Introduction

Discover how God’s gentleness reveals His character in the most profound way. Though He holds the universe in His hands with unspeakable power, God treats us with remarkable gentleness—never forcing, always patient, blessing us whether we deserve it or not. This sermon explores how God’s gentleness towards us transforms how we relate to others and change the world.

If you know the wonderful Narnia stories by CS Lewis, you’ll know that one of the loveliest aspects of them is the relationship between a little girl named Lucy and a lion named Aslan. And their relationship is joyful and trusting and often playful. And Aslan, despite his immense size and strength, is incredibly gentle with her.

Lucy says of Aslan, he is not a tame lion, but he is good. And it is a beautiful picture of the gentleness that God treats us with. We are coming to the end of this autumn series on the Fruit of the Spirit, and I hope if you’ve been along with us, that you have been inspired and challenged in equal measure.

These virtues, these fruit of the spirit are the very character of God. And they are the things most seriously lacking in our world. Love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and self-control. They’re the things that make life worth living. It’s what it is to be really human.

It is civilisation. And we have long taken these things for granted, but it is increasingly clear that these things have their origin in the Christian faith and as our world slips its moorings, these Christian virtues fade. And perhaps not least, this idea of gentleness. What place is there for gentleness in a culture of self-promotion and the pursuit of power and ambition?

It’s important at the outset though, to say that gentleness is not what it is perceived to be. It is not about weakness. In fact, I’d argue it is quite the opposite. It is the ability to be in control of what strength you have. The Greek word that is translated here is praütēs, and the literal translation of that wonderfully is gentle strength. Isn’t that a wonderful picture of what gentleness is.

I think we retain some sense of that in that kind of slightly old fashioned word of being a gentleman. And we recognise that gentleness is a sign of character, the ability to care and respect. St. Francis de Sales said nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength.

Sometimes perhaps it’s helpful to understand a word by considering what its opposite is, and I reflected on this and I thought that perhaps the opposite of gentleness was cruelty. But actually I don’t think that’s right. I think actually the opposite of gentleness is carelessness. It’s how you treat people when you don’t think that they matter or that you don’t care about them.

And it is an amazing thing to think that God who holds the universe in his hands, who is unspeakably powerful, is able to treat us with such gentleness. He never forces, he never overpowers us. He’s patient and waits for us. He blesses us whether we deserve blessing or not. He even allows us to go our own way to make our mistakes and even to reject him. And he responds in gentleness to us.

His incomparably great power is held in the most precise control for our sake. So to our passage this evening from one Peter. Verse eight says, finally, all of you be like-minded. Be sympathetic, love one another. Be compassionate and humble. I don’t know if you spotted in that, but there are two words which mean, almost essentially, the same thing. Those two words are sympathy and compassion. They both mean to feel with, to feel alongside, to have empathy for another person. And God’s gentleness with us is because he knows our every weakness. He treats us gently because he knows our frailty. The way that we treat one another needs to be rooted in that same empathy.

Gentleness is rooted in a sort of emotional intelligence, an ability to walk in someone else’s footsteps to understand how they feel. To care. But it’s also rooted in humility. All too often our carelessness with people is because we’re only really thinking about ourselves, about our agenda or what we want.

Gentleness is putting others and their needs before ourselves. But it strikes me that it’s not just people, but it’s institutions that need to be gentle, especially churches and Christian organisations. Too many people have stories of being bruised by their encounter with church, and that can be the case both in traditional institutions, which can be cold and bureaucratic, but also in new churches with dynamic pastors that innovate in wonderful ways, but sometimes care more about results than about people.

Do you know Mark Zuckerberg who founded Facebook? And his mantra when he was doing that was move fast and break things. And it’s a very dynamic way to be. But if we apply that to church, what gets broken is people. We can be impatient to do good, but the way that we do it can do great harm. Church leadership needs to be markedly different than corporate leadership because our model is Jesus, who comes to serve, who comes in humility and love and gentleness. But I am convinced that gentleness is the way that we change the world. Verse 10 says, whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. Do you want to see a better world? Do you want to see good days?

You need to live in a way, act in a way which is distinct from this culture that we are part of. Very little of lasting good is won by coercion, by dishonesty, or by the abuse of power. And of course, this is Jesus’ revolution in the world. He exercises the greatest power, but he does so in gentleness and sacrifice and love.

Though he is in very nature God, he empties himself and takes the form of a servant. He turns the other cheek, he goes the extra mile. He gives himself in love for others. Gentleness is how we win people. Verse 15 says, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that is in you. But do this with gentleness and respect. I love an intellectual defence of Christianity. I am convinced that it is the most rational explanation of the state of the world and of the human condition. It makes sense of life in a way that nothing else does. But my experience, I don’t know about you, is that people are rarely won over simply by an intellectual argument.

And the way that we treat people is far more important than we realise, and that people will acknowledge. It is very easy to win an argument and lose the person through a lack of gentleness and respect. And gentleness is how we see the world changed. Verse nine says, do not repay evil with evil. Or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing because it is to this that you were called that you may inherit a blessing. We are, each of us, called to live as Christ did and it is a high calling to respond to anger with love, to unkindness with blessing. And it is that way that the kingdom comes, not because we are weak, but because we are strong and we believe that this is how God works in the world.

This is how lives are changed, how societies can be changed for the better. Did you see that wonderful line? It is to this that you were called and what a high calling it is. And so we cultivate gentleness. It may be the antithesis of this pushy, careless world, but that makes it more important than ever.

We put our trust in God. We humble ourselves before him. We say: Your way, not mine. We stop trying to control people and situations because it isn’t us who will change people. It is God by his spirit in his time. Instead of trying to force our will on other people, we walk alongside them and help them to find God’s will for themselves.

And as with all of the fruit of the spirit, gentleness comes by investing in our relationship with God. Someone once said, prayer is the seed of gentleness, and as we root ourselves in the gentle presence of God, as we learn to trust his purposes and his timing as we learn to say, thy will be done, not mine, as we learn that we are profoundly loved just as Lucy did with Aslan.

So we will learn to be gentle with ourselves. With one another. With those that we encounter along the way just as God is. So use what power you have gently, and if you are trustworthy with a little, you will be trusted with more. Beware of careless people for this is not the way of God. Impatience, anger, carelessness are not how his kingdom comes. And let us be a people and a church, which reflects the love and compassion and empathy and gentleness of God. For in that way we are participating with his purposes in this world and we will see change, real change little by little, one life, one step at a time. As we see his gentle kingdom come in this world and in the next through Christ our Lord. Amen.