Have you ever gone fruit picking? In just a couple of weeks you should be able to go pick apples in Oak Glen if you wanted to. I don’t know of any orange orchards that do “u-pick”. But the point of the matter is that you wouldn’t go to an orange tree to find apples, nor an apple tree for an orange. And you certainly wouldn’t expect to find apples growing from a palm tree. Pretty elementary. Even most people who might not know anything about trees, bushes, plants, or what it takes to grow them, if they knew what an apple was and they saw an apple growing on a tree, they wouldn’t have to know how to recognize the apple tree leaf or its particular bark. They would recognize the tree by its…fruit! Right? The whole energy of a fruiting tree, or plant, if it is working right, is not in growing more leaves, but it funnels its efforts toward producing fruit: good fruit. Fruit which is used ultimately to plant more of the same kind. Think of apple seeds, orange seeds, avocados, etc. It is in some ways a very selfless enterprise.

Likewise, you can tell if a tree is healthy or diseased by the quality or lack of its fruit produced. As Jesus said in today’s Gospel lesson: “every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.” That also makes sense. Healthy tree = healthy fruit. Diseased tree = sickly or diseased fruit. In an orchard or a garden if something that has been planted gets diseased or ceases to bear fruit or be productive, the owner will often cut it down or prune it sharply. The tree has failed in being what it was supposed to be. The diseased tree or its parts would also be removed and burned so that whatever is wrong with the plant does not infect and infest the others.

What was Jesus talking about in this Gospel lesson and why? He was not so much concerned with how orchards work, but rather speaking about spiritual realities within this world. The orchard and vineyard of the Church is under constant threat of attack from outside spiritual forces using the disease of false teaching by those who pretend to be orchard keepers, by the environment of the world, and from within. It actually is pretty easy to detect the effect and influence of these attacks. It may seem difficult at first but eventually it should be pretty elementary to identify a false teacher and prophet. The standard for identification is as simple as this: faithful fruit is identified as preaching, teaching, and administrating the Divine Service in agreement with the wisdom of Holy Scripture. Lay people who are Christians can be identified by the fruit of their faith as well. That fruit involves being kind, doing things that are good, tithing, caring for each other, receiving regularly the nutrients offered in Word and sacrament, but what is the true and chief fruit of faithfulness? Repentance, humility, and joy in the hope and promise offered in Jesus Christ.

If people or pastors are unfaithful and: you can identify them by their fruit. Their fruit is lawlessness: that is that which does not abide by the Law and counsel of God in Scripture. In today’s society the spirit is most identified by permissiveness, the fact that these false ones do not preach against sin or warn against temptation, but rather they preach a doctrine which rots, a doctrine which promotes worshipping self, feeling good, justifying oneself, nursing one’s own desires. Perhaps they will occasionally preach the performing of good deeds but not for the sake of mercy, but so that people can pat themselves on the back in pride. As the true fruit of faithfulness is repentance and joy at the Gospel, so the fruit of diseased trees and their rotten fruit is this: pride, a refusal to repent, to humble oneself and it recognized by its lawlessness. Lawlessness meaning lack of discipline and respect for what God has established as good and right by His Word.

So look at yourselves, look at how you have been living, and interacting with the world or your fellow trees in the orchard or vines in the vineyard? What has been your chief goal in life? What kind of fruit are you bringing forth and forming?

The problem is that you and I by nature would rather not produce good fruit. Good fruit on the part of the tree means sacrificing, being pruned, being trained. We would rather be wild and grow according to our fleshly nature, we like how the disease of false teaching first makes us feel as it does not prune away pride and arrogance, but lets it grow wild and lawlessly. Lawlessness makes us feel like we are gods. It makes us feel like we can make personal laws for ourselves and alter them as we see fit. We don’t have to follow God’s Word exactly, we can go and grow along any lines we would like, even if it does not produce healthy fruit. That is why so many people in today’s modern churches, if they go to church at all, go to feel good churches that cater to their likes, their whims, and does not teach repentance and the cross, but turns God into a god who promises earthly prosperity and comfort in one’s own definition of truth. We, according to our flesh, would prefer to rebel against the pruning of God’s true Law which identifies our sin and would cleanse the diseased sores which we have allowed to invade and fester within us. If there is no repentance, then the Gospel which gives life is wasted. Like water off a duck’s back, the work of the Holy Spirit is rejected. The work of Jesus means nothing for those who feel they have no need for salvation.

Like it or not, offended or not, when “Christians” regularly skip church for things like sports, housework, chores, or just to sleep in. That is what they are saying. “I have no need of you, God. Me first. Maybe I will return some day.” This behavior and attitude are showing the fruit within the heart. These actions and thoughts reveal the work of the disease of sin and pride which causes faith to shrivel and the fruit that should be good and should be nurtured and fed by God’s Word is sickly, stifled, and may never mature.

In the day of death, the day of Christ’s mighty return, the spiritual trees of this earthly orchard shall be judged by their fruit or their lack of fruit because it is and was the evidence of the faith inside it. Then it will be too late to alter course. And then as Jesus said: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Dear friends, we must all beware of our own pride, our own security in our sin, we should look to our fruit and take care. We should also take care not to attend false churches or watch or listen to preachers or read books by those who by God’s Word we can recognize as not being faithful.

Now let us, pastor and laity, bear the fruit of repentance to God, let us admit our need for Him to prune us of our pride and sin, and receive it as we confess that sin.

Then as hungry and thirsty trees planted in the good soil of God’s Word’s let us absorb and take to heart the truth that we need to hear. The truth from God which is a pesticide of the best kind against the idolatry of self and the world, a weapon to kill wolves and mute false teachers: The Word of life in Law and Gospel. You already heard the Law and its threat today and I have spoken about the Gospel, but now hear that Good News: God does love you. God has planted you into His orchard by His word and through Holy Baptism. You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” Christ Jesus came to face the devil, the false teachers, the world, the temptations of the flesh, and in His life and then in His crucifixion and death, He defeated them. He defeated them for you. He died so that the fruit of His righteous sacrifice would give birth to life, faith, and righteousness in you and all believers in Him. You have been redeemed with the redemption that you and I could not accomplish in the blood Jesus Christ. We are freed from our sin once more. AS St. Paul said, “brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”

So you are children of God. Live in Him. Rejoice in Him, receive from His hand here in the Sacrament of the Altar His forgiveness, love, life, and mercy. Be renewed in your heart and mind by the Holy Spirit in the strength of true teaching and practice as members of the Church. Be made strong in Jesus Christ crucified and raised for you; strong to bear the fruit that He has created you for: faith, repentance, joy, life now, and eternal life forever in Him, for Jesus Christ’s sake, Amen.

Pr. Aaron Kangas