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Fruit of the Spirit and the Great Stone Face
by The Rev. Canon Heidi E. Kinner
Year C, Proper 8, Gal 5:1, 13-25
June 27, 2010
unedited
“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
I don't know about you, but I have always wanted to resemble this list. Wouldn't it be nice to be joyful, patient, generous, and faithful?
In fact, when I was in Seminary I decided to overcome my sins, act like the fruit of the Spirit list, and become a super holy person. After all, if you can't climb the ladder to holiness surrounded by theologians and priests in training, what hope is there?
Well, as you've no doubt noticed, I failed.
But I kept trying, and so I signed up for spiritual direction with an elderly Nun who visited the Seminary every month, thinking that she could help me out.
I liked her immediately. She loved the Lord, was joyful, kind, faithful, and self-controlled. In short, she resembled the list and I thought, “Aha, she can give me the insider tips to being wonderfully gentle and saint-like.
Well our meetings were always a blessing to me, but she never gave me a list with the “five short-cuts to glowing holiness.” But I left each time determined to be more like her, and so I would refocus my energy on living the list. My efforts were valiant….the results were pathetic, and usually within the hour I was grumpy or frustrated about something or other.
Which, of course, made me feel like a complete failure. I just didn't understand why I couldn't produce the fruit of the Spirit in my life.
Ah, but there's the rub.
You see, I was missing the whole point of this passage from Galatians – it is the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of Heidi. It comes because of the work of the Holy Spirit in me, not because of my work or will.
But I didn't see that for a long time.
Thankfully, the nun saw my sin and problem, and one day she gently, but truthfully pointed it out. She said that I should spend less time “navel gazing” (looking at myself), and more time looking at God in worship, Bible study, and prayer.
I had failed to understand that the fruit of the Spirit would only come forth when I stopped focusing on myself and stopped trying to bend the Holy Spirit to my will. I wanted to be holier. I wanted to be kinder and more patient. Good goals, but I wanted them so that I would be seen to be a better Christian, so that I could stand before God and say, “Look aren't I a good representative for you.” It was all about me. It was all about earning praise from mankind and trying to earn my own salvation. And so the good fruit would not come, because I was feeding my soul with ego and sin, and that sort of food only produces stunted, unhealthy fruit.
I needed to start looking at Jesus and stop worrying about myself.
So, she sent me away with a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne called The Great Stone Face.
This wonderful story tells of a valley that was overshadowed by a mountain that looked like the face of a good, wise, and kindly man. Since earliest times the people had passed on the prophecy that one day someone would be born who would look just like the Great Stone Face and be the noblest person of his generation, a great and wise leader.
One boy in the valley named Ernest loved looking at the Great Stone Face and longed for the time when the long-awaited man would arrive. Through the years many men came and tried to fill the role. A strong military leader, a wealthy businessman, a popular politician, and a poet, but none of them fully reflected the wisdom or love of the Great Stone Face.
As the years wore on and Ernest grew old, he did his work humbly and kept looking at the Great Stone Face, pondering the prophecy and hoping for its fulfillment. He grew to be gentle and kind from contemplating the compassion etched into the lines of the Great Stone Face. He became wise and truthful from gazing on the firm determination of the stone face. And people in the valley began to turn to him for guidance, teaching, and wisdom.
Finally one evening, as he sat on a rock near his home preaching to the people of the valley, they realized that Ernest had come to look like the Great Stone Face. He had come to reflect in face and spirit the kind and wise visage that he had looked on for all those years. The people proclaimed that he was indeed the fulfillment of the prophecy. Ernest, however, had no such hubris and he simply finished teaching and walked slowly back home to sit by his door and look again at the Great Stone Face.
This story helped me understand my monastic friend, and more importantly, it helped me understand this passage from Galatians.
I realized that the fruit of the Spirit was not a list of moral qualities for me to achieve, but a result of looking at the One who is the wellspring of all love, joy, peace, and patience.
I re-read Galatians 5 in light of John 15, where Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
I realized that God in his grace and mercy has grafted us into the life-giving vine, His Son Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus, we are just dried up sticks, dead in our sin. But when we are grafted into Jesus, we are given new life, as His life flows through us, like sap flows into the branches from the grape vine.
As branches of the vine, we cannot make fruit come forth. Only the life giving sap of the vine can do that.
I began to understand that the only real task of the branches is to hold on to the vine. We simply hold tight to Jesus, look on the Cross, and rejoice in the Resurrection.
It's as we cling to Jesus that the branches begin to grow and bear fruit, but we almost don't even realize it, for our attention is turned toward Jesus, the vine, and not on ourselves.
Practically, how do we hold tight to Jesus, the vine? Well, like Ernest and the Great Stone Face, we just keep looking at God. As the nun said, we do this by studying and praying with the Bible so that God's word permeates our hearts and our heads. We do this through prayer, talking to God day by day. And we do it by looking at God in worship, kneeling in awe and wonder at the feet of the Almighty.
As we draw nearer to Jesus through Bible study, prayer, and worship the Holy Spirit begins to bring forth growth and spiritual fruit.
We become more kind and loving to others because we realize that God was gentle and loving to us, even when we were undeserving of such love.
We become more patient because we see how patient God is with us and all of our selfish petulant ways
We become more joyful in all circumstances because we know that Jesus has won the ultimate victory over sin and death and that we are part of His kingdom.
We begin to look like Christians not by trying to make-up our faces to look saintly or by trying to appear holy to earn praise, but by looking long on the face and work of Jesus Christ.
That is what that nun had learned. The Holy Spirit was bringing forth fruit in her life for the building up of God's kingdom, not because of her effort, but because she was grafted into the vine, Jesus. It was His fruit, His work, and she knew it.
It is the lesson that I had to learn, and am still learning every day.
It is often a painful lesson, because we humans like to be in control, we like to think that we can achieve all things and earn kudos for our works. Moving myself out of the center of my focus is part of that daily dying to self, and so it is difficult.
But ultimately this is a lesson of true freedom and rest. We are freed from the endless founds of fruitless striving and failure, and can rejoice in the fact that it is God's gracious work in us. We can rest in Jesus and let the Holy Spirit bring forth the fruit.
May God grant us the grace and wisdom to simply hold tight to Jesus, to fix our hearts and minds on God, and let the Holy Spirit handle the rest.
Amen.
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