FRUIT THAT WILL LAST

Guest Speech for Humber Welcoming Night – April 3, 2008

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you

to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.” (Jn 15:16)

Hello, my name is Andy Stumpf, and I’m a graduate student in Philosophy at the University of Waterloo. I’ve been studying Philosophy for the last ten years or so now. In order to study philosophy one thing you have to really enjoy is asking questions. Philosophers get to ask a lot of interesting questions. “Do human beings have free will or are we determined to do whatever we do by necessity?” “Can we have certain knowledge of anything?” Of course one of the biggest questions of all time is this: “What is the meaning of human life?” Why are we here? What is the purpose of all this? Philosophers are good at asking questions, at even better at telling you why other peoples’ answers are wrong. Not always so good at giving own answers. But tonight I want to try to give you a partial answer to this question. I’m not going to speak to you as a philosopher. In stead, I’m going to speak to you as a fellow human being, and also as a Christian, based on my own experience and relating that to the Scriptures.

In short, my answer can be summed up in own word: ‘fruit’. The meaning of life is fruit? Why do I say this? Well, let’s think about what fruit is. Everyone can imagine pineapples and pears and oranges and bananas. The primary or literal definition of ‘fruit’ is: “The seed bearing product of a plant’ (Notice that on this definition a tomato would be a fruit) But there are a lot of other uses of the word. Does anyone here know what was the first thing God said to human beings, according to the creation account in Genesis? God said, “Be fruitful…” (Gen 1:28) In that context God was telling human beings basically to have lots and lots of babies so they could fill the whole earth and take care of it.

But the word ‘fruit’ has a broader meaning. ‘Fruit’ can mean the consequence or result of some effort or action. What year of your studies are most of you in? For those of you who are undergraduate students, I can give you some advice based on this concept of fruit. Getting a grade on an essay, an exam or in a course can be compared to bearing fruit. But this doesn’t just happen instantaneously. Fruit is the end of a long process that involves many steps and stages. It starts out with a seed that produces hormones causing cell division and expansion giving the fruit its bulk. Then the fruit has to ripen. Ripening is signaled by the production of a gas called ethylene. Enzymes are produced and these begin to break down starch into sugar. New pigments are produced so that the fruit’s colour changes. I won’t go into all the details. But the point is before there can be a nice soft juicy fruit ready to be eaten a lot of work has to go on. Similarly if you go to your classes, complete all your assignments, and study hard for your exams, the result will hopefully come about that one day you walk across that stage and receive that shiny diploma or degree, the fruit of all those long hours of work.

This concept of a tree bearing fruit applies to our lives more generally. Fruit, in this broader context, can represent the product or result or impact of our lives. We might ask ourselves, “What do I want the fruit of my life to be?” Or thinking not quite so far ahead, “What do I want the fruit of my college years to be?”

In John’s gospel chapter 15, Jesus gives an interesting analogy. He says in verse 5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. Branches can’t bear fruit by themselves. They have to keep their connection with the vine in order to receive the nutrients that sustain them. Otherwise, they not only fail to produce fruit- they end up shriveling up and dying. Now we have to ask the question, is it really true that we can do nothing, unless we keep a connection with Jesus like a branch to its vine? Isn’t it true that people do all kinds of things, and even lots of good things, everyday apart from Jesus? Well, the answer seems to be yes, and no. Yes, many people who don’t have any obvious relationship to Jesus do lots of things. But if we keep in mind that Jesus is not talking about doing anything, but about bearing fruit of a particular kind, then we have to admit that no, we can’t do this without Him.

So what kind of fruit is Jesus talking about then? Gal 5:22,23 say, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” An important dimension of bearing fruit in our lives is developing a character and a heart like the character and heart Christ himself had. Most people admit that Jesus was a pretty good guy, even if they don’t accept his claims about his identity. You would be hard pressed to find anyone in this world who loved so deeply and who gave himself so completely for others. It would be hard to deny that if you could become as kind, as good, as loving as Christ, your life would have borne some pretty good fruit. But the problem is that we are not naturally like that. So the process of fruit-bearing that takes place in our hearts has to begin with repentance (Mt 3:8). We need a change of heart.

But how can we have this change of heart? How can we catalyze the process of bearing the fruit of the true and good character God desires? The answer is surprisingly simple. We simply have to remain in Jesus, and let his words remain in us (Jn 15:7). Ps 1 talks about the secret of a prosperous and fruitful life: The man who is truly blessed is the one who delights in the word of God and meditates on it continually. Such a person “is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.” When we look into the word of God in the Bible, we learn how Jesus lived and died. We learn about the thoughts and the ways of God our Creator Himself. We learn there, for instance, that God is love (I Jn 4:16). We learned that God loved us so much that he was willing to come into the world as a man and die so that our sins could be completely forgiven. He gave his life so that we could be set free from the evil in our hearts, and so all our brokenness could be bound up and healed. When we get in touch with this Divine love that is revealed there, something happened in our hearts, and the process of bearing fruit begins. We begin to bear the fruit of love-love for God and also love for one another.

Up until high school, I lived a fairly normal life, except maybe for the fact that I was introduced to pornography at a very early age, and quickly became addicted to masturbating and sex. I was raised in a secular family, with no church background. In high school, I went from one relationship to another, hurting the people I was with. I also was an instrument of harm through the drugs that I started taking and selling to others. I tried to invent my own religion, with myself at the centre- thinking I was some kind of god. I remember one time ending up in a cemetery late at night lying on the cold ground in the winter time. My life was really fruitless- or even worse, the kind of fruit my life was producing was like really sour and poisonous fruits. It was really true that I could not bear fruit on my own, without a connection to the life-giving vine. I wanted to do good and to love other people, but everything I did ended up wrong because it came from my pride and self-love. I was almost convinced that there was no real hope or meaning in life at all, and that all I could do was tot wait until the sad joke was over.

Somehow in the midst of this darkness, God reached out to me through Christian friends and through a near-death experience. I promised God that I would read the Bible. Right after that I met a man from the UBF in Waterloo named Joshua, who wanted to study the Bible with me. Joshua was from Korea, and I soon found that I really liked Korean food- since he and his wife Hannah frequently had me over to their place. I saw in them an example of people who not only believed but were struggling to follow the teachings of the Bible. Deciding to attend these Bible studies turned out to be one the best decisions I ever made. The words of Jesus were like warm and bright sunlight shining on my cold and dark heart. Finally through a study on Romans 3, I realized that I could not deny the truth that I was only a sinner, desperately in need of a Saviour, and that this Savior was offering himself to me in Jesus. I realized that God not only wanted to save me through Jesus, but also to give me the meaning and purpose of my life. I found this in Jn 15:16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. I did not choose Jesus, but myself. As a result I could not bear any truly good fruit. But Jesus chose me by his grace alone. When I remained in him and kept his words in my heart through regular Bible study, he began to enable me to bear meaningful and lasting fruit- to learn how to love and serve others, and to become an instrument of God’s love and peace in this world, studying at the campus where I am studying. On top of all that, God gave me great success in my studies so that I could graduate with top marks in Philosophy. God led me to a wonderful woman of faith, who is now my wife, Jennifer. God has even given me two beautiful children. God’s blessing and abundant and fruitful life inevitably comes to anyone who remains in the vine.

Ministries like the one here at Humber UBF are like gateways into the vine. They are places where students can get connected to Jesus through the Bible studies and supportive community setting they offer. Who knows, but that God might have brought you here tonight so that you could find a place where you can get in touch with Him? So I just want to conclude by encouraging each of you to look into the Bible more seriously than you might be doing now. This is the best time in your life to do this kind of thing, before you get too tied down in the world of jobs and family and the pressures of life. Based on my experience I can tell you that there are vast riches in the word of God and in his Spirit. Let me conclude by sharing one verse from Hosea 10: 12, “Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers righteousness on you.” May God bless you to bear lasting and meaningful fruit in your college life and beyond.