Fruit of the Heart: What Your Actions Reveal About Who You Really Are

Sunday Readings: Sirach 27.4-7; 1 Corinthians 15.54-58; Luke 6.39-45

Why do you see a splinter in your neighbor’s eye but not notice the beam in your own? How can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the splinter out of your eye” when you yourself do not see the beam in your own? Hypocrite, first, take the beam out of your own eye; then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your neighbor’s eye (Luke 6.41-42).

The splinter and beam imagery exaggerates the difference between the one, small thing one sees in the neighbor and whole, huge, deeply-rooted faults one can’t see in one’s self. This is a good-humored proverb that makes the same point as Scottish poet Bobby Burn’s famous poem “To a Louse,” which ends with a louse crawling up the back of a lady’s hair in church and the poet’s observation, “Ah, to see ourselves as others see us.”

Sunday’s gospel also compares trees and humans. Trees are known by the fruit they produce. The proverb implies people’s hearts work just like fruit trees. Our actions are fruit that reveal out hearts. This proverb praises people whose actions are food for others and offer them nourishment. It invites us to assess what kind of nourishment we offer those around us.

New proverbs arise to educate us to new wisdom. For example, today trees have importance not only for their fruit but for their capacity to transform carbon into oxygen. They make the air we breathe. People who care for Earth teach us, “People need trees more than trees need people.”

• What proverbs that you know or use express the values and wisdom you most want to pass on to your children or those you teach or work with?

• What are your favorite contemporary proverbs from bumperstickers? What proverb would you pay to have framed in your living room?