Sermon: Fruit-Full!
August 4th, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: Colossians 1:1-14
Did you know: a single strawberry plant can feed the whole world?! I just learned that! I watched a tutorial on strawberry plants this week. How many of you have or have had a strawberry patch? I learned that after the berries have grown and been picked, the plant spends the rest of the summer sending out runners (called umbilical cords) with nodules along them that will become baby strawberry plants. If one of these nodules rests on the soil, it will start growing roots and leaves. Eventually, if those roots get established down in the ground and it becomes its own plant. Tending a strawberry patch involves cutting the umbilical cords and replanting the baby plants so the bed doesn’t get too crowded and choked. Every season there’s more plants, all that have come from the original, all bearing luscious berries and then sending out runners, year after year, so that one strawberry plant could eventually feed the whole world! (“Feed the world with a single strawberry plant”, MIGardener, youtube.com)
The strawberry plant is a wonderful metaphor for the church. Isn’t it amazing how God weaves His design for living into every aspect of His creation, and the way strawberries live and give and grow serve as an illustration for us.
Colossians: Setting the Scene
After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the first believers gathered in Jerusalem, joining together in worship and prayer. The Holy Spirit was given to them and they began to bear fruit. It didn’t take long before they also became the target of persecution. This drove many believers to flee Jerusalem. I’m not sure how persecution fits with the strawberry analogy, but God uses it to push the Jerusalem church to send out runners, which God the Gardener then replants in other towns and cities. I learned that if a gardener doesn’t cut the umbilical cord of the runners, the mother plant will produce fewer and fewer strawberries as it puts its energy down the runners at the cost of fruit on the original plant.
One of the cities believers flee to is Antioch, about 400 miles north up the coast from Judea. When word gets back to the church in Jerusalem that a church is growing in Antioch, they send a man named Barnabas to go check it out. Perhaps like sampling the fruit of the new plant, to see if it is true to the original plant. Barnabas invites Paul to join him in Antioch, and together they stay a whole year to tend and nurture that church. The book of Acts tells us that “the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch” (Acts 11:26)
Then the Antioch church begins to send out runners. It commissions Paul and Barnabas to go out as church planters on their behalf. One of the cities Paul and Barnabas go to is the city of Ephesus. Church historians believe that while they are there, they meet a man named Epaphas who comes from a town about 100 miles inland (Ephesus is on the coast), the town of Colossae. Epaphras goes back to his hometown and shares the news about Jesus, and pretty soon a church starts to take root in Colossae. It started as just a few families, based in one or two house churches. One of those house churches meets in the home of a man named Philemon (that name may ring a bell – his name is on one of the books in the New Testament).
Paul travels on, planting churches everywhere he goes. This disturbs the soil of the status quo in many cities, and eventually Paul is arrested by the Romans and is put into prison in Rome to await a trial. Epaphras travels to Rome, either to try to help Paul or perhaps because he too gets arrested, for Epaphras ends up becoming a prisoner too (Phlm.23). As he sits in prison with Paul, he of course shares the news that there is now a church in Colossae. It’s not a church that Paul planted, yet Paul feels a responsibility for them, perhaps like a grandfather to a grandchild. The church in Colossea is like a grandchild he has not yet met, but nevertheless he cares about them and loves them.
So Paul writes them a letter. There is no global postal service, so he directs fellow believer and traveling companion of his, a man named Tychicus, who is from the region of Colossae, to travel home carrying Paul’s letter with him. In addition to the letter for the Colossians (which Paul asks them to share with other house churches in the region), Tychicus is also carrying a personal letter from Paul to Philemon and his household (this also ends up being shared around!). Tychicus isn’t traveling alone, he is with Onesimus, a man who had at one time been a part of Philemon’s household. Small world!
It is still a small world sometimes in the network of Christian brothers and sisters – like the visitor from New York, at Lakelawn for a conference, seeking out another ABC church to worship with and joining us several weeks ago. Or Lisa Reshkus staying with an ABC missionary when visiting in Honduras, and worshipping with the church that Dilia is a part of there – and while Lisa was there, together with other American Baptist from churches in New York and in Minnesota, communicating our love and care for them as part of the world-wide Baptist family, Christian family.
The Letter to the Colossians: Opening Remarks
Paul begins his letter wanting to communicate his love and care for the Christians in Colossae. He wants to affirm them. It’s almost as if Paul says to them, ‘I can tell you are the real thing because of the fruit that you are bearing looks and tastes just like the real thing; just like the original plant, Jesus the Christ.’
The other thing Paul wants to say, which then leads him into the main part of his letter, is that he has a deep interest and loving concern for them and for their continued wellbeing. Paul wants them to continue to bear fruit, to grow and mature. So they may “live” (literally, the word in vs.10 is ‘walk’) or walk in the ways of the Lord. Paul and Epaphras are passionate gardeners and want the strawberry patch in Colossae to do well, be strong and healthy, producing fruit, feeding others, sending out its own runners. Paul expresses both these things, the affirmation and his hopes for them, as two prayers: a prayer of thanksgiving and a prayer of intercession. These are the prayers that Paul and Epaphras are praying for the church in Colossae while they sit in prison. (Isn’t it encouraging when you get to hear what someone else is praying for you?)
The Fruit of the Gospel
In the first prayer of thanksgiving, Paul is rejoicing and thanking God for the Gospel fruit that is growing in Colossae: faith, hope and love. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Paul writes, verse 4, “we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and your love for all God’s people, which comes from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven.” Ever since the true message of the Gospel reached them and took root – to took root when they understood God’s wonderful grace – ever since then, Gospel fruit began to appear. Faith, hope and love – the same fruit that Jesus produced, the same fruit eventually produced in his disciples, and then produced in groups of believers in churches. If your strawberries taste just as delicious as the ones on that first plant, then while there may have been a progression of plants in between, you are still an authentic part of that same, original plant.
Strawberry plants don’t decide what to grow – strawberries come naturally from a true strawberry plant. So it is with the Gospel, the good news of God’s wonderful grace. Churches and Christians don’t have to force faith and hope and love to grow; they are produced naturally when the Gospel takes root. Faith, hope and love describe what naturally comes from truly knowing that God, our Creator, so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, Jesus, to rescue us, to purchase our freedom and forgive our sins.
When we look at the First Baptist Church of Delavan do we see Gospel fruit? I see the faith of a group of people who planted this congregation 180 years ago, giving sacrificially because they longed for the Gospel message to put down deep roots in this place to feed and bless the community. They built with a confident hope that this church would serve as a place to worship God for many generations into the future. They dug down deep, in the day before Caterpillar tractors and diggers, to set the foundations. They raised up the brick walls, before the day of big delivery trucks and front loaders. They painted walls and polished pews, showing love for each other. I think of the faith that has been passed along through Sunday school teachers. This church’s roots began in a strong church school program and we continue to have dedicated teachers, like Rocky whose faith has inspired her to teach Sunday school here for nearly 50 years! I look out and see the faces of people who have faced the loss of loved ones with courage, because they have a deep hope in what God has in store in heaven. I see you all reach out in love to receive visitors, to receive with love those who have come from other churches or from the community, bearing pain of various kinds, giving your time and money in faith. I see the love for all God’s people evident in food in the wagon in the entryway, and Kleenex and wipes and markers in the wagon here in front for families at the Tree House, and the resources and prayers that make it possible for Lisa to go to Honduras to pour out love there and to come back safely to us today.
Faith, hope and love – evidence that the Gospel continues to grow right here, as we understand God’s wonderful grace in Christ Jesus!
Tending the Gospel Plant
In verses 9-14, Paul then prays for what is necessary for the Gospel plant to continue to grow and mature. This is what he asks: that God would give the church a fuller and fuller knowledge of God. Knowing God’s heart and God’s plans comes through developing spiritual wisdom and understanding – spending time in prayer getting to know God, investing time in reading God’s word, studying the stories of Jesus and of God’s people in the Bible. As we show up, Paul says the Holy Spirit gives that trio of knowledge and wisdom and understanding to us. Then, as we get to know God better, we walk in God’s ways, we practice acts of love and kindness to others, our lives begin to produce fruit. We make God smile! (Just as biting into a luscious, sweet strawberry always makes me smile!)
The other thing Paul asks from God for the church is for them to be strengthened. Strengthened by God’s power with endurance for the long haul, with patience for the challenges, patience with one another. And finally he asks God for the church to be filled with joy, the joy that bubbles up from gratitude to God for the wonderful, amazing grace of the Gospel – the wonderful, amazing grace of God’s love and God’s light.
You were once a runner, heading out into the weeds, into rocky soil, away from the protection of a garden fence, into the realm where rabbits and ground squirrels roam, eager to devour you. But Jesus rescued you. He transplanted you into God’s garden patch, so you wouldn’t die, but might thrive and produce the luscious strawberries that God intended for you to produce all along. God wants to rescue each person from the world of darkness, from dead-end lives, and replanted us into the bright, sunny patch of God’s garden, the kingdom of Jesus. (If you want to learn more about how to be planted in God, please talk to me after the service.)
One strawberry plant can feed the whole world. One Gospel can transform the whole world to rescue, redeem, forgive, bring light. Let us nourish ourselves on this Gospel, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus, as we share now around the communion table.
Communion Song: “Let Us Be Bread”
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