February 16, 2025
New Year Series
Finding the Middle Way: Living the Fruit of the Spirit
The Fruit of Faithfulness
Hebrews 11:1;Matthew 25: ; Galatians 5:22
Seven years ago this week following the Super Bowl, the Colts were set to announce their new head coach at a press conference, Josh Daniels from the New England Patriots. (Feel free to boo every time you hear the word Patriots in this story!) While the chair in front of the mic in Indianapolis sat empty, the owner of the Patriots got their assistant coach to remain in New England. Daniels went back on his agreement.
As bad as this looked for the Colts, it was even worse for three assistant coaches Daniels had invited to be on his staff in Indy. The three men had already purchased homes and were in the process of moving their families here when they learned what had happened, Daniels was staying with the Patriots.
Talk about being left holding the bag. The Colts were under no obligation to keep these coaches. They would owe it to a new head coach the freedom to hire who he wanted. What would these three coaches do now? Fortunately for them, they didn’t have to make a decision. The Colts said, “Don’t worry. We will honor our contract. You have a job with the Colts.”
This was observed to be highly unusual by the sports world. The Colts could have easily gotten out of any obligatory commitment to the three coaches, but they stuck to their word. Why? Because as the Colts’ front office said, it was the right thing to do. In a time when breaking contracts and going back on your word are understood as just the business is done today, staying true to your intentions, being dependable, following through, stand out as exceptional.
Perhaps this is why Paul included faithfulness among the fruit of the Spirit. Loyalty and trustworthiness must have been as needed then as now. Jesus once said, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no,” probably because people didn’t always keep their word. So Paul wrote words that might have been as exceptional for his time as much as ours, “The fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness.”
But there is another side to this matter of faithfulness, only it is not a lack of dependability but an over emphasis of it. Think here of the spiritual guru, Jerry McGuire. If you remember the movie starring Tom Cruise, there is a scene where his love interest, Dorothy played by Rene Zellweger, asks him to go outside one evening for a heart to heart. They married quickly after Jerry lost his job and his girlfriend, and now Dorothy wonders if he needs to be free. Jerry says to her, “I don’t quit. I am a guy who sticks.” She says to him, “I need more than just somebody who sticks.”
Faithfulness on this side looks like someone who sticks. Follow through isn’t their problem. They will show up. They will do what they say, but there’s no heart in it. What 2
gets diminished is relationship. Relationship always takes a back seat to responsibility. It’s just about getting the job done. Think here of Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.” (Matthew 23:23) They took people out of the equation.
So you have these two extremes, unreliability on one hand and rigidity on the other. How is faithfulness a response to both?
Well, let’s think about what faithfulness is. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word AMN comes from the word for faith. We probably recognize that, it’s our word Amen. Amn means true, firm, stable. When we say Amen to something, we’re saying, “that is solid, reliable truth.” Faith in this regard is what describes God. God is a source of firm, reliable truth.
Now in the New Testament the word for faith is pistis. It means belief, but believing in a way that means to be our trust in that belief. The best definition of faith comes from Hebrews 11:1 “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Assurance, conviction. They sound a lot like firm, stable. So faith is our reliance on the reliability of God.
In the 1850’s a Frenchman man named Charles Blondin was known as the greatest tightrope walker in the world. He was the first to cross Niagara Falls without any kind of net or safety harness. But each day he had to keep coming up with a more novel feat to keep drawing a crowd. So he would go out and do headstands on the rope. Another day he did somersaults. One day he carried a chair and a little stove. At the midway point he stopped, balanced the chair on the rope, sat down and cooked an omelet. The crowds went wild with each event. Finally he asked them, “Do you think I could carry a man across?” People cheered, “Yes, yes.” So he said, “Who will be first?” No one responded. Finally, his manager accepted. He climbed on Blondin’s back and Blondin said, “Whatever you do just hold on tight.” That had to be the most unnecessary instructions ever given to a person.
They crept out slowly and moved over the falls, but about the midway point Blondin started sweating and struggling. He had never done this. He didn’t realize how tiring it would be to carry someone. Plus, the rope is not a straight line. It dips significantly meaning the second half is all an upward climb. At one point he stopped and told his manager, you need to climbs down. Don’t you know the manager was thinking, “You didn’t say this is how it would work.” But he got down and held onto to the back of Blondin while he rested, then back up and they kept going eventually crossing safely.
Ever since that event happened in 1859, preachers have used that story as an illustration of faith, and that’s appropriate, but think carefully about what faith means here. It’s not our job to get to the other side. It’s not our job to bridge the divides and make everything all the separations of our world work out okay. Our job is not to save the world. Our job is not to change other people. Our job is to cling to the one who can. And clinging to God 3
will always involve holding onto people. Because if you allow God to lead you, then God will sometimes take you to people you are at odds with, and help you have an honest conversation with respect and compassion. God will take you to someone who thinks very differently from you, and maybe use that courage to be an influence that changes the way that person thinks.
What will change someone is not our telling them they are wrong. What will change them is our willingness to listen to what they think. In almost all of the situations where I came to think differently about an important issue there was a relationship involved somewhere. Somebody or several people were influential in my changing my mind. And just the opposite, I have stubbornly held onto ideas that were probably wrong simply because other people made me feel stupid or uninformed to think the way I do.
But when we cling to God, we allow ourselves to be carried in the right direction while not letting go of people in the process.
This idea of holding onto a firm resolve and the ability to love was captured well in a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart.” Addressing the cause of changing unjust racial laws he said, “We shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as citizens, but may it never be said, my friends, that to gain it we used the inferior methods of falsehood, malice, hate, and violence.”
If we are to face the anxiety and uncertainty of these times then we must depend on the Holy Spirit to produce in our lives a faithfulness that clings to God.
But this is just half the truth of faithfulness, for faithfulness is more than mere trust. It must be. For at some point a deep trust in God must be expressed. Faith is not just something we have, we must live out the faith we have.
In the 25th chapter of Matthew Jesus gives his last collection of teachings before the events of his arrest, trial and crucifixion. The teachings all have a futuristic setting when the faithful of God stand judgment. The last teaching calls the ones who pass this judgment “the righteous.” Jesus commends them for feeding him when hungry, giving him something to drink when thirsty, clothing him when he was without, giving him shelter when homeless, caring for him when sick, visiting him when in prison. And they are honestly shocked because they can’t remember a time when they ever encountered Jesus in such a way, and Jesus said, ‘Because you did it to the least of these, you did it unto me.”
What Jesus commends them for is showing compassion for the vulnerable as an expression of their faith. In fact, Jesus goes further than this. He doesn’t say this is good for extra-credit. He says when we treat the vulnerable this way, it’s the same as treating Jesus this way. Jesus grounds faith in the way we treat the vulnerable. 4
And this is where the Gospel gets uncomfortable, because some people say it brings politics into the church. To express concern for he way immigrants are treated, or for the way budget cuts and executive orders have an unfair impact on marginalized people, gets political and the church is no place for politics. And this is where we have a problem, and the problem is with this book right here, the Holy Bible. Either we take it all seriously or we throw it away. But we are not given the option to pick and choose. And throughout the whole of the Bible, the most common rebuke of God against religious people is when they compartmentalize their faith. They talk about clinging to God and wanting God’s favor when it’s in their interest, but not when it comes to defending the defenseless and calling out injustices. So God says things like this from the holiness code in Leviticus:
“‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:33-34 (NIV)
The prophet Amos was brutal in talking about the way the people could divorce their faith from their responsibility to care for the poor and the foreigner. The prophet said, “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.” (5:21-22)
And one of the clearest passages in this regard in the Bible comes from Isaiah 58:
“…day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God…
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. (Isaiah 58:1-8)
Let’s do this. Let’s replace the word politics for people. Let’s not talk about politics in church. Let’s just talk about people, people God calls us to love and support. People who aren’t criminals, who aren’t harming others. Just people needing support. People this book calls us to care about. Because if we aren’t comfortable with that, then we really don’t want to read this book. 5
But we don’t have that option. We depend on this book to know what it means to be faithful. And that is what God wants to produce in our lives.
This was what God did in the life of Oscar Romero. He was born in El Savador and became a priest. Eventually he was made an Auxullary Bishop in San Salvador, something many priests did not support. You see Romero felt too much attention had been placed on social justice in the church, and he was critical of priests who worked alongside the poor and supported social organizations and land reform.
Then, he was appointed archbishop which was supported by the corrupt government and the wealthy elite. They felt Romero was someone who would not challenge them. Then Romero’s friend, a priest, was assassinated because of his work organizing the poor. This, along with Romero getting to know the poor himself, changed him. He realized that his faith must take a stand. He began speaking out and challenging the policies that disadvantaged the poor.
He preached, “By what right have we catalogued persons as first-class persons or second-class persons? In the theology of human nature there is only one class-children of God!” He also denounced those who claimed to be Christian but prioritized their own wealth above all else, “how many there are that would do better not to call themselves Christians, because they have no faith. They have more faith in their money and possessions than in the God who fashioned their possessions and their money.”
That is someone who obviously changed positions wouldn’t you say. And it cost him. Romero was eventually assassinated while conducting mass. But his death was a turning point. It launched a revolution that overcame the injustice of San Salvador.
What happened to Romero? He realized that belief in God was not enough. He must live the way of God. He chose to put his faith into action. That’s what faith means. It is always risky to live by faith.
I have heard people sometimes scorn persons of faith. They say faith is a cop out. Faith is just an excuse people use not to do hard things. What I have learned is that people who say things like this have no understanding of faith whatsoever. There is nothing harder than living by faith. It is as hard as getting on someone’s back as they walk across a rope hundreds of feet above a violent waterfall, feeling the wind nearly blow you over and listening to the person say, “Whatever you do, don’t let go.”
Amen.