Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
My first parishes were in rural Pennsylvania and like in any rural area, growing food was a big part of the culture. People still canned good in the summer, made their own vegetable soup and apple butter. One of my parishioners, an elderly matriarch of the congregation, had a unique apple tree in her front yard. In the fall, it produced five different kinds of apples. When it was young, different branches had been grafted on to the same tree trunk. It was a marvel!
Jesus tells us today that he is the true vine, and we are the branches. It is a metaphor filled with great power. We call ourselves the body of Christ, his church. It is an image of intimacy and union. The passage is filled with the word “abide”. “Abide in me”, Jesus says. What does it mean “to abide”?
Abide always carries with it the sense of permanence and commitment. It conveys the idea of belonging, of identifying with, of being a part of something; it has a homey, warm quality. If you’ve ever moved in your life, you can relate to the idea that it takes time for a new house and a new town or location to feel like home, like you belong there. You have to put down roots, establish yourself, find a doctor, a mechanic, make friends, get to know the bank teller by name, live through at least four seasons and make, most of all, a commitment to the place. You will know it has happened when you start referring to your former home as “the place I used to live”. You really can have only one true home at a time.
When you abide in a place or with someone, you change. You adopt their values, their customs. You identify yourself with them. You live in them and they in you. You become an extension of them. You become a “clone” in some way. We Lutherans teach our children that they are to become a “little Jesus” to our neighbor in need”. What we mean by this of course is that we see our neighbor through the lens of the cross. Where is my neighbor in need? What is her pain? Is he lonely? Is she suffering? Are her basic needs being met? Is he doing self-destructive things that I can draw to his attention? I am to help my neighbor in any way that I can because I abide in the true vine. I abide in Christ. There is always a cost to me in terms of my energy or resources, but Jesus has made me my brother and my sister’s keeper. To love others is to bear fruit.
It is interesting how Jesus says in this passage that every branch that bears fruit is to be pruned so that it bears more fruit. There is only so much life, and so much energy in a tree, yet a trees nature is to produce as many blossoms as possible. After the blooms turn into tiny fruit, a grower will “thin” the tree. This mean she examines cluster of fruit and takes off four and leaves only the biggest one. The energy of the branch then is given to this one fruit and it grown up to be large. The logic holds true for individual Christians, and for churches. We can’t do all things. There is only so much energy and so many resources. We have to match our abilities and our resources to the needs that the Holy Spirit places in front of us. Knowing which buds to pluck and which to nurture requires our prayer and the discernment of the Holy Spirit. Whatever God wants us to do, God directs us toward. You simply need to be attentive and continue to abide in Him
Jesus says that every branch that bears no fruit is to be removed. It is useless. It takes life and energy away from the tree. Yet sometimes we have terrible difficulty doing that kind of pruning because some of those non-fruit producing branches are our favorites. We all have weaknesses; they seem to be given randomly. Some people are stingy. Some folks are prone to gossip. Some are vain and self-aggrandizing, others a little lazy. They are character flaws. Everyone gets a few as well as a random assortment of strengths, talents and graces from God. The struggle is to so abide in the Word of God, and stay close to the tree, that we continuously cut out from our lives what is self-destructive or “death producing” and redirect our lives and ourselves to what produces fruit in us. It is a life-long struggle.
I was watching TV this week and I saw some remarkable things. A woman whose face was horrible disfigured had a face grafting. She was literally given a new face. We can transplant and graft new arms and legs on people. An acquaintance of our secretary Cathy has just received two new forearms and hands in a hospital in Pittsburgh. It seems unimaginable. The man is over 40 and he received two arms and hands from a young man who was 24 who died in a car wreck. There is a metaphor for us. We who are grafted on to the true vine become a part of the body of Christ. Christ’s hands fuse with our hands; Christ’s heart with our heart; most importantly as St. Paul said in Philippians Christ’s mind with our mind as in, “let this same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus, a divine, servant’s mind.
Every week, every Sunday, we come to church because we abide in Christ. We hear God’s word so that our minds and hearts are transformed. Like electric cars that need to be re-charged, we come to our energy source. We present ourselves to God. We offer ourselves to God both in envelop and in person, in substance and in presence. When my last child Eliza was born, the doctor asked me to cut her umbilical cord. I resisted the request at first, but later agreed to do it. It was a bittersweet event. The umbilical cord unites us to our mothers; we literally draw our life from theirs. We are two, yet we are one. We take oxygen, nutrients, everything from the blood of our originators. (Hold up the chalice). This chalice is our umbilical cord. It holds the energy we need to produce fruit. It carries forgiveness, love, mercy, grace, the loving kindness of our divine originator. It is available to us every week. We will never be cut off unless we absent ourselves. We take life from Jesus as he comes to us in the bread and wine which God transforms into Jesus’ very self. “This is my body, given for you…This is my blood shed for you so that you may abide in me, and I in you, so that you may bear fruit”.
That’s as good, as it gets.
In the True Vine’s name,
Amen.
Who We Are