Produce Shopping

Gospel: Matthew 7: 15-20

Shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables is a skill that takes years of practice in discerning what pieces are good for cooking and eating, and which ones are not.  Qualities such as texture, color, firmness, and size are all factors.  The piece of fruit or vegetable itself will tell us whether it is good or not.  No other considerations are of any other relevance.

The same is true in our moral and spiritual lives.  It is the virtues and the Beatitudes - whether we possess and live them - that determine whether we are fruitful or not in matters ethical and spiritual.  Have we been like the tiny mustard seed that has grown to a large tree open to welcoming and sheltering all?  Or are we the man who took his talent and buried it in the ground, not sharing or taking risks to care for others?

We have come to see "fruit" merely in terms of attendance numbers and fundraising goals.  Such things are the essence of the ironical annual "spirituality reports" of churches.  But Jesus never speaks of these things; they are never the criteria he uses in talking about fruit.  For Jesus, fruit is always about the virtues and Beatitudes that should govern us, the produce we should be shopping for in our lives.