Fruits of the Spirit: Gentleness

Today, we come to the eighth fruit of the Spirit listed by St. Paul in Galatians chapter 5 verses 22-23, gentleness.

I don’t know what you think when you hear the word gentleness, but I tend to think of someone who is kind, mild-mannered and tender.  I conjure up images of doves and little lambs.  I decided to do an image search on Google about gentleness, and you see pictures of babies hands being held by adults; puppies, kittens, feathers, and adults holding little babies.  You see things that make you go, “Aw! How cute!  How precious!”

And so one might think, “Ah, this is how we are supposed to be as Christians.  We are supposed to be gentle.  We are supposed to be like doves; like lambs–cute, cuddly, and basically harmless.  But as I have found so often during this sermon series on the fruits of the Spirit, what I first thought was not necessarily the case.

Prautas, the Greek word for gentleness, can be translated gentle strength.  There is no hint of weakness in this word.  Rather, it is a term that is used for someone who indeed is strong; someone who has power; yet, does not use that power abusively. Instead, he or she uses it in a very restrained manner.

I can remember when Kevin, Jr. was born.  Of course, Kiera, being three years old at the time, wanted to hold her baby brother.  She was much bigger and much stronger than he was, and so when we laid him on her lap, we told her over and over again, “Be gentle.”  She could have easily used her superior strength to hurt her baby brother, but instead, we had to teach her to restrain her strength and hold her brother in a way that wouldn’t hurt him.  This is the kind of gentleness that Paul lists here as a fruit of the Spirit.  It recognizes that we have power.  It recognizes that we have strength.  And it calls upon us to restrain that strength for the sake of others.

Now, what does that mean?  We get a good grasp of this from our Gospel lesson from the 11th Chapter of the book of Matthew.  Jesus has been teaching a crowd of people, and he has just finished railing against a couple of cities that he has been in.  He performed many deeds of power and might, but they did not believe in Him.  He told the crowd that it would not turn out well for these cities in the long run.

Turning his focus from these cities, Jesus then thanks God for doing something quite unexpected.  Instead of “opening the eyes of the wise” which one would expect God to do, God chose to open the eyes of “infants”.  This is a not so subtle slam against those who claimed to know who God was and how God acted in Jesus’ day.  These are the folks who rejected Jesus as Messiah and Lord. They couldn’t see God at work through Him because Jesus didn’t meet their expectations.  And so it was those who had been cast off by the religious elite who could see Jesus as the Messiah.  It was those who were cast off by other rabbis because they were considered unworthy to continue their religious education who came to believe in Him.  Jesus rejoices in this.

And then, Jesus utters these words which, if you have been raised in the church, are very familiar, “28 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Now, there were two types of yokes used in Jesus’ day. The first was a yoke used to harness two animals together so that they could plow, pull a cart or what have you.  But there was also a yoke that human beings would use.  This was placed on the shoulders to help carry or pull a load.  I’m a hunter, and generally, every time I go into Academy or some other similar store, I walk through the hunting section.  On several occasions, I have noticed shoulder harnesses that can be worn in the event that you shoot something and have to drag it quite a distance.  This is a modern day yoke.

The question is: what kind of burden needs to be borne?  What needs to be carried that would require a yoke?  Quite simply put, it is obedience to God. It is discerning and following God’s will.  It is making sure that I do what God tells me to do.  Now, there are some folks these days who would say that they don’t have to worry about that yoke because they don’t believe in God.  To them, I reply, like I did last week, it just depends upon what you mean when you say God.

Remember, last week, I set forth Luther’s definition of a god that he set forth in the Large Catechism.  A god is anything that we look to that we believe will provide safety, security, and to which we give our whole heart to.  I took a bit of time to show that you can basically make anything into a god.  If you think government will solve every problem, your god is government.  If you believe having money will solve all your problems, your god is money.  And so on and so forth.  What Jesus would say to this is that whenever you put your ultimate trust in something–you take on its yoke.  You take on its demands.  You become obedient to your god, and your god has power over you.  Your god makes demands of you.  You must bow to these demands or face the consequences.  And, eventually, you will see that any false god will destroy and humiliate you.

What do I mean by that?  A newspaper reporter who interviewed an old rancher asked him what attributed to his success.  With a twinkle in his eye, the man replied, “It’s been about 50 percent weather, 50 percent good luck, and the rest is brains!”  At that moment, a young, cocky cowboy rode by and saw the old rancher sitting on his mule.  Deciding to have a little fun, the young cowboy drew his six shooter and told the rancher to get down off his mule.  Then he asked him if he had ever danced.  The cowboy laughed as he emptied his revolver at the man’s feet!  Obviously unamused, the old man slowly turned back to his mule and pulled out a shotgun from his pack.  He aimed it at the bulletless young cowboy and said, “Did you ever kiss a mule?”  The young cowboy said with a trembling voice, “No, but I’ve always wanted to.”

You could argue that the young cowboy in that story was worshiping humor.  He tried to satisfy his god at the expense of an old rancher, but his obedience wasn’t good enough.  His tactics did not result in conversion.  Instead, they resulted in the tables being turned.  Now, the question is: what will that god of humor demand of that young cowboy?  What will that god of humor tell him?  It would tell him this, “Well, you messed up royally this time.  So, next time, you’d better try harder.  You’d better take a different approach.  If you want to serve me and laugh and have fun with life, you’d better be more careful and do things right!”

And things might go okay for a time, but there will be another time when someone else doesn’t find things funny. There will be another time when someone else takes offense.  There will be another time when the tables will get turned, and the same spiral will occur with more and more demands being made.  Now, I know I stretched things just a little bit with this example, but hopefully you can see how false gods operate.  They are very demanding with those whom they put in their yokes.

Jesus says, however, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  Here is that word: gentle.  What is Jesus saying here?  He is saying that when it comes to the demands of satisfying the true God, the only way you will find peace is through Him.  The only way you will find that you can satisfy the demands of God is through Jesus Christ.  The only way you can have obedience to God is through Jesus Christ.  The only way your soul can rest in knowing that you have met God’s demands is through Jesus Christ.

And it’s not because Jesus is a weakling.  Remember, oftentimes we think of gentleness in this fashion.  No.  You don’t calm a storm if you are a weakling.  You don’t cast out demons if you are a weakling.  You don’t bring dead people back to life if you are a weakling.  Jesus embodies the power of God.  Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth.  But the question is: how does He use it?  How does He put it into practice?  Does He bring condemnation and damnation?

No.  He brings quite the opposite.  He brings love and reconciliation.  Knowing that we could never satisfy His demands; knowing that we fall far short of the glory of God, Jesus saved us by grace as a gift by redeeming us as He gave Himself as a sacrifice of atonement effective through our trust in Him.  That’s a short paraphrase of Romans chapter 3, by the way.  In other words, when we could not be obedient to Jesus; when we failed to follow His commands and were deserving of His wrath. When Jesus had every right to unleash the same power He used to calm the storms on the sea upon us for failing Him, instead, He held us as children in the palm of His hand.  Instead of punishing us and making us pay for our failure; He paid that price for us and gave Himself up for us.  And then, He clothed us with His righteousness.  He clothed us with Himself.  He reached into the depths of our hearts to change us from within.

And because He did this, our hearts respond with gratitude.  Because He did this, our hearts leap with joy.  Because He did this, we know that nothing can ever separate us from our God.  We know His tremendous love for us, and so we strive for His will.  We long to please Him.  We long to fulfill His commands, not because we have Jesus looming over us filling us with fear lest we fail, but because He was gentle with us.  He could have used His overwhelming power to condemn, but instead, He used it to save.

And when our hearts are grasped by this, we do likewise.  This is St. Paul’s point in Galatians chapter 6.  You see, too often, we Christians are like the lion who one day decided to walk through the jungle.  He was taking a poll to find out which animal was the greatest of them all.  When he saw the hippopotamus, he asked, “Who is the king of the jungle?”  “You are,” said the hippo.  Next, he met a giraffe.  “Who is king of the jungle?” he asked.  “You are,” said the giraffe.  Then he met a tiger and said, “Who is the king of the jungle?” “Oh, you are,” said the tiger.

Finally, he met an elephant.  The lion gave him a good rap on the knee and said, “And who is the king of the jungle?”  Immediately, the elephant picked him up in his trunk and flung him against a large tree.  As the lion bounced off the tree and hit the ground, he got up, dusted himself off, and said, “You don’t have to get so mad just because you don’t know the right answer!”

I think we’ve all heard the stories about Christians who walk around thinking they are morally superior to everyone else.  We’ve all heard stories of Christians who walk around wearing their salvation on their sleeves and looking down their noses at anyone who doesn’t believe as they do or who they see as immoral.  We’ve all heard stories about Christians who think that being saved gives them license to point out everyone else’s flaws and rain down God’s condemnation upon others.  Somehow, it is thought that this is effective evangelism.  But it only serves to infuriate others.  It only serves to make them angry at us and turn them away from God.  Paul’s response in Galatians six: if you see someone who is sinning: be gentle.

This means, we have power.  This means we do have a sort of moral high ground.  We recognize the sin.  We recognize that someone is doing the wrong thing, but instead of using our power to condemn, we become gentle.  We recognize that the person who is sinning or who has sinned must be treated in a manner that will bring them to repentance instead of harden their stance.  We must recognize that our role is to bring them to the foot of the cross where they see the God who died for them so that they are willing to put His yoke upon themselves.  We must hold back our desire to yell out “Thou shalt not or you will face God’s wrath!” and instead lead them in holy conversation to meet their Lord and Savior.  We must confront their sin in a manner that helps them see how they have fallen short, but does not condemn them or make them think we hate them.

Booker T. Washington traveled to a city to make a speech.  As the story goes, his train was late, and he was in a hurry.  So he left the station to take a cab, but the driver yelled out, “I don’t drive blacks.”  Washington said, “All right, I’ll drive you.  You get in the back.”

Do you see the gentleness in that response?  Do you see the ability to show the sin without condemning the sinner?  This is the fruit of the Spirit alive and well.  This is the fruit of the Spirit that we produce when we first experience Jesus’ gentleness toward us.  This is the fruit of the Spirit that issues forth from the church and from us as Christians.  May we produce it in abundance.  Amen.