Each week during summer we have been studying one of the fruits of the Spirit. So far we’ve studied love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and goodness. The second to last fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. 

Gentleness involves love, it involves humility, and it also involves self-control. I’m thinking first of when a young child is given an opportunity to handle something delicate. I remember a number of years back, one of my young cousins (she was maybe 4 or 5) wanted to hold one of my other cousins, who was a newborn. The kindergarten aged cousin was sitting down, of course, when the baby’s mother handed the baby to her. And the words that she kept saying were “be gentle, careful, hold him here and support his head with your hand here”. You need to be gentle with a baby, but also you need to be in control of yourself because the baby is delicate.

The other example of gentleness that I have been thinking about is someone who takes care of a farm or builds things. You may not at first think of farming, gardening, or building things to be a gentle occupation. Those occupations often involve hard work, applying physical force to make something happen, and they can involve difficult decisions. But the biblical idea of gentleness is not just a feeling that we have to be sweet. Instead, there can be gentle actions and gentle work – work that is done with love and care and attention to the details.

Gentleness is one of those things that you know it when you see it. I’m thinking here of when you drive through the Big Valley through the Amish and Mennonite farms, you often see gentleness and peaceableness in action. The farms are in order. The work appear to be done with care and self-control. The farms look nice because the values of the farmers themselves prioritize care and gentleness and love in the biblical manner. They are bearing good fruit.

The opposite of gentleness is violence. While violence makes us most often think of a crime or some sort of physical act of aggression, violence has a broader meaning. We can speak violently or act carelessly towards others or towards God. Think about what happens when someone yells at another person. Yelling and mean-spiritedness have become so normalized, such that when it happens, we tend to brush it under the rug or shrug it off as how that person is. But yelling and bullying are not normal in the church because they are opposite to the way of Christ, who himself was humble and gentle. 

Yelling and mean-spiritedness are a form of verbal violence. How can we say that? Well, what ends up happening when someone yells or bullies someone else is that a break in that relationship occurs. The person on the receiving end of the yelling and bullying is not seen as a human being who is created in the image of God who is worthy or respect and consideration. Instead, they become an object for the person doing the yelling’s wrath. That is what violence is, a willful action to damage or destroy the image of God that each person bears. 

How do we become more gentle? It’s both a do and be question. We both have to be changed inside and we also have to want to be gentle. Here is what I mean.

A while ago I overhead a conversation at McDonald’s where one person said to the other, “You know, I’ve been asking God to make me more humble. I want to treat my mother better. But so far I haven’t received any answers on how I can be more humble.” The other person looked and bluntly asked, “well, have you tried being humble? Maybe to be humble you have to act humble.”

Without knowing it, they were really doing the old self and new self thing that the apostle Paul writes about in his letters in the New Testament. The old self and whatever its attitudes were – self-righteousness, bitterness, arrogance – needed to be stripped off and clothed with the new self and a new set of assumptions – gratitude, gentleness, patience – to act and be humble. That happens in the Christian life when Christ comes to us and lives and dwells with us and we are close to God. To be a part of Jesus Christ and the church is to be changed, to be renewed, to act and live differently than you did before.

When ancient Christians were baptized, often it was a multi-day process over Holy Week. They would recite the creed on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. Then, the bishop would lead them in the baptismal vows and baptism, at which point they would take off the outer garments they were wearing and replace them with new white garments to signify their stripping of the old self and putting on the new. Finally, on Easter morning they would process into the congregation much like a choir would, and join in singing that Christ the Lord is risen today, knowing now that they too now were raised with Christ.

Gentleness may not come naturally to us. But Christ transforms us if we allow him to so that what is part of the old self is stripped away and our new self can produce the spiritual fruits – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.