Reading: John 15:1-8
The reading today is John 15:1-8. One verse of the reading, “I am the vine, ye are the branches,” is painted right into our building, in the centre of the sanctuary ceiling. It looks down upon us, filters year after year into the very air we breathe, and enters into our blood and our bones every time we gather here for worship.
In the Gospel, the saying begins a bit more pointedly, though, with Jesus saying, “I am the true vine … Remain in me, and I will remain in you…You cannot bear fruit unless you remain in me.”
In the time of Jesus and the time when the Gospel was being written, one vine many hitched their life to was Rome. The empire was idolized, the emperor deified, and the gods of Rome offered a very attractive set of gifts: peace through war, world supremacy through conquest and domination of others, a good life for the privileged elite, and Rome’s greatness again, and again, and again … at any cost to the world.
Another vine widely available to the people around Jesus and at the time of the Gospel’s writing, was the temple religion of Jerusalem and what Judaism had fallen into – a form of legalism that mostly made people feel guilty and unworthy, and a form of blessings theology or deuteronomic theology in which God was said especially to bless the righteous with good life, and withhold blessing from the wicked, so if you were lucky enough to have good things in life you could count yourself as righteous, and if calamity came and suffering or tragedy entered your life… you must be wicked.
The life and faith of Jesus was different, though, from both those religious streams. His was a vine of a different variety, offering a different kind of lifeblood to those who followed him. What he taught, put into practice, and inspired in the lives of his followers, was something more compassionate, more gracious, more inclusive and more generously supportive of others – of all others, than either of these other two religious streams.
I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he trims clean so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the
branches. If a person remains in me and
I in them, they will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, they are
like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up,
thrown into the fire and burned. If you
remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be
given you. This is to my Father’s glory,
that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Meditation
Here at Fifty United in Winona, we have vineyards across the road in front of us, down the lane behind us, and beside us as well just down the highway. When Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches” he’s speaking our language.
And what is he telling us?
One: If he is the vine and we are the branches … or, because he is the vine and we are the branches, we better be busy doing the kind of stuff he desires to be done in the world.
It’s good to pray for other people and lift up their needs to God. We’re being faithful when we ask God to bless them, and expect God to do so.
But at the same time, it’s not the vine that bears the fruit in the world, but the branches connected to it. The vine provides the life and the sap and the juice, but it’s only as it flows into and through the branches, and the branches grow and reach out with the life they are given, that fruit comes and the real desire of the vine for life in the world is accomplished.
I was talking recently with someone about a mutual friend who is suffering a number of losses even as he gives himself unreservedly to help others. We feel both admiration and sympathy for him. It was suggested, he will get his reward. And we agreed, in full confidence that God will see to it. But as I think about it now, I wonder if our faith in God to reward our friend, somehow and sometimes lets us off the hook to be the ones through whom God’s help is meant to flow.
It’s like Mr. Rogers says his mother told him in his childhood, when you look for God in the midst of calamity, injustice, tragedy and hardship, “look for the helpers.”
Or as Theresa of Avila says about
the risen Jesus at work in the world, the will of God being done, and the
kingdom of God unfolding in the life of the world:
Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on Earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world,
yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.
If he is the vine and we are the branches, we had better be busy doing the kind of stuff he desires to be done in the world. That’s one thing.
A second: Because he is the vine and we are the branches, we had better be spending lots of time in prayer and humble reflection and meditation with him and with God. Setting aside unbusy, quiet time with him.
This seems the opposite of the first, but really, it’s just its proper partner.
Martin Luther once was asked why he spent so much time every morning hidden away in prayer and unavailable to others. With so many things to do, so many people to help, and so much of God’s work to be done in the church and in the world, wouldn’t the hours he spent hidden away and unavailable every morning in prayer be better spent in other ways?
His answer was, it was time in prayer that made all the other time fruitful and productive, and if anyone wants to accomplish much for God, they had best set aside much time with God.
For one thing, we need it for self-care, for recharging our batteries, for renewing our awareness of being loved, forgiven, and held in God’s gracious care.
And for another, we need it to save us from our egos and the self-centred imprint we are tempted always to put on everything we do. Idle hands may be the devil’s plaything, but busy hands can be the devil’s favoured tool to make even the best-laid, most faithful plans turn out wrong and in service of different goals and a different God than Jesus would have us serve.
If he is the vine and we are the branches, we had better be spending lots of time in prayer and humble reflection and meditation with him and with God. That’s a second thing.
And a third is this: Because he is the vine and we are the branches, we must always be ready to be pruned back – to let go of our greatest-loved, most hard-won achievements, in order to start out each time directly from the good Source of what we will do now, rather than just from the outgrown result of what we have done in the past.
When branches just grow and grow, entranced by their own growth, they quickly become unfruitful and a drain on the whole vine. They channel all the life of the vine into their own extended growth. Every branch every year needs to be cut back close to the source, so every year there can be a good and juicy new vintage, rather than just a diminished and diminishing version of a previous year’s vintage.
In the practice of mindfulness there is an important step called “adopting a beginner’s mind.” It means letting go of, and putting to one side, as fully as you can, whatever you already know about yourself, God, life and the world, the things that in the past have brought – for good and for ill, to where you are now – for the sake of being open to the grace of the present moment, and whatever gift it brings to help you be what you are needing, and are needed to be right now.
I think of a colleague in ministry in a spiritual-growth group for people struggling with things like addiction, depression, and a variety of personality disorders. The group uses the 12-step program developed by AA and adopted by all kinds of groups, so the program talks a lot about trust in a Higher Power – in God, however each person understands God. The minister thought, when he first joined the group, that at the sessions where the agenda for the week was to talk about the Higher Power that can save us, this is where he would shine and have something to offer the others.
He learned quickly, though, that especially at these sessions he was better off to listen – to close his mouth and open his ears, his mind and his heart instead. Because what the others in the group knew of God from their experience of being at rock-bottom and of opening themselves to God at a child-like level – with “a beginner’s mind” – allowed them a more vital experience of God’s grace and healing than all the minister’s life-long achievement of theological study, church leadership and pastoral ministry gave him.
This also means that when life takes things away – when ill health, bereavement, bankruptcy, pandemic isolation, or other losses reduce us to something less than we used to be, all is not lost. Least of all is our place and our importance in the unfolding of God’s kingdom lost. At least, not while we remain connected to the vine, the source of life and love. Not as long as we are opened by our losses to whatever new vintage and new form and new way of living out God’s love for others is now able to grow on what is left of our pruned, little branch.
So, because he is the vine, and we are the branches…what are you busy doing of what he desires for the good and well-being of others in the world?
How are you spending time close to him in prayer, so it’s really his work you’re busy with?
And what are you letting go of, for the sake of being part of the body today of the risen Jesus – God’s hands and feet, eyes and ears, voice and heart wherever and however you are right now?
No comments:
Post a Comment