I am the vine, you are the branches. (Gospel). Van Gogh: Branches of an Almond Tree in Blossom 5 th Sunday in Easter, Cycle B May 6 th, 2012
First Reading: Acts 9:26-31 26 When he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples; and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 So he went in and out among them in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29 He spoke and argued with the Hellenists; but they were attempting to kill him. 30 When the believers learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. 31 Meanwhile the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers. Responsive Psalm 22: 26-32 Lector: 26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. All: May your hearts live for ever! Lector: 27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; All: and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. Lector: 28 For dominion belongs to the Lord, All: and he rules over the nations. Lector: 29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, All: and I shall live for him. Lector: 30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, All: 31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it. Second Reading: I John 3:18-24 18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19 And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22 and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.
Gospel Reading: John 15:1-8 15 I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 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. 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. 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. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. Homily The Gospel Reading is one of the most familiar ones in the NT, and one that almost all of us raised in the Christian faith would have heard many times whether we came from protestant/evangelical, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox backgrounds. We should note the similarities between the vine and branches allegory is similar to the parables of the Good Shepherd and the door in chapter 10. We also can see a parallel with the language of the Eucharist: I am the bread of life, and the Apostle Paul extended the idea in his doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ. We see in today s Gospel Reading that Christ is the vine, and his disciples are the branches, connected intimately there is no life apart from the Vine including those of us who follow two thousand years later the vine has continued to live and the branches have grown and proliferated. We see an important point, here, however, that perhaps we have not noticed before. The Father is the vinedresser, that is, the one who will make the decisions as to how to care for the entire plant. Christ and his disciples form an organic whole plant and the Father is the one who prunes and cares for it. Now, we may have wondered about the seemingly punitive idea about the branches that do not bear fruit being cut away. They wither and then are gathered and thrown into the fire. I have thought about this over several years and have gone through several layers of thought about it. We must remember that the context is in the first century. Life was harsh. It sounds like a cruel, harsh judgment but if we think about literal vines, the goal was to produce grapes, to produce food. And the unproductive branches could also be a source of fuel, as in burning them. That is one level. In a world where survival was an issue, nothing could be wasted and everything had to be put to a use. It wasn t a cruel idea; it was merely practical. Even animal dung was put to use, burned and used as fuel! It is still the same in many Third World countries today. Some think that the idea of unproductive, unfruitful branches indicates an excommunication of those followers who proved unworthy, unreliable, and perhaps in some quarters viewed as posing risk for other Christians, leading them astray. Some writers thought that the unfruitful branch idea might have originally been applied to Judas, who betrayed Jesus. NT scholars also say that in the era of 4G being written, there were various heterodoxies that challenged the core proto-orthodox theology that became what is considered orthodox Christianity today. One of these alternative
views that had a long run was Gnosticism. Gnosticism had some good ideas and interesting ideas and some of its features were ultimately integrated into an orthodox view. But Gnosticism was essentially dead by the end of the second century. For the Gospel evangelist, the cutting away of the unfruitful branches meant the Gnostic heretics. Why were the Gnostics viewed as a threat to the young Christian movement? We have some clues in this passage and also in the Second Reading. The Gnostics viewed the fruit of their spiritual path as their own internal deepening and insight their own personal spiritual experience was seen as the apex of spiritual life. Thus, one s own subjective experience was the highest value. There are traces of this concept that can be found in modern life as well, e.g. so-called New Age where one person s idea is viewed as valid as another s. There is a certain satisfaction in terms of figuring things out for ourselves. We may congratulate ourselves on our great insights. If this is the end of the road, then the Gospel today says it is not true discipleship connected to the Vine. It has another source, comes from another plant. We have our modern-day equivalents that can sometimes go to greater extremes, for example, those who spin endlessly in theological or philosophical speculations. This is not to say that those disciplines are a waste of time they are not. Some go to psychotherapists and try to reconstruct meaning for past events in their lives. And this is certainly not to say that counseling or therapy is a waste of time. But aside from our intellectual or emotional satisfaction, we need to consider what is netted from them? Taken in proper perspective, they are useful. But we must remember that we are the ones who produced them. How have our lives changed as a result and what have we done as an outflow from that change? Internally, yes, as branches on the Vine, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. How do we know that our spiritual insight is of God and authentic or simply part of our own mental production, from another source or plant as it were? If we don t love one another, if we don t serve others, if we don t produce fruit, this week s scriptures would say we have missed the mark as Jesus disciples, as his branches. We have lost our organic Wholeness. In numerous places, scripture tells us the truth about ourselves: we are not capable of sustaining real love for ourselves or for others without being in relationship to the Source, the Vine. In the young Christian movement, the endpoint of the spiritual path was to bring others into spiritual community. The external test or proof that one had achieved union with God (a mutual indwelling, a mystical relationship) was not simply the achievement of awareness and insight. Rather, the test of union with God was whether or not we keep his commandments remember from last week, to do the commandments, e.g. to act accordingly, to do the work of the Spirit. Or another way of thinking of the test is whether or not we produce spiritual fruit. By their fruits you will know them an empirical test! This is the contrast with the Gnostics that was being made in today s readings. If we are uncertain of our own standing with God, the Epistle tells us that there are several sources of help for us to find reassurance. There are the external tests and the
internal ones that give us assurance. If we know that we love one another and serve others, we are producing fruit and we are assured of our standing as Christians. Our internal or subjective experience is not always so reliable, because we are human beings who are broken reeds and who are prone to be blown in the winds of change or distress. But I John gives us some help for sorting out our feelings and thoughts. If our conscience is clear, then we have been freed from the lost energy of obsessing and spinning our wheels. As we stay centered in Christ, we are free indeed! And if we are one of those anxious worry-warts who is still uncertain of how God views us, then we may trust that God knows us better than we know ourselves. An important principle in gaining wisdom in the Christian life is that we do not have to know everything. We can learn to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity. There are some things that we may never know or understand in this lifetime. Does that mean that our faith is weak? No, that is the reality of being in this world. My prayer when I am uncertain is that He will reveal to me what I should know at this moment, and when the time is right for me to know more, I will trust in God to bring it to my awareness when I am mature enough and ready to hear it. The Gift of the Holy Spirit confirms for us that we belong, that we are his even when we cannot close the gap intellectually or emotionally. What we need to continue to grow and mature is to be connected to our Vine and as branches we receive his nutrients and live in his Light which will bring our spiritual fulfillment in serving those who are in need.
Lord of the one true Vine, in you we live and move and have our being. We are your branches, spindly and slight and fragile. Please ask your Father to prune us (though gently). We want to bear more of your fruit. Needs come in droves with their hands outstretched. You, know each one better than we do. You know that we need one thing only, one. You Prayers only. Copyright 2012, Anne M. Osdieck. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.
Books Worth Reading: Andreas J. Kostenberger and Michael J. Kruger (2010). The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture s Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped our Understanding of Early Christianity. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway These authors are evangelical scholars whose intent is to examine the Bauer hypothesis, an idea that orthodox Christian theology was a development that won out over a myriad of diverse ideas in the first century of the faith. They say that the core of orthodoxy was always there which I don t seriously doubt but there were a lot of competing ideas in the first three centuries of Christianity. They say the Bauer theory can be discredited, and they claim that this theory is the basis for the work of Bart Ehrman, a well-known NT scholar who came out a few years ago as an agnostic. The evangelicals have debated with Bart, and while they are always pleasant in these debates, Bart is a man they love to hate. I think the polemical coloring of this book is a little too overdrawn and it depicts Bart Ehrman s scholarship in some ways which I think are unfair. (I ve read many of Ehrman s books and have gone through four or five courses with him back in North Carolina in the past five or six years.) So although I began to read this book with a healthy skepticism, I believe that it offers a healthy counterpoint, and brings in some useful information. But you can tell from the subtitle of their book, they are out to take out what they regard as the postmodern scourge, as it were. Ho-hum. I ll keep you posted on my reactions after I finish the book. James D. G. Dunn (2010). Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. This book is written in response to Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado, whose books we have previously reviewed here, who posit the view that worship of Jesus was taking place in the earliest generation of Christianity not a later development of high Christology that arose later, as some have said. I have just started this book, but I felt it was of interest to post because it will offer some counterpoint to those we have earlier cited. It is noted that the book was dedicated to Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado as partners in dialogue so I think that augers well for new perspectives that Dr. Dunn will offer on this topic. Diarmaid MacCulloch (2009). Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. NY: Viking. I am only part-way through this book which had been recommended to me by Fr. Jim Farris+ and it does help pull together the history and developments in Christianity across the first two thousand years, and then the author who is an Oxford history professor goes on to address developments in our own era and where they may lead us. I should note that MacCulloch has also produced a BBC series entitled A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. NY: Ambrose Video Publishing, Inc. It is just excellent, and will be part of our lending collection (see St. Junia s website for details).