The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of the 5th Sunday of Easter
29 April 2018
Readings:
Acts 8:26-40
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
Psalm 22:24-30
I am not a vine-grower. And while I have lived within an hour or two of Oregon, Napa Valley, Central Coast, and Colorado vineyards for most of my life, and enjoy the fruits of the vine-growers’ labors, I found, in preparing for my sermon this morning, that I had no point of reference for understanding Christ’s metaphor of the vine in today’s gospel without doing a bit of research.
I was surprised to find out that branches on a grape vine are trimmed back to the bud or two closest to the vine every other year to keep the productivity of the vine steady. This is necessary since the branches grow, produce grapes, and then stop producing after they reach two years old. Thus to keep the branches vital they must be in a constant cycle of renewal.
I also discovered that the branches must be tended closely during their flowering in the spring, as fifty to seventy-five buds may grow on a single branch, each capable of producing a cluster of fruit, yet the vine cannot healthily sustain more than fifteen clusters per branch. The healthy branch, then is one that is pruned into balance, maximizing the potential to produce high quality grapes, and also guaranteeing enough resources in reserve to promote healthy growth of the branch itself for long-term survival of the entire vine.
Suddenly Christ’s words, heard in this morning’s gospel story from John, were a lot less cryptic and severe sounding. As it turns out, the vine, the branches, and vine grower are all tied to one another in intimate relationship, depending on one another for health, balance, and ultimate survivability.
In this relationship, we rely on God to help us create and maintain health and balance in our lives. Perhaps this looks like creating a healthy balance between our personal and professional lives, seeking opportunities to act on our faith in worship and outside the doors of the church, and seeking to let go of those things that are beyond our control while concentrating on those things that are within our control, and truly matter to us.
Extending the metaphor, when we periodically find ourselves becoming complacent in our relationships with God and each other, or simply become too unbalanced in our work and daily lives, we quite suddenly find ourselves pruned back—and those sixty extra things we were trying to cram into a hectic schedule pale in comparison to the joyous birth of a child, a tragic illness or death in the family, the loss of a job, or even to the necessity of reconnecting with our spouse or partner. Whatever the cause, that part of our lives that had been out of control or no longer productive is cut off from us, and we either locate ourselves in the cut off portion, feeling lost and abandoned by God, or we turn around and discover that we haven’t been cut off from the vine of Christ’s sustaining love and grace, but rather, through our faith, we are even more strongly tied to God’s love and care—we are trimmed back, and when we’ve had a period of time to recover, we find ourselves ready again to grow—our relationships restored, and our productivity renewed.
What sounded on the surface like a potentially harsh admonition to bear fruit or risk being cut off and burned with the unproductive branches, becomes, instead, the story of our faith, God’s faithfulness, and Christ’s promise to sustain us.
Echoed in John’s words from today’s Epistle, the fruit of God’s vine is the love by which we, as Christ’s body, Christ’s branches, carry on in Christ’s work of bringing God’s kingdom to life in the world around us. Taking a more universalist stance, John goes further than many in his stance that “all who love” know God and do God’s work—a stance we see in Christ’s own ministry of healing the Centurion’s servant, healing the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, healing the Gerasene demoniac, and which we see again see in Philip’s baptizing the eunuch in today’s reading from Acts, as well as in today’s Psalm in which performing of vows to God will be a work of love and service that contributes to drawing all hearts back to God and teaching yet unborn generations of God’s love and care.
Seen in John’s idiom of God being love, and all who love knowing God and doing God’s work, the careful devotion of the vine tender from today’s Gospel becomes an image of our God not as one who seeks to cast us off into the burn-pile, but as one in whom we find sustenance and hope when we find ourselves cut back from our usual routines and ways of being. When we have been cut back to that first or second bud, or when, in other words, most of where we have placed our value or time or effort or identity has been cut off from us, it isn’t then that we’re cut off from God and cast aside. Rather, it is then we are closest to our core, to the vine from which we have grown in the first place. It is then we are closest to God.
It seems fitting that this metaphor of our relationship with God should fall in the midst of our final week of preparations for the re-roofing project. Here we are, a week out from our final service in the church building for the next three months—about to be pruned as it were. Some of us may be feeling like we’re about to be cut off from God or at least from the beloved space in which we worship. We may not know quite how it will feel to be here on Sundays worshipping in the parish hall instead of the church. We may not know quite how our visitors will respond. We may be concerned about having to relocate our different groups that meet on campus. In fact many uncertainties may have us feeling uneasy.
Yet as we prepare to worship together in the parish hall for these next three months, it is also a time of excitement, a time of renewal of community, a time of drawing close to one another as we are pruned back to the vine that sustains us and makes us community in the first place. And that isn’t our magnificent 154 year old building. Rather it is Christ, who is the vine that sustains us in this time of trimming back on what we’re able to do and how we think of ourselves as a worshipping community at Calvary. And it is Christ that brings us together in relationship, drawn around the table of fellowship and mutual service.
Who we are and what we stand for as a community isn’t being cut off from us and cast away. Rather, as our gospel today assures us, these elements of our core identity are in the process of being revitalized, refreshed, and renewed so that we may, grow, bear fruit, and flourish.
May this long awaited season of preparation be a time of celebrating what makes us community, may it be a time of drawing near to one another and working together, may it be a time of prayer and thankfulness, and may we seek to be prepared for whatever new growth and fruitfulness God has in store for us in the days ahead!
Amen.
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