that God’s power is made perfect in weakness. Let’s say that one again. God’s power is made perfect in our weakness.

 In the days of the patriarchs, God is described as coming down to earth for occasional visits. On one such occasion, God, apparently accompanied by two angels, comes to see Abraham. He promises that Abraham will be the father of nations. He promises that Sarah will have a son. Sarah, now ninety years old, overhears the conversation and laughs out loud. Indeed, at the birth of their son the next year, the child is named Isaac, which means “laughter.” But the upshot of Abraham’s faith is that Sarah, at ninety years of age, sustains a pregnancy and begins rearing this child promised by God. Abraham gets the fame; Sarah gets the morning sickness, the labor of pregnancy and childbirth. Sarah is one of many caregivers in the Bible.

 Ruth is a beautiful but widowed Moabite woman. Naomi, her mother in law, is Jewish. Naomi outlives her sons, ande is forced to return to her homeland of Judah, as she is penniless and must live at the mercy of her family of origin. She releases her daughters in law to remain in Moab, but Ruth protests. She pledges to stay at Naomi’s side, even though it means going to a foreign country. In chapter 1, Ruth utters the words so familiar to us now: “Where you go I will go and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”

          And then there is Barnabus, perhaps my favorite among the Bible’s caregivers. Barnabus traveled with Paul on their first missionary journey. Embarking from Antioch, they went to the island of Cyprus and on to the province of Galatia.  A young John Mark accompanied them, but left them in Perga to return home for reasons we do not know. The always opinionated Paul was not happy about this turn of events. Upon their return, Paul and Barnabus went to Jerusalem to make their case to the Church leaders there. Paul needed Barnabus, who was highly respected, to help make their case, as Paul’s credibility in Jerusalem was not yet sufficient. Paul and Barnabus got the recognition and approval they sought. Yet on the next missionary journey, Paul dismissed Barnabus because Barnabus wanted John Mark to go with them again. So they went their separate ways.

Why do bad things happen to good people? How can some people continue to give and give, facing nothing but thankless praise, empty promises or rejection from the very persons to whom they bring care? Why does God put you in a place where you have some control over your life and then uproot you to start over somewhere else with something or someone entirely different? You’re not going to get the final answer to any of these questions today, but maybe you will get some amplification on the subject that will help you grapple with these age old questions.

          Paul says “there was given me a thorn in the flesh,” implying that God is the giving agent. He describes his affliction as “a messenger of Satan to torment” him. This is not unlike what God allowed to happen to Job. Whether God sends the problem or just doesn’t stop Satan from his delivery, we don’t always know. Sometimes I think our Creator just picks righteous men and women from our midst and holds them up as examples to the rest of us. At the end of the day, it is the learning, the spiritual maturity and the trust that counts, not whether the event is God inspired or Satan sent. Regardless of the origin, the outcome for the believer is ultimately the illumination of God’s power and grace. From each experience, our trust in God grows. As Paul says, take delight in the hardships, for when you are weak, you are made strong through God’s grace.

  “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” asks Job. My neighbor would say you have to accept both. In an adult life lived as a paraplegic, she learned to do tax returns and worked from home, volunteered regularly at the hospital, drove a car and still remained a caregiver to her aging parents. She died not too long ago after a life of giving and caring for others. She would not describe herself as handicapped.

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” My church friend would say you should accept both. With God’s help, he has risen above family tragedy. He says humbly that the death of his granddaughter at such a young age has probably had more influence on her peers than her life may have had. Even now, young men and women flock to a website to remember her and to remark how they have been touched in some positive way by an encounter with her. My friend works faithfully to cook meals for church events and knows God more personally and deeply than ever before.

Christopher and Dana Reeves would say we must accept both. Christopher ultimately died as a result of his severed spinal cord, and Dana from lung cancer though she had not smoked for years. But after Reeve’s injury, those two set the world on fire with their achievements in the field of spinal cord injuries. Even now, the foundation they started continues to raise money and awareness to sponsor medical research in that field.  

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” Look at the lives of Job and Sarah, Ruth and Barnabus. Nations have sprung from that one seed that Sarah bore. As surely as Abraham is the father of those nations, so Sarah is the mother. You know the rest of Ruth’s story. She journeys to Judah, works in the fields, meets and ultimately marries Boaz. Naomi is provided for and Ruth becomes one of the matriarchs in the genealogy of Jesus. And what about Barnabus?  At the end of Paul’s life, it is faithful Barnabus who is there with Paul giving him aid and comfort. I get the feeling that Barnabus was always there for Paul, even though Paul was often so intense that he didn’t realize all that Barnabus meant to him and his ministry.

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” asks Job. It is a question for each of us to answer in our own hearts. I can tell you this from personal experience. I have learned that I need all that God sends. That time I spent as a teenager with a mentally ill mother is still hard for me to talk about. It was sometimes embarrassing, always lonely, often just plain scary. But church friends and one high school teacher found me, checked on me, put their arms around me, and I found meaning in the saying that “it takes a village to raise a child” I began to experience God’s grace at work in me.

Years later, other events were to come my way that would make that time pale in comparison, and I was destined to learn in a very personal way that God does not move. It is we who are like the tide, ever ebbing and flowing. We are the ones that move. Sometimes, as in Paul’s case, a “thorn” comes along and can help prevent spiritual conceit. Sometimes, God will vaccinate us with a misfortune or misstep in order to immunize us from a future and otherwise paralyzing blow. And sometimes, I think, God will use us precisely because of the good we can do others by remaining people of faith through trials and adversity.

For 33 years, He walked among us. He ate our food, drank our wine, toiled and labored under the same sun. For 3 years, He told us who He was and why He had come. He never sinned. He did good to everyone with whom He came in contact.  One fateful night, He went into a garden and prayed, and He prayed the same prayer you and I have prayed before. Deliver me, He prayed. Don’t make me go there. But in the end, he prayed one more line, “Not my will, but thy will be done,” He said. Less than twenty four hours later, they took His speared and spent body down from a Calvary cross and handed it over to a few broken hearted women for burial. They collected His body, but they could not break the immortal seal of His soul, for He was already atoning for the sins of all for all time. It was the ransom that bought and paid for you and me. And the gates of Hell could not hold Him. He rose and he lives today and forever.

Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? Jesus is our model. He came for trouble. He asked for trouble. And when trouble sought and found Him, He did what you and I must do today. He placed Himself squarely in the hands of God and said, “Thy will be done.”  What followed changed the course of history.

So when Satan decides you’re looking a little too close to God and throws temptation in your way, or when God decides to work on your character or just to use you to testify for Him through your life, let it come. God may test you, but He will never tempt you. Satan may send the curse, but it is the caress of God Himself that you will ultimately experience. It won’t be easy, and you will shed some tears. But God will not send more to you than you can bear, and He will remain right at your side. God’s overarching providence always produces good, even from evil.

It has been said that God is not nearly so concerned with our comfort as He is with our character. Character is not a DNA thing. You aren’t born with it. You have to earn your stripes. Good character is most often forged in the fire of adversity and hammered into shape in the hands of experience. In the process, and in our weakness, God’s awesome power and love can be reflected in the likeness that emerges. And what an awesome reflection that can be. You just won’t believe how strong and beautiful that reflection might become.

The Basket Revisited (Gal. 5: 22-25) 10/14/12

On a really good day, I wake up almost in prayer as my eyes open. On those days, I feel the presence of God with me from the razor on my face in the early morning to walking the dog right before bedtime. On those days, I have self control. I can field the calls of impatient clients, deal with the irritating emails of vendors and put up with the lack of time to finish even half the chores of the day. On those days, I have patience to deal with the world. When I have self-control, I have patience, I can be gentle; I can be good. I am able to be kind. All of this because I wake up with the Spirit of God and don’t push him away. Being obedient to that call makes me faithful. Those are the best days. Those are the days and the ways that bring my life fully into the experience that God planned for me long before I was born. Those are the days that I find love…and joy…and peace in the life that God designed for me long before there was even a word for church. Love, joy, peace—they are the produce of the garden of the Fruit of the Spirit.

I was walking through the cemetery here at Rocky Creek last week. I do that from time to time, trying to become familiar with the names of some of the saints who have passed this way. I came upon a stone marked Angus Johnson. Many of you know that name. Many of you can trace your ancestry back to Angus Johnson. Or to the Johnson girls, Kat and Crit, John’s daughters. They donated part of the land the church sits on today. That’s another fruit to go in Paul’s basket—the fruit of generosity. But Johnson is only one. There are many other names listed on those markers next door to the church. The heritage of service to God from this area goes back well over a hundred years.

The seeds of this church trace back to 1848 in our recorded history. That’s about the same time they discovered gold in California and the Gold Rush started in the West. As some journeyed in Conestoga Wagons to make their fortune in California, others were laboring in Chesterfield County here in South Carolina to make their community a place where God could be worshipped. Yoked with the churches of Jefferson and/or MeBee for over ninety years, this church struck out on its own only a few years ago. The little church planted so many years ago in a field of three now stands on its own, awaiting and pursuing God’s call to make new fruit for this community.

Fruit makes a great analogy for lots of things. It has variety. It has many flavors. It is healthy and good for us. It is colorful. Fruit comes in all shapes and sizes, from a grape or cherry to a watermelon. God’s church is like that. There are Presbyterians and Lutherans and Methodists and Episcopals and Baptists. There are Roman Catholics and Orthodox Catholics and Coptics. There are conservatives and liberals and Evangelicals and Pentecostals. We worship in cathedrals and temples and chapels and gymnasiums… and even under shade trees. It takes a basket to hold all the different churches and denominations that have sprung up to worship God.

What’s your favorite fruit taste? Is it the sweetness of a cherry? The wetness of a watermelon? The crisp, sweet bite into an apple? The tanginess of an orange or a grapefruit?  The meatiness of a banana? The fruitiness of a pineapple? And then, there are peaches! You can’t talk about fruit in this area and not mention peaches! Fruit comes in shades and variations of sweet and sour and salty. It comes in green and pink and red and yellow and orange and blue. It is long or round or smooth or fuzzy or ribbed. It is like people, isn’t it? They too come in all shapes and sizes and colors. And just as God made all those different fruits, he also made all those different people. It takes a basket to cover Americans and Europeans and Africans and Eskimos and Aussies and Asians. Like the song says: “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” Every one of us made by God.

The Fruit of the Spirit is a wonderful concept. Nine virtues are mentioned by Paul, but I don’t think they are an exclusive club. This message has added generosity to the list. Can you add one of your own? Paul’s point is not that these nine virtues are the magic beans that will make everything work. Paul’s point is, rather, that living the Christian life means living out a menu of character traits that come together to make us complete as witnesses to our risen Lord. These are virtues that work together to hammer out a complete package of humanity. Take out any one and you suffer. They go together.

Most of you know that my son is a helicopter pilot.  His job is a pretty good example of what I mean about our lives needing the whole basket of virtues to find the peace and joy and love that God promises us. My son Ethan uses his hand and both feet to guide, maneuver and fly that bird. He uses his eyes to see not only where he is going but also to take in the information flashing on dozens of instruments in the cockpit. It takes practically every part of his body to fly, together with lots of concentration. If he tries to fly without benefit of all that integration of body and mind, he won’t fly well or long. So it is with the Fruit of the Spirit. Our love and joy and peace come from applying all those other fruits in a way that honors our Savior.  

Sometimes we hear statements that seem to imply that God wants us all to be the same. And yet, we have all these nations, all these forms of government? Why can’t we all be one color? My youngest daughter asked me just the other night why we had to have so many different denominations.  Perhaps the answers to these questions have more than one layer. First, I don’t think that God wants us all to be the same, at least in those sorts of ways.  I think God likes diversity. Look at what he did to fruit. Fruit comes, as we have noted, in all shapes, sizes, colors and tastes. So does geography and weather and yes, people too. God made sure of that diversity in his treatment of the Tower of Babel. In Genesis 1:28, God says to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. In Genesis 10, the writer tells us that the whole earth had one language and the same words. The people began to build a tower. They began a work to keep them in one place where they could obtain great power. God saw it and changed it. He confused their language and dispersed them “from there over the face of all the earth” (10:7). God made sure that his mandate to fill the earth would come to pass.  God likes variety. We can all be very different and still be loved by God.

On another level, the very first chapter of the Bible also reminds us that each of us is made in God’s image (1:27). God’s image. We are made like him. God has made us all. He has made us short and he has made us tall. He has made us Greek and he has made us Cherokee. He has made farmers and machinists and paupers and kings. So from that I think we should conclude that God is not concerned about gender or color or height or weight or geography or language or nationality or really anything that we members of the human race count as our differences. We are made is his image. We are the people of God. Our God-DNA is not chemistry; it’s our fruit! It’s that basket of character traits we have been talking about. It’s the Spirit of God himself manifested in our thoughts, in our actions, in our lives. God did make us the same, but not in our color or language or tastes. He made us the same in the way our Spirits are like his.

In a few minutes we will all be blessed by the benediction and end this service, only to reconvene in our fellowship hall to celebrate Homecoming for this church. Similar activities are going on all around the Presbytery this month. This reminds me of yet another fruit to go into our basket, the fruit of hospitality. In fact, Paul mentions hospitality elsewhere in his letters.

Ever played the game “Hot and Cold?” As you get closer to the target, you get warmer. You get colder as you move further away. The Fruit of the Spirit is to me the hot side of Christianity. It’s where all the warmth comes from. Only a few verses earlier, Paul talks to the Galatian churches about all the bad things to stay away from. These are the cold parts that keep us from God. Partaking of and growing the Fruit of the Spirit keeps us from ever having to even deal with all those cold, negative things. When we call on the Holy Spirit to guide us, we stay in his warmth. The bad seed has no place to grow. We choke it out with a garden full of God’s fruit.

Fill your basket of life with this fruit, from patience to self-control. Fill yourself with the Spirit of the living God and you can trust that you will experience love and joy and peace. It is part of that great mystery that our Savior has brought us. He came to earth and in his coming he ushered in the kingdom of God there and then and here and now. That is what we call the “already.”  And yet we know that there is more to come. He will come again. Now we see partly. Then all his glory will be revealed. That is what we call the “not yet.”

Do you have the Fruit of the Spirit? Fill up the basket of your heart with these virtues and you will experience real love, real joy, real peace. That is the promise. Will you claim it?       

          “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” It takes the whole basket. Want to live in the Spirit? Walk in it! And bring your basket!

Enkrateia (Gal. 5: 22-25) 10/7/12

                Self-control. It’s a lot of different things all rolled into one term. It’s restraint in the face of provocation. It’s rejection at the point of temptation. It’s keeping your mouth shut when every fiber of your being is calling out for you to shout and scream. It’s your grandmother reminding you that if you can’t say anything good about the person, then don’t say anything at all. Self-control. The Greeks had a word for it, too. They called it “enkrateia.” It has to do with mastery…mastery or the lack of mastery over one’s tongue and one’s actions. Self control is the last of the six inner virtues that Paul names as the Fruit of the Spirit. It’s last but far from least.

In many ways, self-control is the key to unleashing the power of all the other virtues. If you don’t have self-control, you are not going to have enough patience for the situation you confront. If you don’t have patience, you won’t have enough kindness or gentleness. Then you can’t be as good or as faithful as you meant or need to be. If we can control our actions and reactions, many things are possible. If we cannot, well…it’s liable to become a long day. 

Self control is not some abstract term peculiar to Christianity. Plato used the term with the ancient Greeks to define self-mastery, the trait we need to harness our desires, to keep our pursuit of pleasure at the appropriate level. The apostle Paul uses an athlete in 1 Cor. to illustrate his point. Paul says that athletes exercise self-control in all things in order to be able to compete and not be disqualified. He uses the word with modesty and later alongside holiness in I Timothy 2. He uses it beside power and love in 2 Timothy 1 and in 2 Timothy 2, Paul reminds us that the lack of self-control can result in slanderous talk that is harmful to others. 2 Peter tells us that the road to love requires self-control, and that it and other qualities help us from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord (2 Peter 1:6-8).  

 I don’t want to be unfruitful, especially in the knowledge of my Lord. I want to bear fruit. But sometimes I feel like if I have to ignore one more act of immaturity, one more act of selfishness from someone close to me, I am going to implode. Sometimes I do. And every time, the result is the same. I am so unfruitful I feel like a prune. It’s not that I am wrong. It’s not that I don’t have every right to feel angry or hurt or slighted. It’s just that no matter what has been done or not done, said or withheld, losing my self-control shows my lack of knowledge of my Lord and, perhaps even more, it shows my lack of grasping what servant hood is all about. Losing control only hurts. It hurts the person targeted and it hurts me.

Thomas a Kempis once said that one should “be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.” Sad but so true. If we were to spend our time on that which is required for us to come to grips with our own emotions, our own stresses, we would have little trouble with those occasions where people do not act as we might want them to act. In the end it’s all about who we are, and the way someone else acts or fails to act is precious little justification for the behavior we exhibit in response.   

We all admire those who can show restraint. What is it about those people who never seem to lose their temper, never seem to lose control? How do they do it? What is it inside them that makes them able to do that which we find so difficult. Sometimes, it’s as simple as the amount of the investment. If it’s your friend’s great-nephew visiting from North Dakota who offends you, it’s only a matter of time until that situation will disappear. Not much investment. Oh the other hand, if it’s your son or daughter, your parent, your best friend, and that person hurts or insults you, it’s hard to hold back. And what if it’s been going on for months? Isn’t there a point? Doesn’t there come a time when enough is enough? Of course.  But the point we need to see is that whatever we do, whatever we say, however we act, it should be in control. We should act, not react. Reaction is for a burn or a bite. Reaction is the recoil of the body. Action is the deliberate response of the mind and heart. Self-control does not hinder bodily reaction nor should it. But it is our best weapon against the poison that can come from our lips in anger or disappointment.

In the book of Proverbs, the writer warns us that “a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Pro. 25: 28).   Think of that in the context in which it was written. No ancient city would have left itself defenseless. Walls helped prevent cities from being taken over by enemies. They provided a safe haven for those who could come in from outside when under attack. Walls provided stability. Self-control does that for us in our behavior. When we find ourselves under attack, we can find stability and take refuge behind the walls of self-control. When we lose it, our defenses cave in and we are at the mercy of our base instincts. Don’t you know that Satan does so love that kind of company!

 Theologian William Barclay tells us that “self control is the virtue which makes a man so master of himself that he is fit to be the servant of others.” While I would not ever dispute such a learned Christian, I would like to just add a bit. Yes, as Barclay says, self-control does indeed help make a man fit to serve others. Barclay also says that such control makes a man master of himself. What I would like to add, what I truly believe, is that such control, at least in the context of real servant-hood, is just not attainable except by the grace of God. We can do it, but not by ourselves. We can have self-control for a moment or an hour or even several days. But we cannot maintain it without the grace of God given through the Holy Spirit. This is the true way to self-control. Don’t even try to do it by yourself. Lay it at the feet of the Master. Then it is not only possible; it is a promise claimed. Try it. See what it can be like to finally have real self-control, compliments of the Holy Spirit.

          But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Prautes (Gal. 5: 22-25; Mat. 11:29) 9/30/12

                I love to watch my dog Sadie. My wife Cindy will tell you that Sadie is her dog and my daughter Ellie will probably say that Sadie is really her dog. The truth of the matter is that it’s more accurate to say that we are Sadie’s family.  But that’s not the point. The point is that I love to watch Sadie, particularly around young animals or people.  Sadie is about 75 pounds of energy and she can play rough. But when she is exposed to kittens or babies or most any kind of newborn, she goes into her mothering instinct. She gets down on all fours, her tail wagging goes into overdrive and she just wants to lick and cuddle. She gets so intense and so happy, it makes me wish I had a tail of my own to wag. When a defenseless creature is present, our big strong playful dog becomes gentle as a lamb.

          People act little differently. Watch a mother of a newborn child. She instinctively holds and protects her baby, letting it find security in her arms. You don’t really have to teach a young mother how to hold her baby. Fathers do pretty well themselves. Perhaps it is just in our nature to become softer when it is required of us.

          Gentleness. That’s what the Greek word “prautes” means. Its synonyms are humility and courtesy. I like that. I think those words are good descriptors for gentleness, but I also think that gentleness has a meaning distinctly its own. You can see it in the eyes of my dog Sadie and in the eyes of any young parent cradling a newborn. Gentleness. It’s not just a state of mind. It’s a state of being.

          I want you to think about gentleness. You have been gentle. Think about when you were gentle for some reason. Think about how you felt. Gentleness is instinctive for us in many situations. It’s a good feeling and we know it’s the right way to be. But then, we walk away and the gentleness melts away. Most of us seem to be able to summon it for a season, but we don’t wear it as a way of meeting life.

          The Psalmist tells us that “a gentle tongue is a tree of life” (15:4). When Paul writes to the church in Thessalonica, he characterizes his stay among them as “gentle, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thes. 2: 1). In his letter to Timothy, he mentions gentleness as a needed character trait for elders and contrasts it with being quarrelsome (1Tim. 3: 3). So part of being gentle is to not be quarrelsome. Paul tells Titus to “be gentle and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (3:2). James characterizes wisdom from above as “pure, peaceable and gentle” (3:17). Peter challenges us to be gentle to the unjust as well as the just (1Pet. 2:18) and later invites us to make our adornment not external but rather to cultivate hearts with the “beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Pet. 3:4).

          The first five books of the Old Testament are called the Pentateuch, which means five. They are also called the Law, for they contain not only the Ten Commandments, but also the various laws and regulations that accompanied the commandments from Mt. Sinai. Traditionally, the author has been thought to be Moses, although twentieth century scholarship has argued about that without reaching any final conclusions. Whether or not he wrote the books, Moses is certainly one of the most prominent characters of these books. In the final chapters of Deuteronomy, God comes to Moses and tells him his fate. After forty years of leading God’s people and preparing them for the next step, Moses will have to watch his people enter the Promised Land from a mountaintop. God gives Moses the words for a song and the entire 32^nd chapter of Deuteronomy records that song. Moses spoke the words of the song to the people of Israel before they crossed the Jordan. Contained within it is a verse on teaching, and God through Moses declares:

                   May my teaching drop as the rain,

                             my speech distill as the dew,

                   like gentle rain upon the tender grass,

                             and like showers upon the herb,

                   For I will proclaim the name of the Lord;

                             ascribe greatness to our God!  

                                                                   Deut. 32: 2

Teaching as gentle as dew on tender grass. What a poetic way to describe the teaching of our Lord.

          Gentle goes with grandmothers and Sunday lunches with family. Gentle goes with infants and puppies. Gentle goes with parents of newborns. It is the softness in our eyes and the tenderness in our touch. It is the way we treat those who are infirm or weak or small or very old or very young. And yet, we see nothing in the Bible about having to qualify to receive gentleness. In fact, we see quite the opposite. When we look at these passages, we see what we are supposed to do, how we are supposed to act. We see nothing about the objects of gentleness. The very act of being gentle is an end in itself. It is part of the attitude of those who would be soldiers in the army of God. It is part of the Fruit of the Spirit. Gentleness is one of those essential fruits in Paul’s basket of righteousness, and it needs to be part of who we are and how we handle life.

          Well, we have heard from about everyone, haven’t we? We have heard from God though the song of Moses, We have heard from Paul and James and Peter. Before we leave this subject, let’s look at one more line from scripture. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has finished the Sermon on the Mount and has begun the second of five discourses to be found in that Gospel. He is engaged in teaching in cities of the region of Galilee. He makes it clear that not all who hear will understand. He invites his audiences to trust him, to look beyond the historical facts of who he seems to be and where he apparently comes from. He invites those who have ears to hear to come and receive the message that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, that those who are oppressed by the burden of religious legalism can now have their rest. Where is their rest? Indeed where is our rest in this world of taxes and rules and regulations and laws and deadlines? Their rest, as is ours, is in the man from Galilee, Son of Man and Son of God, He promised them and he promises us, rest for our souls. He says “take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” He says that his yoke is easy and his burden light. He says to take him on as our way of life. He says: “For I am gentle…” says Jesus (Mat. 11: 29).

          He is, you know. He is prautes, gentle. He is the newness of puppy breath, the softness of a baby’s skin, the tenderness of the dew on new grass. He is all of those things and so much more. He is the Christ, the son of the living God. He is our Savior. Come now and bow your heads. Close your eyes. It’s OK. Go ahead. Feel him at your side. Find the rest for your soul that only the gentleness of his Spirit can bring. His yoke is easy and his burden is light, for he is gentle.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness…