2023-04-01 A Meditation on Being Known By Our Fruits

“A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” (Mt 7:18–20 ESV)

“They will know us by our fruits” is a reminder for the soldier beleaguered at day’s end, not sure if they quite can call themselves “Righteous” by God’s blood, experiencing murky situations and ambiguous haste, times when we scarcely can remain on a self-righteous perch much longer, and are thrown into the melee. We are thrown in and emerge laboring and completed in tangible, gifted ways: we then have to re-learn the Gospel mandate, that Yes we are clear of the danger, Yes we are no longer bound by sin, Yes we have received from the Lord’s hand double for our sins (Is 40:2), but unparalleled grace as well.

That is, God builds us up with concrete experiences, ones that take us from our planned and self-righteous perch, and ask us to let go and let God. We are asked to accept in the final issue, it will not be our sanctimonious preaching or our holy fasts and disciplines, but rather that we will be milked and mined for a little grace shown to our peer, who “knows us by our fruits”. We will just happen to be “honest” under pressure to lie, “principled” even though time and circumstance are laboring to undo what goodness was first implanted in our hearts. All this and we discover a fresher new way of being, laboring yes, but doing so with full expectation that our labors reveal our sinful estate even more than our solitary times of prayer do (or perhaps we realize the opposite!). We need forgiveness. We need to have a theological or philosophical outlook couched in intriguing day’s output, day’s work. We need to go gentle on ourselves upon finding a safe perch, for no perch is safe but challenges us to be pastor to a few and servant to all.