The Fruit of the Spirit
1992 (Year C) 2 August / Pentecost 8
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
Have you ever played the game with children where you ask them what they want to be when they grow up? One says they want to be a firefighter, another maybe a teacher or a nurse, drive a lorry or a speed-boat. They are amazing, because the jobs they imagine themselves doing have little bearing on the gifts and talents they actually possess. So one who shows a talent for design will say they want to be a policewoman, and one who is hopeless at maths will say they want to be an accountant. What’s worrying is that this is what they actually might become.
Everyone of us is very bad at assessing our own gifts and talents. We’re brought up in a society which feels that if we say we’re good at something then we’re just blowing our own trumpet and being big-headed. A person like that is to be avoided at all costs.
Yet God has given each one of us very special gifts and it is a sin not to use them. To deny their existence or not to develop them is an offence against Gods creation. Some of course have been told for so long that they’re worthless that they really believe it, and for them it’s a long slow process which allows these gifts to come to fruition. The stories of those who have been on the Bishop of Stepney’s Lay Training Course are marvellous examples of people who perhaps had no idea as to some of the things they could really do. On that course those who have had very little expectations made of them suddenly find that their lives transformed as they discover gifts they never knew they had.
All of us have gifts and talents, given us by God, which lie hidden just wailing to be given permission to grow. Often it Lakes other people to identify the gifts we’ve never seen and never imagined. It takes their encouragement to make them blossom. And when it happens we feel marvellous, almost as if we’ve been given a new life. And that’s hardly surprising because it is the Holy Spirit which is working in us, enabling us to become just a little more of what God would have us be.
This blessing of discovery and growth, in relation to our gifts is not the only part the Spirit plays in our lives. God gives to each one of us, through the Spirit, grace to discern how He would ha e us live our lives. He would have us live in, ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control’. All these qualities, says Paul, are themselves gifts of the Spirit. We have all been given the ability to reflect on our experiences and our relationships and to choose them rather than others.
The Spirit is our guide in all this, for not only does the Spirit encourage us on our way; the Spirit enlightens us as to what Gods will for us might be. We’ve all got an ability to keep God before us, to allow him into our lives. The Old Testament reading this morning says that it is actually the Spirit of God within us. It allows us to begin to work out what God might want from this relationship, from that encounter, or from whatever we are presently involved in. The Spirit of God doesn’t want us to live in a constant state of anger, tiredness, frustration and anxiety. God does not want us to use this person or to be abused by that one. God wants us to live in love, joy, peace, all gifts of the Spirit.
The ability to work out how we can bring love to a situation where there is no love. Or how we might be gentle with ourselves and those around us when all seems to be anger and frustration. This too is gift of the Spirit.
To receive this gift we have to give ourselves space and time. Not being constantly busy. Then all we need to do, according to one writer, is to have an expectant faith. In order to receive the gifts of God, we must expect them, be open to them.’ And as we are expectantly ‘open to him, the Holy Spirit can accomplish all those wonders that we read about at the beginning of the church. Each of us needs that expectant faith. Come Holy Spirit! I do not ask of you any special gift but neither do I refuse any gift either, because we receive these gifts not for ourselves but for the building up of the kingdom.’ AMEN