Fruit

         “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (Matthew 15:5-8)

I hesitate to broach this subject, because my automatic response, probably my fleshly response is to want to see my harvest of fruit for the past year put on a table (metaphorically speak) so that I can examine, evaluate, and either expostulate on its glories or on its grand failure(s.) And since we’re coming to the end of the year, such expostulation is not only natural but possibly necessary.

It does us good to reflect on what has come to pass, if we approach it in a healthy way, because fruit is the sign of what we have accomplished. Fruit is normal to a healthy organism. According to today’s passage, fruit is a sign that we are abiding in Christ.

The first problem is that we sometimes get confused about the goal. They mistake big showy flowers for fruit. I like flowers as well as the next person, and they are vital to the environment, but they aren’t fruit. It’s easy to pick something and put our focus on it as fruit, whether it’s sharing the gospel, seeing people come to Christ, speaking in tongues, performing miracles, displays of great wisdom, mercy, love, etc. In short, we like showy flowers in which we can take pride.

          I’ve discovered a few things about fruit. Often, it’s not all that impressive. Take apples, for example. Given a chance, they would all be crab apples. They’d be smaller, with much less “fruit” around the seed, and about with the same, generally apply flavor. There wouldn’t be Fujis and Granny Smiths, or at least, they’d be generally less impressive.  But fruit is also Beggars’ Ticks seeds, sand burrs, and dandelion fluff (or, technically, the fruit is attached to the fluff.) Unless there’s a problem with the fruit, or we want to use it for some reason, we don’t tend to pay much attention to it.

          Fruit certainly can include the showy stuff in which we are at least tempted to take pride. Fruit can also be good deeds done in such a way that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. I would like to be able to become invisible, because then I could go around doing things without anyone noticing. God has seen fit that I should have to be more clever and sneaky about it, and I’m afraid I haven’t mastered the clever or sneaky.

          Fruit can also be character qualities like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Fruit can be faith or wisdom. As I understand what Dallas Willard said in Renovation of the Heart, bearing fruit involves becoming the sort of person who naturally bears that fruit. Apple trees aren’t  going to produce corn, so if we’re going to bear corn, we have to become the sort of plant that bears corn. Or, we can rejoice that God lets us produce apples.

          Another problem with fruit is that we (as the branch) tend to think we’re producing it, and that it is somehow a credit to us. But the truth of the matter is that what produces the fruit is the condition of the soil, the correct quantities and timing of the rain (or irrigation,) light, and both heat and cold, and protection from harmful vermin.  In other words, the fruit is more about the farmer, the soil, the sun, and the rain than it is about the branch.