The Rev. Robert Lundquist           Easter VIA     5/1/05                      St Paul’s, Ft Collins

John 15:1-8   - Online Text -

“I am the vine, you are the branches.”  Jesus certainly offers us a lot of metaphors in his teachings.  This one about the vine and the branches is particularly difficult for Biblical literalists…

With all the metaphors in the Gospels, we have to be very careful, lest we end up with the jumble that Mike Murdoch imagined in the pages of The Door magazine:

            “Jesus taught that we must become like children as small as mustard seeds that grow up and give away all their fruit to the poor until they fit through the eye of a needle so that their father will graciously welcome them home and kill the fatted goat that has been separated from the sheep which the good shepherd went looking for but was unable to find among the lost sheep of Israel and so he found a coin which he paid to the innkeeper and so there was great rejoicing in heaven for the lawyer who loved God and his neighbor and had faith the size of a camel.”  Whew!  It can sound like that when we’re less than fully attentive to God’s Word.

“Abide in me as I abide in you.”  Abiding can be a puzzling concept.  How do I apply it to my life?  Rick Warren, author of the wildly successful book The Purpose Driven Life, brings to a fine point of living in and being lived in.  The purpose of each one of us is:

1)                  To love God  (Worship)

2)                  To be part of God’s family  (Fellowship)

3)                  To become more like God  (Discipleship)

4)                  To serve God  (Ministry)

5)                  To tell others about God  (Evangelism)

[We’ve been working on this last point in our Adult Forum this Easter season with the Groundwork: Digging Deep for Growth and Change program]

This looks like a solid plan.  It’s simple – but far from easy to put into practice!  We will each spend a lifetime exploring and perfecting our worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry and evangelism skills.  The key to doing all of this, found in all of Jesus’ teaching and ministry, is love.  I’m convinced that the fruit we are to bear is the fruit of love.  Jesus’ love for each of us is like the nutritional life of the vine, sustaining each branch for fruitfulness.  And the metaphor here is an apt one:

• An unconnected branch bears no fruit, which is obvious but is often forgotten by “self-made men” and rugged individualists. 

• Branches on the vine are undistinguished – there is no hierarchy. 

• Pruning is essential for new growth.  This is the tough one for me, as I hate to prune even the overgrown shrubs in my yard!  Yet whenever I do the new growth is greater than the old.  I recently heard author Karen Armstrong speak, and she told a tale that I think parallels the idea of pruning, but from another tradition.  Armstrong told the story of the Buddha with his disciples:  “Suppose I were on a journey, and a wide river blocked my path.  I build a sturdy raft, which takes me safely across the water.  Now what should I do with the raft?  Shall I tie it to a tree, or send it down the river?  Or shall I dismantle it and carry it with me as I continue my journey?”  This perspective was helpful to me, for I tend to want to carry my rafts with me.  My baggage is like the withered branches within, which must be pruned for new growth.

Like the branch, I’m to simply abide in the Vine and allow the same Vine to abide in me.

This abiding has everything to do with keeping Jesus’ commandments, according the John the Evangelist.  The commandments, if I recall correctly, are summarized by Jesus:  “Love God with all your heart, body, soul and mind.  Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Everything else is icing [Mark 12:28-31  http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+12%3A28-31++&vnum=yes&version=nrsvae].  Years ago, when I was a teenager, I had a conversation with a friend’s father about Jesus’ summary of the Law.  I was stunned when he told me that, since he didn’t love himself very much, he felt no imperative to love his neighbor very much either.  It was as though he’d found a loophole for his lifestyle, not even grasping how tragic it was.  Maybe it was because of this variety of sinfulness that Jesus gave a new commandment, which trumps the second half of the summary:  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  [John 15:12  http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=John+15%3A12&vnum=yes&version=nrsvae]  That changes the equation, doesn’t it?  The bar is placed higher, and our self-centeredness is taken off the table.  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  These, now, are the commandments.

Some think that this life of faith, as described by Jesus, means constant striving.  I believe that the secret of abiding in Christ, of resting in the Vine, of growing in fellowship and discipleship and ministry – the secret is that we do it best when we aren’t obsessing, aren’t self-conscious, aren’t “trying.”  This abiding in Christ &

Christ in us is most evident when aren’t straining to accomplish something.  This is the beauty of the natural metaphor of vine and branch – it speaks for itself.  It simply is.  We learn to abide in Christ day by day by living it faithfully day by day by day.  To know ourselves as connected, fed by Christ’s love – that is what we allow ourselves to trust, and we will be trained and tended as we grow from the Vine.

Karen Armstrong speaks of the time, the Axial Age, when the major faiths began to truly spring forth from the earlier nature religions.  The nature religions were focused on the cycles of the seasons, and their prayers were aimed at deities of fertility, rain and sun, rivers and plagues.  In a relatively brief period of history something new emerged – a hunger for compassion.  When life became more than merely surviving, the spiritual life of humanity turned toward compassion, a greater good in the universe.  St Paul’s is faced, on a much smaller but still important level, with the choice between surviving and thriving.  Is each of us hearing a challenge to provide from our own resources a greater portion for God’s work through our parish community? 

The key to humankind’s spiritual awakening in the centuries before the birth of Jesus was compassion, asserts Armstrong.  The key is love, says Jesus, and the fruit is love.  Closely related, aren’t they?  Do you feel the pull toward the Vine?

Today is Rogation Sunday, which is why we festooned the cross with flowers.  For this is an ancient observance, perhaps pre-Christian in its origins, of the blessing of growing things, be they life-giving crops and fruit or the beauty of flowers.  The flowered cross visually states that the instrument of painful death is transformed by God into the grace of new life, beautiful life.  Yesterday was Arbor Day, our national recognition of the importance of trees.  A couple weeks back we observed Earth Day, that celebration from the ‘70’s of the environment in which we all live.  Cleaner water and air, increased recycling and the development of gentler technologies, all these and more were stimulated and fostered by the movement begun more than tree decades ago.  How appropriate, then, that we are reminded that Jesus is indeed the Vine, and that you and I are branches.  “Abide in me as I in you.”                      Amen.

My thanks to the Rev. King Oehmig, writing in Synthesis, May 1, 2005 edition, for his helpful commentary.