I am not naturally good at keeping promises. Like many alcoholics, I learned a pattern early on of looking out for myself, and only myself (despite my good intentions a lot of the time). It’s that tragically familiar pattern that lies behind so much of the strife and division in our world. I learned to over-promise and under-deliver—to set my well-being in a fake competition with the well-being of others.
By God’s grace I’ve grown on this front, little by little. But it can still be hard for me to “get” the promises of God that our opening collect asks for today: the promises of our spiritual awakening—our new life in the Holy Spirit; our rebirth and resurrection, which this Easter season centers on. Measuring God’s trustworthiness by the standard of my own flawed reliability, it can be hard for me to understand the scope of God’s promises, let alone trust that God will actually make good on them.
Without the language of resurrection or the Holy Spirit, the ‘Big Book’ of Alcoholics Anonymous actually points to these promises in a moving passage that I’d like to share with you in full (if you’ll indulge me). Talking about the fruit of a life dedicated to spiritual growth, it says:
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word Serenity, and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”
Are these extravagant promises? Maybe not to the authors of the Big Book. But they’ve sure felt extravagant to me a lot of the time—promises that surpass my understanding and exceed what I naturally desire for myself. Even if you don’t have the particular factor of addiction, I’m guessing the thought of possessing these gifts fully—of living this way all the time—has often felt unrealistic for some of you.
And yet, in many ways, these promises describe the new life in Christ proclaimed in our readings today; the inheritance we share as friends and children of God; the fruit we are already beginning to bear as the living branches of Christ the vine. They are what Paul elsewhere describes as the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
These are the fruits of the same Spirit that John says is testifying among us to God’s faithfulness. God promises to pour out this Spirit on all flesh. God promises that it will bear fruit abundantly. God promises that that fruit will conquer the darkness of the world. God promises that Christ’s joy will be in us and that our joy will be complete. These are God’s promises, and they are extravagant.
They are so extravagant that even when God starts to fulfill them in our reading from Acts by pouring out the Holy Spirit on a bunch of unbaptized Gentiles, Peter and the other Jewish Christians are gobsmacked. If anyone should be confident that God would make good on such extravagant promises it should be these guys, who’ve somehow touched and talked and eaten with a guy they saw brutally murdered by the state. But even they are astonished. Because God’s promises are extravagant. The fruits of God’s Spirit constantly exceed what we can understand, desire, or possibly achieve for ourselves.
The good news, though, is that these promised fruits that our gospel assures us that we are to bear, they’re not our fruits to grow or achieve on our own. These extravagant promises—these promised fruits that conquer the world’s darkness—don’t ultimately come from us, but from the unconditional love that God pours into our hearts. These fruits come from faith. Not faith that strives or faith that subscribes. Faith that abides in love.
We are the branches, not the vine or the root. God is the root and the source of our life. And these fruits of God’s promises start to materialize—not when we believe hard enough or try hard enough, but when we simply abide in God’s love for us—when we return and remember God’s love for the world. God’s love revealed to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God’s love poured out on us in the water of Baptism, in the blood of the Chalice, and in the extravagant anointing of God’s Holy Spirit.
Abide. This is the commandment by which we obtain God’s extravagant promises. God’s promises come true when we accept and abide in God’s love—when we “walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself an offering and a sacrifice for God” This is the Way of Love that we walk together here week after week, as branches of the vine—the Body of Christ. When we walk this Way of Love and return to remind ourselves and each other that God loves us more than we can ask for or imagine—that is when quarrels, dissension, factions, and strife will all be conquered. That is when the fruits of the Spirit will be abundant, and our joy will be complete.
Are these extravagant promises? Yes. Yes, they are. But they are being fulfilled among, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. And they will always materialize if we abide in God’s love.