Rotten Fruit

We’re bargain shoppers. What I mean by that is we do our grocery shopping at not one, not two, not three, but four different grocery stores. We do this partly because we know that produce is cheaper at store number one, but meat is cheaper at store number two, store number three has our favorite salsa, and store number four has the world’s most amazing and fresh baguettes. Okay, that last one might be a stretch, because the world’s best baguettes will always be within view of the Eiffel tower.

An added bonus of being bargain shoppers is that we have come to know which grocery stores have the freshest produce…and which ones have the oldest. This is the very reason why we avoid buying any produce at Walmart. I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings Walmart, but in our experience, the fruit you sell has a tendency to become rotten and moldy within two days of bringing it home. Which makes me think of something Jesus said:

“And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.”

- Matthew 8: 8-9 (ESV)

Was Jesus advocating for self-mutilation? Not at all. In a perfect world every human has two hands, two feet, and two eyeballs that work perfectly. In a perfect world, every human has the ability and will to withstand the temptations around us.

But we don’t live in a perfect world.

What Jesus is saying here is what anyone who buys fruit at Walmart knows: if we see a piece of moldy fruit in the basket, it must be thrown away to save the rest. Then, the remaining fruit needs to be washed clean of any mold or rot. If we don’t, the entire basket of oranges will be bad by tomorrow, and nobody likes a basket of bad oranges. We know this is true for fruit but we often deny it is true in equal measure for the functioning of our minds and souls.

I have seen this truth play out in my own life, and I suspect most people have as well. Whether we struggle with eating junk food when stressed, drinking alcohol to unwind, watching or reading porn to relax, or any other vice du jour, we all have something in our lives that we know is unhealthy. These are the habits we wouldn’t dare talk about in church and are the very ones that are poisoning our minds. They are the same ones that we NEED to be talking about in church.

It is only by carefully removing the unhealthy parts of our lives and washing the rest can we ever hope to preserve ourselves with any longevity. We might not think of an innocent TV show as poisoning our minds, but if deprecating jokes, nudity, or crass humor is part of the script then it might be time to throw it away. If you reach for the sour cream and onion ripple chips every day instead of a healthy alternative, it might be time to re-evaluate your shopping patterns.

I give those two examples because they are seemingly innocent and tend to be ignored for far too long. Such is the case for most of our unhealthy habits. We tend to focus on the heavy-hitters when our entire life is burning down around us, but if we paid attention to the small signs along the way then perhaps our lives would never be set ablaze.

If we pay attention to the little bit of mold on the fruit, we can save the rest.

And that is what Jesus is saying in Matthew 8 – do whatever it takes to save yourself from becoming moldy and rotten.

Here’s some guiding thoughts to help us get started:

1. What habit in your life is poisoning the rest of you?

2. What would it look like for you to throw it away and preserve the rest of you?