February 23, 2025
• Rev. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
February 23, 2025
New Year Series
Finding the Middle Way: Living the Fruit of the Spirit
The Fruit of Gentleness
Numbers 12:1-3 (ESV); Galatians 5:23
Indiana native, John Wooden, was one of the great basketball coaches of all time winning the most national championships. You wonder how much of his coaching ability came from lessons he learned at home? In his autobiography he tells how his dad, Joshua Wooden, was a strong but gentle man. He was a rugged farmer who read poetry to his family at night.
John explains how they had a pair of mules named Jack and Kate, and sometimes Kate would get stubborn and lie down when John was trying to plow. He said there was nothing he could do. No matter how rough he treated the mule, she wouldn’t budge. When his father saw this predicament, he would walk toward them and when close enough, shout, “Kate.” Then she would get up and start working again. He said his dad never touched her in anger.
Wooden concludes the story saying, “It took me a long time to understand that even a stubborn mule responds to gentleness.”(Picture of Wooden with quote next to it) (https://sermons.com/sermon/gentle-on-my-mind-(fruit-of-the-spirit:-gentleness)/1358655)
Today we come to the next-to-last of the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of gentleness. The Greek word for gentleness is prautes. It may be the most difficult of the fruit of the spirit to translate. It is often translated in Bible versions as ‘humility’ or ‘meekness,’ but that doesn’t fully capture the complete meaning. In fact, prautes is an action word. It was the word used to describe a horse being tamed (picture), so that prautes, gentleness, is “strength under control.”
Throughout this series we have examined Paul’s traits of the fruit of the spirit as a middle way between two extremes. In the case of our word today we have some help from Aristotle. He said prautes is the mean between extreme anger and extreme angerlessness. (Barclay, Matthew vol.1, p96) True gentleness he says is not weakness. It is strength under control. It balances explosive anger. That can certainly be a problem. Just read about the road rage incidents in the news. But the opposite is a problem too, extreme lack of anger. Never getting bothered or upset about matters. To see abuses and injustices occur and just shrug your shoulders and say, “Oh well,” is an equal problem. The key to keeping these problems in check is gentleness.
The Bible mentions gentleness in a number of places. Several times the Book of Proverbs lifts up the virtue of gentleness. Paul does the same. Even Jesus uses this word in the beatitudes, and also as a description of himself in Matthew 11: “learn from me because I am gentle and humble.” (Mt. 11:29)
But next to Jesus, the best picture of gentleness in action is Moses. Moses liberated the Israelite slaves from Egyptian bondage. He led them into the wilderness where they had to overcome all kinds of obstacles, the greatest of which was themselves. There was no end to reasons the people found to complain. But what had to be one of the more painful complaints Moses dealt with was from his own brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam. They complained about the woman Moses married because she was a Cushite. That was a dig on several levels. First, she wasn’t Jewish. So Miriam and Aaron felt she wasn’t legitimate. And then, Cushites were from Africa. That most likely meant she was black. They didn’t like her skin color. And so they used this to attack Moses’ authority.
Don’t you think that had to hurt? Have you ever been attacked by people you trusted? People you thought genuinely cared about you and had your back? Is there any criticism more painful? Surely this criticism had to hurt Moses deeply. But he didn’t react. He didn’t explode in anger. Why? Because, as it says in verse 3, “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.”
Hmph! Really? Moses was the gentlest person on earth?
Let’s think about this for a moment. What got Moses exiled from Egypt in the first place? He had been the Prince of Egypt, second in power to Pharaoh. But one day he saw an Egyptian soldier beating a Hebrew slave. Remember, Moses was nursed by his Hebrew birth mother. When he saw this, he exploded in anger and killed the soldier. That’s why he had to flee for his life. That’s how powerful his anger was.
Then let’s recall another incident. Why was Moses not allowed to enter the Promise Land? Because one day the people complained against Moses because they didn’t have water to drink. Now Moses may have been angry at the people, but he might also have been angry at God for putting him in this situation. Anyway, God told Moses to take his staff and touch a rock, and water would flow out of the rock. Only, Moses was angry, and he struck the rock with his staff. Not exactly the way God directed him. His anger kept him out of the Promised Land.
And then, there was the 10 Commandments. God cut tablets out of stone and wrote the commandments on them, but because Moses had been away from the people so long, they went wild. When Moses came down the mountain and saw this, he got so mad he threw the tablets down and broke them. So when God sent Moses to get new tablets, he made Moses cut them out of the rock this time.
So when it says Moses was the meekest, or most gentle, person on the face of the earth, it clearly didn’t mean he never got angry. There’s a couple lessons we can take away from this. For one, it means Moses got angry when others were wrongly harmed. That’s appropriate. We should get angry about such things. And Moses also got angry at the way a community could get selfish and perverted. Again, not wrong. But Moses needed to temper that anger. So this was something Moses allowed God to develop in him. The fruit of gentleness is always tempering strength or sparking it.
We have talked about a lot of qualities of the Holy Spirit over these weeks: love, joy, peace, patience. And all of these, especially gentleness, can seem like personality traits. We either have these traits or we don’t. We may even say, “Hey, I’m just a person who gets angry and I let it fly. That’s the kind of family I came from. It’s the way I am.” But that’s not good enough. Yes, God loves us as we are, but God doesn’t leave us as we are!
If we avoid conflict at all cost, God will challenge us to get mad sometimes. Allow anger to move us to action. And if losing control of our anger is a problem, God will challenge that. Gentleness is strength under control.
So how do you think God wants to grow gentleness in you? Does God want to temper some anger? Or does God maybe want to arouse some anger?
For Moses, God wanted to temper his anger. And in the case of his siblings, it paid off. They came to Moses condemning his wife and questioning his leadership. But Moses didn’t react to this. He controlled his response, and what we see is how Gentleness keeps a conflict from escalating. Moses didn’t allow his reaction to make a bad situation even worse.
A few weeks ago I mentioned a book titled Neuroscience and the Fruit of the Spirit. Its written by a chaplain at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. He explains how we all have mirror neurons that make us want to respond in kind to what we experience in other people. If someone smiles at us, mirror neurons in the brain make us want to smile back. If someone is hostile toward us, mirror neurons make us want to react in hostility.
Susan and I experience this sometimes. This may come as a surprise to you but we are both strong personalities. And sometimes when one is addressing a criticism the tone might be heavy and the voice even a little loud. Then the other responds in kind, which makes the other go even louder and stronger. And then what do we do? We start arguing over who escalated the argument! “Well you got loud and so I just responded to the way you talked to me!” And guess what we aren’t doing? Addressing the problem!
That’s how mirror neurons work. And by the way, have you noticed how neuron sounds a lot like moron? That’s what neurons can turn you into! And what I have come to know about the way the Holy Spirit works in me, is when I am tuned in, I will feel a nudge inside that says, “Lower the volume! Hold your tongue. Listen. Show Susan that you heard her. Do not speak that thought!” And sometimes I blow right past the warning, but when I pay attention to it the conflict doesn’t escalate.
As the writer of Proverbs said, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” (Proverbs 15:1)
I watched our former conference superintendent, Dr. Aleze Fulbright, do this on more than one occasion in meetings she was leading. At a point when tempers started to rise and people were getting upset and about to say things they would regret, she would say, “I am going to pause us and ask that we take a moment to listen and talk with the Holy Spirit.” And just that pause for 4-5 minutes would change the climate. It would put folks in a different space.
You might try this at home. The next time you find yourself in a heated conversation, be the firs to say, “Can we pause? Can we just take a moment to be still and ask God to help us?” It’s amazing what God can do with a timeout.
In sports like football and basketball, you always see on the screen how many timeouts a team has. The great thing about life is that we have unlimited timeouts. We can always call a timeout. But just like sports, sometimes the worst mistake we make is to leave timeouts unused.
And this leads to one final observation about gentleness. The truest understanding of this word is that gentleness is strength under God’s control. Gentleness as a fruit of the spirit is not about having willpower. It is about turning to God to have power over us. It is about trusting God to work through whatever we face, but here’s the rub. Practicing gentleness will often feel like a sacrifice. It will feel like we are giving up something, relinquishing something, giving in to something, and this is where the Holy Spirit helps us. Because where God guides, God provides. Where God sends, God defends. And this only happens through faith. Through trusting God to handle something that feels to us like giving in or letting go.
Moses could have gotten so angry at what his sister said to him about his wife. But he trusted God to handle it and God did. God addressed the three of them. And God reprimanded Aaron and Miriam, and God struck Miriam with leprosy. It’s like God said, “You like white skin, then I’ll give you a lot of it!” And Moses ends up interceding for his sister asking God to heal her, and God does. Miriam ended up depending on Moses.
For Moses to hold his tongue probably felt like a sacrifice; like giving up some dignity, pride, defending his wife. But he probably came to recognize the nudge of God letting him know when its time to speak and when its not, and to trust God to handle a situation.
A few weeks from now is the anniversary of the March from Selma to Montgomery. On March 7 John Lewis, who became a leading congressman before his death, was going to lead people in a march from Selma to Montgomery to protest the unlawful killing of a young black man by police. The protest turned violent. Even Lewis himself was severely beaten. This became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Martin Luther King Jr called for clergy leaders to join him in Selma to resume the march. President Johnson sent a message to King to stand down until at least March 11 when he could send troops to protect them. Many felt this was just a delay to get them not to march at all. So on March 9 they gathered. They stared across the bridge at state troopers and riot police who had gathered to prevent their movement. If you’ve seen the movie Selma you probably remember this scene. King asked everyone to kneel. He knelt and prayed, then got up and turned around.
No one knows for sure why King did this other than it was something he experienced in his prayer. But it was not popular with other protestors. They felt King had shown weakness, and that by turning around they would only embolden the police to be more aggressive.
But someone in Washington, DC was watching this on TV, President Lyndon Johnson. When he saw King turn around, it did something in him. He realized he had to show strength. He went before congress to call for voting rights legislation ending his speech by saying “we shall overcome.” WE shall overcome. The white president from Texas said those words. And less than two weeks later thousands marched peacefully from Selma to Montgomery and many historians say that what happened in Selma was a major turning point in the civil rights movement.
Whatever King experienced in prayer that day felt like a loss to people when he turned around. But it was strength under God’s control. He trusted that for whatever reason he was given that nudge, it meant God was going to work God’s way. And God did.
Gentleness comes down to allowing God to tame us and direct us. And the story of God’s work in history hinges on gentleness. This may be the most important of the nine fruit of the Spirit, because the Gospel itself depends on gentleness.
Think about it. Jesus’ own history started with gentleness. Go back to Ruth and Naomi, a woman and her mother-in-law who both became widows. They return to Naomi’s home in Bethlehem. Ruth, a foreigner, goes to glean in the fields behind the workers. The Torah commanded this. People were to leave produce behind so foreigners and the poor would have something to gather.
The owner of that field is Boaz. He sees this and calls for the workers to treat Ruth gently. Don’t let anybody hurt or harm her he tells them. Later he serves her food with extra to take home to Naomi. Look at Ruth’s words: “You are very kind to me, sir. You have made me feel better by speaking gently to me, even though I am not the equal of one of your servants.” (Ruth 2:13 GNT)
We know the rest of the story. Ruth and Boaz get married. They have a son who becomes the grandfather of King David whose family line will one day lead to Jesus. SO think about that. We are here in a church today worshipping Jesus because a man named Boaz showed gentleness to an immigrant. The Gospel hinges on gentleness. This fruit of the Spirit is that big a deal. God’s story hinges on gentleness. God’s story is being told in your life and the turning points will come in our willingness to practice gentleness, strength under God’s control.
Will you do that?