Sunday, April 27, 2025, Second Sunday of Easter

Psalm 1; Acts 5:12-20; Revelation 1:9-18; John 20:19-31

Service of Prayer and Preaching

Hymns: #470 “O Sons and Daughters of the King”; #654 “Your Kingdom, O God, Is My Glorious Treasure”; #474 “Alleluia! Jesus Is Risen”; #894 “For the Fruits of His Creation”; #488 “He Is Arisen! Glorious Word”; #477 “Alleluia, Alleluia! Heart to Heaven”

It’s All About the Fruit, Part I: “Sent Into the World to Bear Fruit”

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” (John 15:8)

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

     A piece of fruit is a wonderful thing; an apple, an orange, a peach, a mango... Fruit, of course, is meant to be eaten, a gift from God for our nourishment and for our enjoyment. But providing food is only the secondary purpose of piece of fruit. Take an apple, for example. Within every apple, there are seeds. The seeds are the true life-purpose of the apple, not the tasty flesh. An apple tree grows from a seed. The tree produces apples, the new apples have seeds inside them, and from those seeds come more apple trees. Which came first, the apple or the seed? We’ll have to leave that one up to God.

     God’s Word has much to say about fruit. Fruit is often used as a Scriptural metaphor. Many of Jesus’ parables are about seeds and fruit and growing things. God’s kingdom is said to be a vineyard. God’s Church is called a fruit tree. God’s people are called upon to be fruitful trees, and to bear good fruit for God. Over the next six Sundays, the “Sundays of Easter” on the Church calendar, we’ll be looking at the remarkable story of the first disciples, and of the early Christian Church and how it grew. Beginning with the story of Doubting Thomas in today’s Gospel, we’ll see that for them – as it still is for us – it’s all about the fruit. What is the “fruit of the Spirit” God is looking for from His Church? And how can we be more fruitful?

     Jesus says to His disciples in John 15: “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” It’s by the fruit we bear that we glorify God. It’s by our fruit that the world will recognize us, Jesus says. And on the negative side of the picture, “every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Good fruit is what God is looking for from us. In fact, He demands it; He has a right expect it from us. And in the end, as a Church and as individual Christians, we’ll be measured by the fruit that we bear in our lives.

     Jesus, in His death and Resurrection, planted the precious seed. He said, “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed; but if it dies, it produces many seeds.” And then He did die on a cross for us and was buried in the ground; and then He was raised up from the grave as “the firstfruits of God’s Kingdom”. And you and I who believe in Him are blessed to be the “nextfruits.” We were sprung up from the ground by the grace of God, because of what Jesus did for us.

     And now, it’s not that we’ll have to die like Jesus did, or that God expects us to sacrifice ourselves. (It might come down to that, the way things are going in this world, but probably not). But we do have to be willing to give of ourselves - to give of our hearts and our talents and our treasure, and of our precious time, to plant the seeds of faith in this world. Bearing fruit for God isn’t an option for God’s people, and it never has been. It’s who we are, and who we’re called to be.

     So what exactly is this fruit God is looking for? It’s nothing that should be hard to understand. Scripture is clear about what the “fruits of the Spirit” are: “Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control,” as St. Paul says, just to name a few. And the blessed Easter Gospel itself is all about the fruit. Jesus, the holy and blessed seed, had been crucified and buried in the ground, and raised up again on the third day as the firstfruits of God’s merciful grace. And now, says our Gospel in John 20, on the evening of the first day of the week - the evening of His resurrection day - He came again to His disciples to plant the seed of faith in them that would grow into the holy Christian Church.

     The disciples were afraid for theirs lives, hiding behind locked doors, afraid the ones who’d crucified Jesus were coming to crucify them, too. They had the proof before them that Jesus was alive – the rolled away stone, the empty tomb, the discarded linens, the word of the angels - but the doubts and fears that were in them were hard things to overcome. But seeing is believing, right?

     Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Peace is one of those fruits of the Spirit, is it not? And then He showed them His hands and His side; they even got to touch the places where the nails and the spear had been. That was all the proof their poor hearts needed, and then “they were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.” And isn’t joy another one of those fruits of the Spirit? Do you see what’s going on here? Do you see what God is up to?

     Once again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, now I am sending you.” That’s the blessed moment when the Christian Church began, the beginning of God’s whole program of planting a seed, and growing that seed into a tree - a tree that grows to produce more fruit, and more seed, and even more fruit; a Church that multiplies itself, “thirty and sixty and a hundred times more than what was sown.”

     Jesus sent those disciples of His out into the world – to do what? To bear fruit! To be fruitful and multiply! To take that blessed peace and impossible joy that Jesus had given to them and share it with the world. Jesus, says our Gospel, “breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” That’s the blessed Holy Spirit, the Spirit that distributes all those gifts of God’s grace, the Spirit that enabled them, and now enables us, to bear fruit for God in this world; the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, the same Spirit that once breathed life into Adam, and is now breathing life into us all. The same Spirit that now blesses us with courage to speak, and faithfulness to bear witness, and the patience to do it all with gentleness, kindness, and love.

     “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven,” Jesus tells them, “but if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." Forgiveness is also a fruit of God’s grace – maybe the best one. Where would we be if our sins weren’t forgiven? This passage is sometimes called “The Office of the Keys,” where the Church on earth is given the power either to forgive sins or retain them. But what Jesus is really saying is that if we, who have been forgiven, refuse to forgive others, then who else will?

     Now it’s true that we can’t just announce blanket forgiveness for everyone. Forgiveness for sin is conditional on repentance, everywhere you find it in God’s Word. If there’s no repentance, no being sorry for a sin, no willingness to change, then being forgiven is impossible. But we’ve been given the power to forgive, and we should make full use of it, wherever and whenever God gives us the opportunity. That’s the gift of “forbearance” in that list of the fruits of the Spirit. Jesus forgives us, and we bear fruit for Him by forgiving one another. Then others by our example learn to forgive others, and that helps to grow God’s kingdom and makes a better world. It’s all about the fruit!

     “Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.” Thomas is all of us. We weren’t there 2000 years ago, at the cross or at the tomb or in the upper room. We weren’t blessed to be the first to hear the Good News and have the seed of faith planted in us. Seeds die, and spring up, and multiply themselves; and then they die, and spring up again, as had been happening in this Church for all these many years. Fruit produces fruit produces fruit. Someone told us the good news, thanks be to God, and now we get to tell others, who’ll tell the Good News to someone else after we’re gone. Satan and all his minions have been trying to put a stop to it for all these years; but still the Word is whispered and spoken, from my heart to my mouth to your ear to your heart, and from your heart to your mouth to someone else’s ear. It’s a wonderful system our Lord has set up!

     The other disciples told poor Thomas, “We have seen the Lord!” – the best good news in the history of the world! But he, grief-stricken and heart-broken as he was, and being a doubter by nature, refused to believe: "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." The world is still full of Thomases – but oh, the fruit that we can bear with patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. The other disciples evidently didn’t lose patience with Thomas or throw him out. A week later, he was still with them, no doubt grumbling and doubting and being a killjoy in an otherwise happy room. But still the fruits of the Spirit went out to a doubting friend!

     Thomas, doubter though he was, received the proof he was asking for - because Jesus Himself is loving and patient and kind. “A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then He said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Stop doubting and believe." And Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" That’s “the fruit of lips that confess His name!” That’s the holy moment! What joy there must have been in that room, when the other disciples heard their friend Thomas make that good confession. That holy moment is what we live for as a Church. That’s our life and our purpose and our greatest joy, to hear some doubting sinner make the good confession and come home to God. It really is all about the fruit!

     Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Blessed are we, then! Blessed are we who believe! We weren’t there when they crucified our Lord, or when they raised Him from the tomb. But the Word of God, the testimony of His faithful witnesses, has been planted in us, by hearing His Word and by His blessed Sacraments. We’re the carriers of the Gospel light in our own day, the tellers of the truth that saves people. We’re a Johnny Appleseed of a Church, planting those seeds of faith wherever we go in the world, and praying in faith to God that the seeds we plant will grow and bear fruit.

     And I just love John’s closing words here, his coda at the end of his Gospel, his final word to everyone who will read his testimony and follow after him: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” The fruit God is looking for is faith in Jesus Christ; and not just faith, but faith multiplied. Not just personal faith, good and necessary as that is, but shared faith, faith that expresses itself in works of love. 

     May fruitful trees be what we are, and may God make a blessed and fruitful tree of the Church of His, for years and years to come. “This is to My Father’s glory,” says Jesus, “that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.” Father in Heaven, help us to bear good fruit for You, as we tell the world all around us who You are. In Jesus’ name; Amen.