“Spiritual Derivatives”

 A Sermon Preached at First Presbyterian Church

By Dr. James R. Henery

Sunday, June 27, 2010

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will never fulfill the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh wants is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit wants is opposed to the flesh. They are opposed to each other, and so you do not do what you want to do. But if you are being led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, rivalry, jealously, outbursts of anger, quarrels, conflicts, factions, envy, murder, drunkenness, wild partying, and things like that. I am telling you now, as I have told you in the past, that people who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us stop being arrogant, provoking one another and envying one another.—Galatians 5 16-26

A father who was also a tax accountant had just finished reading the story of Cinderella to his 4-year-old daughter for the first time and she seemed to be absolutely fascinated by the story, especially the part where the pumpkin turns into a golden coach.  She quickly and excitedly asked her him, “Daddy, when the pumpkin turns into a golden coach would that be income or a capital gain?”

If you were breathing this week and paying any attention to the news, Congress has now rewritten the rules of finance, banking and economics, some 2000 pages worth.  And one of the major changes is this fascinating word, which is the second word in my sermon title, derivatives.  Apparently it’s been around awhile but it’s been unregulated without rules guiding it.  Derivatives basically mean you bet on something to produce something like a profit.  In other words, you can bet or conjecture on anything from what the price of fuel will be in the future or the possibility that a company will go into default over its loans.  Farmers live by it all the time thanks to the Chicago Board of Trade in terms of what are they going to get for their corn or even pay for their corn or soybeans.  The derivatives market in the United States is a $600 trillion market, mostly unregulated without guidelines.  This new policy is intended to somewhat legislate derivatives.  Some experts believe this practice started, ironically, with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1994 when Exxon wanted a $5 billion loan and J.P. Morgan provided a $5 billion derivative type loan meaning they were betting on whether or not Exxon would pay it back—shades of B.P. perhaps.  But it never showed up on a credit line, hidden.

So I’ve titled this sermon, spiritual derivatives, for a purpose that you will eventually hear.  On Capital Hill it was all about financial regulations this week.  The Chinese may have helped us this week by allowing its currency to appreciate.  The G20 Toronto summit is about global economy, although the Canadians are labeling it as a $1 billion boondoggle.

This morning’s scripture is related in a subtle way.  It challenges us about how to live, about spiritual fruits and I’m going to suggest a connection to the word derivatives of another kind.  Verse 22 is where we begin; it’s the pivotal theme in this fifth chapter.  It talks about the fruit of the spirit, actually plural, and we’ve read the list before—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  It’s a virtual shopping cart of how to act and how to relate. 

They’re all positive contributing characteristics that really do lend substance to how we get along, and I’m thinking that any single word in that list would be good enough to work with but it’s a package.  It’s an extraordinary litany of how we should live. 

In my study this week the Greek word for the word fruit, karpos, has multiple meanings including in the root structure and the etymological context you find the words produce and profit.  Thus, there could be a very different translation, but the profits of the spirit, the derivatives of the spirit are this. 

Now I would venture to guess that all of you know something about profit.  It impacts your pensions, IRA’s, Keough’s, 401’s, stocks, bonds, mutuals, maybe your business.  The language of profits isn’t nasty or negative.  Our economy exists because of profits and this week’s financial overhaul is now being touted as the most sweeping legislation since the Great Depression which would transform all sorts of our economy including a reduction in how these derivatives work in terms of speculating on loans in default.  Did you even know we have an Office of Thrift Supervision in Washington D.C.?  They’re apparently doing away with that.  I would suggest an Office of Common Sense. 

So this whole economic package is fundamentally about reducing the risk of unregulated commodities that can catastrophically impact our economy.  It’s about new rules to prescribe how to safeguard banking and investing and change the financial culture of the United States and on Wall Street, maybe. 

I often wonder in my pastoral moments if some profound action in the church, ours and others, could radically transform us and change our behavior short of the second coming that would immediately produce spiritual fruits—these derivatives of our own faith.  Sometimes in my own bible reading a verse becomes so clear it jumps out at me and I wonder how I missed its significance.  If our faith, our actions, our relationships, our connections toward each other were guided by these dynamics of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, there wouldn’t be any need for reform or regulations.  We wouldn’t have to be changing the Book of Order every two years.  We would just simply get along.  We would just care for and respect each other but we aren’t built that way; we need rules and regulations. 

It seems that because something or someone interferes, infuriates, angers, bothers or irritates us, things/life begins to break down.  It doesn’t take long for the fruits of the spirit to become not so delectable, edible or easy to swallow or practice. 

And we know the scenario—love becomes hate, joy turns to despair, peace is swallowed up by conflict, patience loses to anxiety and kindness gets wrapped up in utter complete selfishness. 

Spiritual derivatives are those dynamics we share with each other that produce or keep our relationships going.  These are tremendous qualities that Paul writes about that we do often take for granted.  We have watched other people who exhibit these behaviors.  We know people who have been happy, joyful, giving, kind, and patient and establish a sense of goodness.  Their actions were transmittable;  we wanted to be like them and we even sometimes try to do so. 

We have become a profit-oriented culture.  We are commodity-driven where everything has a price.  We’ve learned that companies actually bet on mortgages and loan companies that they can’t pay their loans back.  We hedge, speculate and conjecture on the negatives of life and people.  We establish odds in sports and often against people at times.  We too often diminish others and their own fruits and what they want to accomplish by suggesting that aren’t capable. 

This word derivative consumed me this week, the practice of deriving something from someone, be it a simple exchange or more complex, such as loans.  This scripture says that the fruits, spiritual profits, are about entirely different achievements and qualities. These are the things we should be doing, trying or practicing with other people—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.  There are no limits, no regulations about these.  Even the concluding phrase says there is no law against them.  In other words, no restrictions, no conditions—just practice them.

In a week featuring financial overhaul of banking and now derivatives, this profound fifth chapter of Galatians reminds us that spiritual fruits are productive.  They are the derivatives, the way of how we should treat one another so that in the end, each of us profit spiritually and with one another.

So it is that at the end of a church service, the preacher had just walked out and was shaking hands.  A small child comes up and puts a dollar bill into his hand.  The pastor says, “Good morning James, what is this dollar bill?”  James says, “It’s for you.”  The preacher says, “I don’t want your money.”  “Well I want you to have it because my Daddy says you’re the poorest preacher we’ve ever had, and I want to help you.”

Amen.