Bearing Fruit in Every Good Work

Colossians 1:1-15
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost 2010

The peaches are ripe, and that makes this a great time of year. My grandfather always said that you know a peach is ripe when it drops off the tree. Unless you have a peach tree in your back yard, you can’t get peaches any closer to ripe than at a South Carolina orchard or farmer’s market right now. The trees are heavy with fruit and the fruit stands are full, and that makes this a great time of year.

It’s something of a reach to think that when the apostle Paul wrote about “bearing fruit” in Colossians 1 he was thinking of peaches. It’s a reach, but it’s not impossible. Peaches were cultivated in China thousands of years before Christ. They were introduced to ancient Persia (modern-day Iran) hundreds of years before Christ. The Persians introduced them to the Greeks and Romans who called them “Persian apples.” By the time Paul was born and traveled the Mediterranean basin, peaches were known and grown all the way from China to Europe. One twentieth-century German biographer of Paul writes, perhaps a bit romantically, of the apostle’s travel on the island of Cyprus where he would have seen “big groves of fruit trees, oranges, lemons, figs, mulberries, peaches, and apricots” (Joseph Holzner, Paul of Tarsus [London: Scepter, 2002], p. 118). Perhaps he did.

Peaches or no peaches, Paul speaks of fruit in four passages in his surviving letters (Romans 7:4-5; 1 Corinthians 9:7; Galatians 5:22; Colossians 1:6-10). In the passage in front of us this morning, Paul speaks of “bearing fruit” three times in five verses. In v 6, he says that the gospel of Jesus Christ “is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world,” just as it has been “bearing fruit,” he says, among the congregation at Colossae. And then in v 10, he says that leading “lives worthy of the Lord” can be characterized as “bearing fruit in every good work.” “Bearing fruit in every good work.”

Unlike in Galatians 5:22 where Paul lists the fruit he has in mind—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—in Colossians 1 Paul doesn’t provide us with a simple inventory of the traits involved in leading “lives worthy of the Lord.” But in chapters 1 and 3 of Colossians we can see the kind of fruit he has in mind. In chapter 1, he praises the Colossians for their “faith in Christ Jesus” and “the love that [they] have for all the saints” (v 4). He speaks of “growing in the knowledge of God” (v 10), of “being strong” and “enduring everything with patience” (v 11), and of “joyfully giving thanks” to God (v 12). That’s the kind of fruit Paul has in mind. In chapter 3, Paul goes on to cites “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” bearing with one another and forgiving one another, love, peace, wisdom, gratitude, and giving thanks to God (vv 12-17). That’s the kind of fruit Paul has in mind in Colossians 1. But this morning, instead of focusing on the produce of the Christian life in “bearing fruit and growing,” I want to focus on the process of “bearing fruit and growing.” The process rather than the produce.

As the new life of spring arrives, fruiting trees and vines begin to bud, and in the bud there is a promise that fruit will be borne. The bud is not the fruit, but it’s the first evidence of the process that leads to fruit. In Romans 7, one of Paul’s other “bearing fruit” passages, he speaks of “new life in the Spirit” (v 6). At our baptism, Paul says, it is as though we are buried with Christ and raised with Christ “to walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). That’s the budding stage of faith and the Christian life. It’s the earliest sign of spring in our souls as we begin to grow, and “peace, patience, kindness, generosity” begin to bud. In the bud there is a promise of fruitfulness to come. As that new life grows, the bud opens and a flower blooms. That’s how it’s supposed to go. But the truth is, there are people whose faith and Christian life bud but never bloom. They have an early experience; they exhibit an early sign of life; they make an early commitment to grow. But for one reason or another, the bud dries up and dies. The promise of faith is lost: they bud but never bloom.

But the bud that blooms opens into a flower. In the bloom there is beauty: faith and love and joy and hope. Because it’s so attractive, some people make the mistake of thinking that the flower in all its beauty is the goal. But it’s not. The flower is not the end: just like the bud, it’s only a means to the end of bearing fruit. The flower’s beauty serves the purpose of pollination, and pollination leads to fertilization, and fertilization leads to the setting of the fruit. That’s how it’s supposed to go. But there are people whose faith and Christian life bloom but never set. They are beautiful for a time; but in the end, it turns out that they are unproductive, long on looks but short on fruit. They bloom but never set. In the setting of the fruit there is potential. “Faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” begin to set so that the fruit can grow and ripen and mature, “growing in the knowledge of God,” “being strong,” “enduring everything with patience,” “bearing with one another” and “forgiving one another.”

There is nothing to compare with maturity. It’s not as showy as the flowering stage, but in the fruit there is fulfillment. In Colossians 1, Paul calls us all to the full maturity of faith and the Christian life when he says that bearing fruit in every good work is what living lives worthy of the Lord looks like. It’s not the bud with all its promise; it’s not the bloom with all its beauty; it’s not the set with all its potential. It’s the bearing fruit. But there are people and churches alike who set but never mature. Everything was in place except growth and fruitfulness. They were ready to ripen, but they never did. Instead they remained forever stunted, immature. For whatever reason, they didn’t grow in the knowledge of God; they didn’t become strong and endure everything with patience; they couldn’t bear with one another and forgive one another. It is the fruit that is the fulfillment.

But the truth be told, we’re not done yet. When we’ve arrived at bearing fruit, we haven’t arrived yet at the end of faith and the Christian life and the life of the church. Because as far as the plant that produces the fruit is concerned, the purpose of the fruit is to provide seed because in the seed is the future. Bearing fruit is about producing seeds. Sadly enough, there are people and churches alike who mature in faith and the Christian life but never go to seed. They arrive at a place of maturity, but they never pass it on; they never scatter and sow and plant. It is enough for them to enjoy their own sense of fulfillment, their own sense of calling, their own sense of community. And so as they age and eventually decline, senescence it’s called in biological terms, there is no one in the generation to come to take up the faith and life and the church. You may like to eat seedless grapes and seedless watermelons, but in the Christian faith and life and in the church, if there are no seeds, there is no future. Bearing fruit in every good work means going to seed every bit as much as it means budding and blooming and setting and maturing. It means passing it on, scattering and sowing and planting the gospel so that fruit may be borne by others. That’s the process we live in faith and the Christian life and the church.

Now, here’s the thing about bearing fruit and growing. It takes a lot of time and attention and effort, a lot of patience and care and feeding. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus told this parable.

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down” (Luke 13:6-9).

As Jesus’ parable shows, sufficient feeding is essential for bearing fruit.

Fred Craddock tells this story of insufficient feeding.

I went to see a lady in our church who was facing surgery. I went to see her in the hospital. She had never been in the hospital before, and the surgery was major. I walked in there. She was a nervous wreck, and she started crying. She wanted me to pray with her, which I did. By her bed there was a stack of books and magazines: True Love, Mirror, Hollywood Today, stuff about [celebrities and such]. She just had a stack of them there, and she was a wreck. It occurred to me, There’s not a calorie in that whole stack to help her through her experience. She had no place to dip down into a reservoir and come with something—a word, a phrase, a thought, an idea, a memory, a person. Just empty. How marvelous is the life of the person who, like a wise homemaker, when the berries and fruits and vegetables are ripe, puts them away in jars and cans in the cellar. Then when the ground is cold, icy, and barren and nothing seems alive, she goes down into the cellar, comes up, and it’s May and June at her family’s table. How blessed is that person.

When the trees are heavy with fruit and the fruit stands are full, it is the best time of the year to commence to canning, putting up the food—the nutrients and the calories—your soul will need when the ground is cold, icy, and barren and nothing seems alive. Blessed are those who store up food for their own soul and for the souls of others for when the winter comes. Craddock also tells a story about putting up just enough to make it through.

A young woman said to me, during her freshman year of college, “I was a failure in my classes; I wasn’t having any dates; and I didn’t have as much money as the other students. I was just so lonely and depressed and homesick and not succeeding. One Sunday afternoon,” she said, “I went to the river near the campus. I had climbed up on the rail and was looking into the dark water below. For some reason or another I thought of the [words], ‘Cast all your cares upon [God] for [God] cares for you.’” She said, “I stepped back, and here I am.” I said, “Where did you learn [those words]?” She said, “I don’t know.” I said, “Do you go to church?” “No . . . Well, when I visited my grandmother in the summers we went to Sunday school and church.” I said, “Ah . . .”

That’s putting up just enough to see you through. When the trees are heavy with fruit and the fruit stands are full, it’s the best time of the year to put up the food—the nutrients and the calories—your soul will need when the ground is cold, icy, and barren and nothing seems alive. Blessed are those who store up food for their own soul and for the souls of others for when the winter comes.

One of the places our souls are fed is at the Table of the Lord. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry” (John 6:35). Jesus also said, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). I invite you to share in the bread and the cup that come from this Table in the prayer that you may eat and drink so as to bear fruit in every good work.

The stories attributed to Fred Craddock are from Craddock Stories, by Fred B. Craddock (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001).

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.