There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you fire and rain, now

The Reading for today is from John 15: 12-17

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. ¹⁶You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. ¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

The word of the Lord

 

Today’s lesson is about fruits of the spirit. You’ve heard them before: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Lucy only asked me to talk three this afternoon: Patience, Gentleness, and Self control, so this shouldn’t take more than a few hours. Anyways. Patience, gentleness, and self control. As I thought about these words, a story popped into my mind where all three came into play. This is the story of the first and only time that I was ever sent to the principal’s office. It is a story about how Patience, Gentleness, Self control are fruits that will last.

In New Jersey, where I attended middle school, each eighth grade student is required to take a fun filled,  multiple hour exam known as the GEPA test. The Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment. This test had little to no sway in your personal academic career, and unless I had failed it, the results would never have mattered to me. Now, I had never cheated on a test before, and I have never cheated on a test since, so I have absolutely no idea why I chose the GEPA, a test that didn’t even matter, to be the one test that I decided to cheat on. I wish I could say it was a noble intention to boost Thomas Grover Middle School’s rankings in the state, but unfortunately there simply wasn’t much thinking at all going on in my brain. I went back to a different section after the time was up and finished some answers that I had previously left blank. Another student saw me, reported me, and thus, I found myself, Nate Sell, teacher’s pet for the previous nine years, in the principal’s office. The principal explained to me what a grave situation this was, and that he had already called my father at home, and that we would discuss the consequences with my parents later.

When the day was over, I got onto the school bus, pressed my forehead against the cold glass window, closed my eyes, and for the 20 minute ride home I contemplated my certain annihilation by my father. It was a terrible thing to know that I was about to be destroyed.

When I walked into my home, I immediately burst into tears and went to go face my father’s wrath. And there  in our living room, was my dad, in his favorite chair, studying Karl Barth, calm as could be, smoking his pipe, our old golden retriever sleeping at his feet. “This is strange,” I thought to myself. He certainly doesn’t look like he is going to vaporize me.

I started blurting out words about how they thought I cheated on this test, and how they thought I was lying. Dad patiently puffed on his pipe and smiled at me. Then I’ll never forget what he said. He said, “Son, you know I love you. It’s okay. Here’s the deal. You need to tell me what happened, and you need to tell me the truth. I’ll do anything I can for you because I’m your father, and I love you. I’ll go to the mats with you. But you need to tell me what actually happened.”

I was so ashamed, but I admitted I cheated. And then I realized my father still loved me and I would not be destroyed. We talked about how what I did was wrong, but that he still loved me. Then he told me about the time when he was 13 and drove his brother’s car into a neighbor’s yard, got it stuck, and then tried to run away. I found it odd that my Presbyterian minister father had car theft on his resume, but it did make me feel a bit better about what I had done.

The next day we talked to the principal. I changed my test answers back. I haven’t cheated since. In the end, I was more shook up by getting what I did not deserve, more shaken by my father’s love for me, than I could possibly have been if he had given me what I did deserve. I was shocked by grace.

Fruits of the spirit.

 Patience. Gentleness. Self control. My father showed me fruits that lasted, and they have made a lasting impression.

In some ways I think this is exactly what Lent is all about. Assuredly, we all fall short. We all mess up. We realize how pitifully foolish and bad we are.  We deserve nothing less than the fury and punishment that our sins warrant. But then, rather than wrath, we are greeted by Grace, instead. Easter. It can startle us so much that it makes our hearts ache.

 God has already shown us patience, gentleness, and self-control. And in our reading today, Jesus asks us to do the same things. He says, “Bear Fruit that will last…  Love one another.” Who will we be patient with? Who will we be gentle with? When will we control ourselves despite our desire to lash out? Will we love one another?

it evaporated, see?

I slept under   rhododendron   

All night   blossoms fell

Shivering on   a sheet of cardboard   

Feet stuck   in my pack

Hands deep   in my pockets   

Barely   able   to   sleep.

I remembered   when we were in school   

Sleeping together   in a big warm bed

We were   the youngest lovers

When we broke up   we were still nineteen.   

Now our   friends are married   

You teach   school back east   

I dont mind   living this way   

Green hills   the long blue beach   

But sometimes   sleeping in the open

I think back   when I had you.

 

-gary snyder

A man walks into the living room of a friend’s house and sees a large greyhound dog wrestling on the floor with his friend’s children.

His friend had a habit of rescuing the greyhounds from the race tracks because they make great pets.

The dog and children were having a great time rolling around and playing on the floor with each other.

The man looked down at that greyhound dog and said, “Dog, how come you’re not racing anymore?”

And the dog said, “I’m certainly young enough to race.”

The man responded, “So you’re young enough to race. Is it because you weren’t winning anymore?”

The dog said, “Oh no. I was winning every race. I won every race up until the day I stopped racing.”

“Well then why aren’t you racing anymore dog?”

The dog replied, “Because one day I realized, that rabbit I was chasing wasn’t real.”

 

-Story heard from Tony Compolo

“No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath… We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?” Donald Miller

Speak yet again!

Get yourself a hut house not too far from town, live cheap, go ball in the bars once in awhile, write and rumble in the hills and learn how to saw boards and talk to grandmas you damn fool, carry loads of wood for them, clap your hands at shrines, get supernatural favors, take flower-arrangement lessons and grow chrysanthemums by the door, and get married for krissakes, get a friendly smart sensitive human-being gal who don’t give a shit for martinis every night and all that dumb white shit in the kitchen. If you have ice cream I will give you some. If you have no ice cream I will take it away from you. (It is an ice cream kōan [cone].)

 

kerouac

“Hear me out
day follows day
light turns to clay
in my hands…”