From the Gospel of John, chapter fifteen, verses one through eight, we listen to the words of Jesus

Transcription

1 1 From the Gospel of John, chapter fifteen, verses one through eight, we listen to the words of Jesus 15:1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 15:2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 15:3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 15:8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. This is the Word of the Lord Thanks be to God Frequently when we read scripture, and especially when we re reading Jesus in scripture, we re bogged down in metaphor. Today we

2 2 don't struggle so much with the metaphor, that is straightforward. What we might struggle with is pulling meaning and application from the metaphor. As we know, sometimes the simplest instructions are the hardest to carry out. As you listened to the text, I m not sure what jumped out at you, but one word that caught my attention was abide. We hear the word abide eight times in our eight verses. We can either chalk this up to the fact that our ancestors didn t have a thesaurus handy, or we can dive a little deeper into the word and try to figure out what is so important about it. The greek word is Meno, and occurs all over the New Testament. And in addition to 1 abide, it translates to endure, last, remain, stay, live...it is a word with some degree of permanence. When Jesus says these words he is speaking to his disciples. Actually he s speaking to eleven of his disciples, as this speech happens after Judas has left. This is, in chronological if not lenten study order, the last of the I am statements that Jesus gives. It is part of his farewell discourse, he is giving instructions for when he is gone, and they know that time is coming soon. And in some of his final moments with them, Jesus chooses to let 1

3 3 them know that he will always be with them. That as they abide in him, he too will abide in them. An appropriate and comforting time to use the lingering meno. It is also of note that since he is talking to the disciples, 2 he s using what one commenter calls insider language. He s not making exclusionary claims, or intending this as a call to evangelism, he s sending a message to those who already believe. We read the text in the New Revised Standard Version this morning, but now that we ve explored the context a bit, I want to read it to you again, this time from The Message paraphrase. The way that Eugene Peterson has crafted the passage really speaks to the permanence of Christ, the activeness of the passage, the comfort the disciples must have felt hearing the words, and by changing things up, he allows for words and messages in addition to abide to shine through I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken. 2 FOTW, 477, Barbara J. Essex

4 4 4 Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. 5-8 I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is when you produce grapes, when you 3 mature as my disciples. What I love about this version is that it pulls out the garden imagery, and it also brings to life the greek word meno. It doesn t have the same impact as repeating abide over and over, but it gets the message across just the same and opens the passage up in a different way. As we move from the language into the metaphor, I have a confession to make. Despite the plants in my office, and my love for trees and flowers and farmers markets, I have never had a real, producing garden. And I m not entirely sure I could swing it. I am the product of many green thumbs. My dad s father was an urban farmer decades before 3 8&version=MSG

5 5 it was cool. His backyard in Lexington, KY was full of vegetables, flowers, and chickens. My mother s parents met while at Ohio State for grad school. My grandmother was doing an experiment on carnations and it wasn t turning out the way she wanted, and my grandfather, an agriculture student, informed her that it was just carnations. Nothing to get so upset about. They could grow anything. For years in their Central Pennsylvania home you could always find orchids growing in the basement. Grampy would go to the store, see a sad little orchid dying and bring it home to rescue it. My grandmother is not such a soft touch, but she still has a few orchids that bloom every year. My parents inherited the ability to grow anything, and all of my growing up we had a garden full of tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, roses and poppies. Mom even grew kale before it became a hip vegetable. While I am usually able to keep house plants alive, I've not grown any vegetables, though I have managed to kill a number of basil plants. Part of that is circumstance, I live in a small apartment and don t have a yard or good sunshine on my porch, but part if it is labor. It s a lot of energy to keep a garden. To work the land, to connect to the soil and to the very dirt of our creation. The plants may

6 6 seem to magically sprout and grow and bear fruit, but there are many steps between seed and tomato. There are three parts to our little garden today. We have God as the divine gardener, Jesus as the vine, and the disciples as the branches. I think the vine does a lot of hard work here. I was telling friends that I would be preaching on this particular text and one of them said she loves it and finds it comforting because it s so clear- she is NOT the vine. Jesus is the vine. We can relinquish that need to control or hold up because it s just not our role- even though we ARE closely and intimately connected to the vine. The message says in verse 4- Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. While we can and should find comfort in Jesus as the vine, we can also acknowledge our relationship with God the gardener. And through that relationship our need to be pruned. If you re a gardener, or grew up around them, then the language of pruning and fruit bearing may speak to you. If you ve never kneeled in the dirt, then you may be wondering what in the world Jesus is talking about. It can seem a bit harsh, to think that you have to cut things off or out. It

7 7 may feel counterproductive to scale back something that is fruitful. But if we look into vines and their growth patterns and the work of the vinedresser, it makes a lot of sense. You may have noticed that vines, if left alone, will do whatever they want. They grow in any and every direction, get tangled up on themselves, cover and smother things around them. Vines require someone to keep them. Someone to cut off what isn t healthy or productive, and to carefully craft what is healthy and productive into more bountiful and flavorful growth. When we translated this passage in seminary there were folks who had seen gardens go through a season. Seen bushes and plants cut down, seemingly to nothing, only to grow back the following year looking magnificent. They had watched as underproductive sprouts were weeded to make room for the thriving plants. Now, I m sure there s another sermon in there somewhere, but for today as we look at this simple but elaborate metaphor, we see that the Gardener tends to the garden in a way that speaks of attention, and care, and love- and the vines and the branches respond. The disciples were trying to figure out what a community of faith would look like after Jesus death. How it would be to carry on as a

8 8 minority in a culture that actively discouraged and disapproved of their faith. And this metaphor of vines and branches- and the others we've explored- shepherd, bread, light- are all ways Jesus is communicating to the disciples, giving them strength for the next stage of the journey. As they move on together the disciples, and really all Christians since then, have to learn what it means to be branches on the vine together. What it means to be community together. My mother had a grape vine in our back yard for a few years, and what always stuck out to me was how intricate and unique the vines and branches were. Each branch looped and curled in its own way, but each still held fast to the vine. Our Christian communities today are much the same. We share a common belief in Christ, but the ways in which we respond to that good news are many and varied. Perhaps this is why Jesus does not say he is a tree standing in the middle of the field by himself, Jesus says I am the true vine, and vines are communal plants, with branches and grapes all over the place. Wound together and around each other for sure, but just as the vine dresser intends, not on their own.

9 9 We may have responsibilities to the vine, but we are not the vine. It is liberating in a lot of ways, and yet how many of us are good at recognizing that? At letting ourselves be just another branch instead of trying to be the vine- or even the gardener? I think that it requires a lot of trust and faith, something that actual vines and branches don't ever have to think about. The branch doesn't know any different than to just assume that the vine will hold it. But because we are human, because we have had life experiences and peaks and valleys- we don't always trust the vine. At least, I know I don't. It is all too easy to forget that I'm not in charge, that I don't get to decide what happens or which direction I'm going to twist into. But the comfort in this text, the resonance of meno, of abiding, and staying, and living- is that I don't have to. I have life abundant in Jesus Christ, I have a divine gardener cultivating my life so that I may bear fruit and witness to the good news. And I have a community of other branches, all relying on the true vine. All connected and intertwined in a way that is truly holy. Let us pray. Gracious God, holy vinedresser, we give thanks and praise for your hand in our lives, and for the true vine, Jesus Christ. Help us to be ever

10 10 mindful of our role as branches, help us to rely on the true vine, help us to respond to you our gardener, and be nourished by the Holy Spirit. Amen.