Bear Fruit

Every Branch that Does Bear Fruit He Prunes.  Apparently, the time to prune blueberry bushes (and by extension all berry-producing plants) is late January into early February. Before the sap starts flowing at the spring thaw, there is work to be done. One of the many articles that I have been reading to overcome my ignorance about growing blueberries says: “Be severe.” Anything thicker than one’s thumb is too old for a blueberry cane, since age indicates a decrease in the number and the sweetness of its berries. “Cut them all the way to the ground.” That way the sap will flow more toward the new growth and the better berries.

After that, one must go further still: “Take out about 1/3 of all the canes that are left.” Wow, that is severe and thoroughly counterintuitive! In my state of ignorance, I would have assumed that having more branches makes more fruit involving less pruning. But now I know better! [Of course, bearing more fruit increases the chance of attracting more bears, or bear-fruit.]

My thumb is not even slightly green; a master-gardener I am not. But God is crowned with the title, in John 15:1, the vinedresser—the Master of all master-gardeners! His thumb is not only green, but it causes everything it touches to come to life. Step aside King Midas—your golden touch only brings only death. God is the eternal gardener, he causes life and invites those who have come to life by his gracious touch, to join him in his activity of cultivating life in others. We are both his field and his fellow workers in his field where he is growing life (1 Cor. 3:9). His crop is Christlikeness!

God has no ignorance about his vineyard. “Every branch that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:2). His activity may seem severe, and his pruning knife may appear counterintuitive from the worm’s-eye perspective, but he knows what he is doing and does what is in accord with all he knows! “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 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” (John 15:4-5).

The question for us, then, is: do we trust him? His pruning knife may seem terrifying, but his character governs his actions. “You are good and do good; teach me your statutes” (Psa. 119:68). As we abide, which means to remain vitally connected to God by faith, his sap, which is to say his character, flows through our vascular tissues producing his fruit in us. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law” (Gal. 5:22-23). “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8). God is growing godliness in his disciples.

Being Prepared

Being Prepared.  Hyper-alertness and vigilant preparedness, living near our military installation has given me a new appreciation for constant readiness. While I might have already known some synonyms for the word readiness (e.g., watchfulness, attentiveness), I am now pleased to have an entire cadre of people who embody the reality of readiness in their collective commitment to make preparedness their constant focus. Readiness is no joke at Seymour Johnson, much like I suppose would be the case at any of our nation’s military installations. Drills and training, followed by more training and drills, it seems like the job of the military servicemember is to be and remain ready. Perhaps readiness remains more in the category of potential readiness in times of peace than in times of war, but whether at war or in peace, it takes an active and disciplined mind to maintain heightened alertness.

The Apostle Peter used this word, preparedness, twice in his First Epistle (1:5; 3:15). We who have been “caused by God to be born again” (1 Pet. 1:3) are also those “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5). In other words, God is hyper-vigilant for us, as in, on our behalf. It is his job, so to speak, to cause us to be prepared to display his salvation. The way he keeps us ready is by constantly testing us for “the genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire” (1 Pet. 1:7). God vigilantly makes us vigilant!

The second time preparedness appears in First Peter is in chapter three. As it was in chapter one, the church’s preparedness often braids together with testing and trials. In chapter three, Peter instructed the persecuted church, “In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15). When witnessing for Christ was a capital crime (as it is today in many countries) and when brothers and sisters were being imprisoned or killed for honoring Christ as Lord (instead of hailing Caesar as lord), Peter touched upon the fortitude of being prepared. It is our job to be ready always to bear witness to Christ, even if faithfulness to Christ might be regarded as treason to Caesar.

When Peter’s two uses of preparedness are fused together, they form a singular picture. Chapter one’s readiness is God’s work done in us to cause us to be ready. Chapter three’s readiness is our work done through God’s power to “make a defense to anyone who asks” (1 Pet. 3:15). Either way one looks at it, biblical readiness is God’s power enabling our obedience. Are we ready? God has caused us to be ready and he will continue to enable our readiness, even by using tests and trials, for giving reason to anyone who asks for our hope.

To Remain Quiet

To Remain Quiet.  Physics has always had its governing principles, but Sir Isaac Newton is famous for setting those observable principles down into his three Laws of Motion (1687). Google helped me to remember what they are, especially Newton’s Third Law of Action and Reaction, which states: for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. 

The Law of Action and Reaction collided with my week, or better put, potentially collided with my week. I made an action last Sunday morning which might have caused an opposite and equal reaction. I don’t know for sure, but it is conceivable. I indicated that my principal goal for 2023 was simple: more Bible at home, at church, and all points in between. Toward that goal, I created a space in the service for additional Scripture Readings, as they appear in the back of our blue, pew Bibles, with tear-off tabs on the communal cork board.

However, the technically unasked but legitimate question of who itched in my brain. Would someone in the congregation ask about the bearing that 1 Timothy 2:12 has on who can publicly read Scripture in the worship service (i.e., only the pastor, only the elders, only the men, only the members, etc.)? My quick answer to this unasked question was this: anyone and everyone. I still hold to my answer: anyone and everyone can read Scripture in public. Let me show you why I land and remain there, especially considering 1 Timothy 2:12, which is an important verse, but which talks about pastoring, not the reading of Scripture.

Paul wrote: “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” The pertinent word is quiet. What did it mean to Paul for women in the public worship setting to remain quiet. Significantly, he used the same word back in verse 2, applied to all Christians everywhere (not just Ephesus) to pray for all people (vs. 1) that the entire population “may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (vs. 2). Clearly, quiet does not mean non-vocal in verse 2, and therefore can’t in verse 12. It means living harmonious with the established order that God has for society (e.g., under kings and rulers).

In the very next paragraphs, Paul gets into gender specific ways that peace, quietness, godliness, and dignity are expressed when the church assembles. All Christian males should resist their core temptation of passivity to God, but instead “pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or quarreling” (2:8). All Christian females should resist their core temptation of comparison toward others, but instead, “adorn themselves in respectful apparel, with modesty and self-control” (2:9). Our key verse sits here. The male church leaders “teach [and] exercise authority,” whereas the female church members follow, or remain quiet in the sense of living harmoniously within this God-established order in the church leadership.

Throughout chapters two and three, Paul continues his gender specific instructions: spiritually mature men serve as elders/pastors, if qualified (3:1-7), and spiritually mature women follow the elders’ leadership (2:11-14). This is what it looks like for peaceful, quiet, godly, and dignified Christian behavior in the church! It looks like unity, under Christ, in accordance with Scripture. Authoritative “teaching” (4:13b) is clearly distinct from “the public reading of Scripture” (4:13a). Therefore, it is biblical that anyone and everyone can read more Bible anywhere and everywhere, anytime and every time. Although no one technically asked!

God-breathed

Breathed Out By God.  I picked up bronchitis somewhere over the bridge into the New Year. It is mild but constant. Every breath is labored, like pulling oxygen through wet cotton. (Not like, it is exactly that!) Medicine helps, as do hot tea and honey, but the body simply must relinquish its determination that a threat is present and authorize the release of its extra, defensive layer of fluid that has swelled in my throat and lungs. (Sheesh, thanks for working so well, Mr. Immune System!)

As with every new day, there is a new lesson to learn, even while I am chewing on menthol cough drops like they are candy. (Not like, they are candy!) The inhale-exhale rhythm is physically remarkable and spiritually illustrative. We were designed to inhale, to take in a foreign molecule (oxygen) that exists naturally in a form that must undergo a change to become biologically useful. Respiration then infuses the converted oxygen to our bloodstream, which distributes usable oxygen to every cell in our body. Then, before we exhale, we link waste molecules (carbon dioxide) to the spent oxygen delivery system and carry it out again. The failure of any of these mechanisms is fatal within a few minutes. Inhale, exhale—even when asleep—inhale, exhale.

It is amazing that God created oxygen before he fashioned lungs to need oxygen. He provided air before he formed humans to require air. And he outbreathed his word before we inbreathed anything else in this world. It is no accident that God grabbed the inhale-exhale rhythm to explain not only the spiritual necessity of his word to life, but also its order: exhale-inhale. He provides before we need. Need comes later. God always precedes. Even if/when we use the air that God created and provided to formulate curses for hurling back at him—he provided that, too. Hang on, I need another cough drop because that sort of takes my breath away. (Not sort of, it does!)

“All Scripture is breathed out by God” (1 Timothy 3:16a). The Greek word is unique: theopneustos. Theo means God. Pneust means wind, or breath, or spirit. Put them together in an adjectival form to modify “all Scripture” and you get: God-exhaled. The word of God is the breath of God pushed out of his lungs, so to speak, which results in the inspired (think: inhaled, or inhalable) Scriptures. For eternal life we inhale that which God exhaled; we believe. All our spiritual activities, whether reading, praying, worshiping, teaching, evangelizing, fellowshipping, contemplating, lamenting, etc., are fundamentally built upon inhaling that which God has exhaled. *Whew*

Number Our Days

Teach Us to Number Our Days. It is a divine ability to reckon, comprehensively and decisively, the true situation. Humanity simply cannot find the edges of its own reality, not to mention make numbered determinations upon reality. God alone can and does. “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names” (Psa. 147:4). For us, the backstory and the future ramifications of every experience extend far beyond our line of sight in each direction. Men and women remain in the metaphysical realm as boys and girls remain in the physical realm—we simply do not know what is dangerous versus what is beneficial, what hastens death versus what fosters life. We lack the capacity to make a proper accounting of our own selves, to number our days. Left to ourselves, we fundamentally lack wisdom.

This finitude was displayed in the primordial temptation and our original sin. Satan hissed with the serpent’s forked tongue, “’For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Gen. 3:5-6).

By no means was it coincidental that Moses, who narrated Genesis, used some of the keywords from the Garden in a totally different light in Psalm 90:12. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Adam and Eve stridently reached outside of their relationship with God for the ability to determine what is good and what is evil. God is wise, and since they had a relationship with God, they had wisdom through God. Satan tempts us to lunge for knowledge and wisdom apart from God; to become autonomous.

Moses’ prayer in Psalm 90 seeks the undoing of the deed in the Garden. “Teach us to number our days,” could be translated, “Cause us to know the determined edges of our days.” Or define our days! It is an admission of incapacity. Moses cannot (and should not try to) attain this knowledge. He asks for it through a relationship with God, not instead of a relationship with God. To the same God who numbers the stars and gives them each a name, Moses approaches in terms of his own allotted time on Earth. Cause us to know that you, O Lord, have appointed our times and our seasons. Inside that relational knowledge built on faith, God causes us to enter into wisdom. By steering us into himself, God is effectively steering us into wisdom. Our search for wisdom ends with knowing Christ, just as surely as our appetite for wisdom begins with knowing “Christ, who became to us wisdom from God” (1 Cor. 1:30).

And On Earth Peace

And On Earth Peace.  An artistic competition was sponsored, goes the fable told by Berit Kjos (A Wardrobe from the King, pp. 45-46), because a patron sought but could not find the perfect picture of peace. The submissions were eager yet predictable, still two finalists emerged. “A mirror-smooth lake reflected lacy, green birches under the soft blush of the evening sky. Along the grassy shore, a flock of sheep grazed undisturbed. Surely this was the winner.” But the prize went instead to the unexpected and more complicated interpretation of peace. “A tumultuous waterfall cascaded down a rocky precipice . . . a spindly tree clung to the rocks at the edge of the falls. One of its branches reached out in front of the torrential waters as if foolishly seeking to experience its full power. A little bird had built a nest in the elbow of that branch. Content and undisturbed in her stormy surroundings, she rested on her eggs.” Rather than the absence of turmoil, peace is calm serenity inside though unaffected by the tangle of dangerous complications that swirl outside.

An often-asked question for Christmastime is: Why December 25th? The answers are eager yet predictable. Most scholars insist that the Christians invented a holiday that evolved from and intentionally coexisted with the pagan festival of Saturnalia. The sprawling Roman pantheon of gods included worship of Saturn, who was—among other things—over the winter sowing of the spring crops. In Saturn’s honor, a week of partying crowned the Roman year surrounding the Winter Solstice and Sol Invictus, when the unconquerable sun god, Helios, was reborn (so-called). During this week, disorder was celebrated as wine cellars were emptied, in a topsy-turvy reprieve from the usually strict orderliness of Roman rule. In many Roman households, a King of Mischief was mock-crowned and permitted any sort of raucous behavior. Slaves were jovially served by their masters. A pig would be sacrificed at the temple of Saturn in Rome’s Forum. Even the Emperor would sometimes wear the conical cap of a freed slave (www.history.com/topics/ancient-rome/saturnalia).

But I like to imagine a more sophisticated reason that Christmas took up the December 25th slot on the calendar, though I don’t think anyone really has any solid data as to the actual day Christ was born in Bethlehem. Like the artist’s rendition of peace nestled inside chaos, Christians celebrate how Christ’s peace invades and overcomes from within our most decadent and depraved celebrations of darkness. The juxtaposition of Christmas and Saturnalia, even if it were invented by some cleric in the Dark Ages, was genius in terms of an object lesson. Christmas didn’t attempt to bring Saturnalia to heel but looked for and found a totally different and better peace in Jesus Christ. More than the absence of social restraints, the Prince of Peace incarnates the very presence of God. Christ intentionally came to be with us, as his name Immanuel means. “For he himself is our peace” (Eph. 2:14, cf. Micah 5:5).

Great Joy

Great Joy.  The text of the Christmas Story is certainly inspired and inerrant, but it is also excellent literature. Just like in 9^th grade English class, we can see the bell-curve of a good story at Bethlehem: problem, ascending plot, conflict, resolution, descending plot, and the establishment of a new normal. The narrative of Jesus’ birth has it all, especially in terms of character development. Even the minor characters spiritually duke it out with moves and countermoves. But the blood that flowed in the massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem was not merely a literary device. Real life was lost as the true Lord of Life was born. The stark reality is this: the cost of life for Christ is death but in Christ the reward of death is life forevermore.

However, at the speed of everyday life, it may have been very difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys because they often speak the same lines. For instance, when the wise men inquired at Jerusalem about the Messiah’s arrival they said, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matt. 2:2). But King Herod the Great, who was famously jealous of his throne and openly murderous when it came to the struggle over who would inherit that throne, used the same words as the wise men. “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him” (Matt. 2:8).

The similarity between the wise men and the evil king ended there at the surface level. Both said worship, but one used worship only as a disguise to cover up his malicious intent. The inner quality of each character was not found in their vocabulary, but in their response to the Infant King. “When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh” (Matt. 2:10-11). Contrast their response with Herod’s reaction. “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men” (Matt. 2:16).

The visible difference was their joy. Herod has no joy, only fury. “Thus you will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:20). The pattern continues today with moves and countermoves. Many may sing, “Joy to the world the Lord has come,” but only some will fall down and worship him.