There is a story told about Lafayette, the French aristocrat and military officer, who served under George Washington in the Revolutionary War and commanded the Continental troops in the final decisive battle of the war. Following the war, Lafayette returned to France to oversee his family’s many farms and estates. In 1783, due to colder temperatures resulting from the eruption of a volcano in Ireland, the harvest was poor for many of the farmers in France. Lafayette’s farms were unaffected by the problems though. One of his farm workers approached him and gave him what appeared to be good advice. “The bad harvest has raised the price of wheat,” he told him. “This is a good time to sell.” Lafayette considered the worker’s words and responded in a way that surprised the worker. “No,” Lafayette said, “this is the time to give.” What we do with our abundance says a lot about who we are and what we care about.

The problem is that many of us don’t feel like we have an abundance. We feel drained, empty, struggling to tread water in a relentless stream of tasks and activities and commitments. Even the things we enjoy sometimes feel like a burden, just one other thing sucking away our energy and happiness and passion for life. In the gospel of John, Jesus talks about himself as the Good Shepherd and he tells his listeners, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” So, where is our abundance? It seems like if we look around us we see an abundance of anger and hatred and fear. But those are not fruits of the abundant life that Jesus came to bring us.

We see this even within the Church. We see preachers and church leaders and many who boldly proclaim faith in Christ that spend so much time and energy speaking against things that make them mad or that they think make God mad, rather than speaking FOR things like love and peace and justice and hope. And Luke tells us in our passage for this morning, “It is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” If we have anger and hatred and fear in our hearts, then that is what will come out of our mouths. But if we are filled with the good things of the Spirit like love and peace and hope, then those things will flow from our mouths. So, how have we fallen away from living the abundant life that Jesus came to give us? And what do we do about it?

In our passage from Luke, Jesus begins by talking about trees and fruit. He says, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit.” A couple of years ago, as we were weeding our garden in preparation for planting, we noticed along the fence of the garden a couple of plant stems with several green leaves on them. April looked at the leaves and thought they looked like the leaves of a mulberry tree. She took a picture and posted it in a plant identification group on Facebook. A majority of the people there said they thought it was a mulberry tree also. The previous year we had bought a couple of mulberry tree starters that had not survived, so April was excited at the possibility of having wild mulberries. A year went by and the trees grew. They got taller and branched off more, but there was no fruit. I looked at them every time I went out to the garden and worried that maybe we were wrong and these weren’t mulberry trees but some other tree that we don’t want and that I will end up having to cut down and dig up the roots of. But April still thought it was a mulberry tree, so we gave it another year. This past summer, the trees more than doubled in size and leafed out very nicely. And a little over halfway through the summer, we noticed some sort of fruit forming on the tree. As it grew, we began to get a clearer picture of what these trees truly were. As Jesus said, “Each tree is known by its own fruit.

Jesus then uses that analogy to talk about human hearts. He says, “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil.” Now, many people see this as applying the analogy of the trees directly to the human heart. But, if we are not careful, we can easily use that to judge others based upon the actions they take that we believe are sinful. We might say things like, look at the fruit of their lives, they must have evil in their hearts. And that can lead us to see others as bad people. But in the original Greek, you can see that Jesus doesn’t does not apply the tree analogy directly. In fact, he makes that quite clear by using different words for good in the two sections as well as different words for bad or evil. And those different words, along with the word translated as treasure, help to clarify Jesus’ meaning.

 First, let’s look at the words Jesus uses for bad and evil. When talking about the trees, Jesus uses the word sapros, which directly translates as “rotten.” No good tree bears rotten fruit and no rotten tree bears good fruit. But the word Jesus uses about a person is poneros, which directly translates as toilsome or pain-ridden. It puts an emphasis on the misery that evil creates. If I were to paraphrase the phrase where Jesus uses poneros, I might say, “The person who stores up misery in their hearts will create misery for others.” Jesus is not saying here that evil people are rotten to the core like a fruit or a tree. Jesus is saying that if we have a treasure chest full of pain and suffering and anger and hatred in our hearts, it is bound to overflow and cause pain and suffering for others.

So we look then at the words Jesus uses for good. When talking about fruit and trees, Jesus uses the Greek word kalos, which means attractively good or beautiful. A tree that looks good and healthy doesn’t typically produce fruit that is rotten. And a rotten tree doesn’t usually produce good-looking fruit. When talking about people, Jesus uses the word agathos, which means inherently good or beneficial. So Jesus is saying that those who are inherently good and treasure that goodness in their hearts act in beneficial ways toward others.

And that leads us to the word translated as treasure. The word is thesauros. Sound familiar? The word means “a storehouse (particularly of precious things).” So, a thesaurus is a storehouse of words. Jesus uses this word to say that whatever we store up and view as precious is what will flow out of us. Jesus says that out of the abundance of our hearts the mouth speaks. That means we probably need to be careful about what we are storing up in our hearts. We can do that in different ways. I’ve read a lot of commentaries that say we do that by avoiding negative things or by obeying the shall nots of the Bible. And while those things might be helpful, I feel there’s another, perhaps better, way.

An abundance of something happens when we fill ourselves with something. And if we want to overflow with the fruits of the Spirit, then we need to fill our hearts and our lives with those things. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians, “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” Paul prays for the love of the Philippians to overflow more and more. And he says that the way that will happen is with knowledge and full insight to help us determine what really matters.

The words Paul uses for knowledge and insight are very interesting to me. The Greek word Paul uses for knowledge is epí-gnosis, which is an experiential knowledge. We know love from experiencing someone else’s love for us. We know kindness from someone being kind to us. And that is a knowledge that tends to stick with us. That person may be a parent, a grandparent, a friend, a stranger…or it may be love from God. It could be all of those. And from those experiences we learn how to love others. Paul longs for that for the Philippians. He also talks about full insight to help you determine what really matters. The original Greek here might be directly translated as the “full discernment to distinguish the things that make a positive difference.” Our love will grow and abound the more we experience love and it will grow and abound as we learn the ability to distinguish the things that make a positive difference in our lives and in our world.

Yesterday was Epiphany, when we celebrated the coming of the magi to see Jesus. In that story we see the magi discerning that the star would lead them to something special and then discerning that Jesus was someone who mattered, mattered enough that they didn’t want Herod to have him killed. So they didn’t return to Herod. We see that they recognized how important Jesus would be because they offered him gifts fit for a king. Today is Baptism of our Lord Sunday, when we celebrate the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. John was able to see the impact that Jesus would have on the world. And he proclaimed it boldly.

It is my prayer for each of us that we might experience love today. That we might experience hope, even in the midst of the challenges of our world. That we might experience joy, even when so many things threaten to destroy that joy everyday. That we might experience peace in a divided and angry world. And that we may grow in the knowledge of those experiences and learn to distinguish what is really important in life, what matters, what will make an impact in our lives and in the lives of every human. And may we be filled with God’s love to such an abundance that it overflows into the world and helps others to experience that love as well. And, in case you were wondering…yes, they were mulberry trees. May our hearts be filled with goodness so that we bear the good fruit of love and kindness and hope and joy and peace and justice to a world so desperately in need of each and every one of those things. And may we be continually refilled by God’s amazing love for us. Amen!