Vines & the Connected Life

Epiphany UCC

John 15:1-8

Title: Vines and the Connected Life

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vineyard keeper. He removes any of my branches that don’t produce fruit, and he trims any branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even more fruit. You are already trimmed because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. A branch can’t produce fruit by itself, but must remain in the vine. Likewise, you can’t produce fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit. Without me, you can’t do anything. If you don’t remain in me, you will be like a branch that is thrown out and dries up. Those branches are gathered up, thrown into a fire, and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified when you produce much fruit and in this way prove that you are my disciples.”

I know that spring has been a long-time coming around here, but just the few warmers days like the ones we had this past week reminded me of the first spring I experienced here at Epiphany, and in the parsonage, the spring of 2012. One Saturday morning I walked out to the Peter Zbinden Garden, which is in-between the church and the parsonage, and found almost every major shrub or small tree had been pruned to an inch of its life – so much so that I thought surely Edward Scissorhands had made an appearance in our garden, and had gone a little crazy. I actually gasped when I saw the sight of it, looking at the all the cut branches on the pathways, and the sheer starkness of it all, of everything being cut back so dramatically. I scurried back into the parsonage back suspecting that it wasn’t Edward Scissorhands who had done the deed, but someone I lived with, a certain Douglas Wilson. I know I must have had a panic look on my face when I asked him what he had done – it looked like a war zone out there – and he calmly explained how this whole gardening and pruning thing worked, which I really know nothing about. But after the carnage in the Garden, I think was I subconsciously going back into the house to tell him that we needed to start packing, because this was probably going to be the shortest pastorate of my career! The life of a pastor’s spouse is an exhausting one, as he will often tell you, and he has spent many of the years we’ve been together helping me to get a clue about things!

And part of the clue I received on that day, and one that I rely on each spring when I see that the garden plants have been pruned to an inch of their life, is that for most plants pruning and cutting back their foliage and branches actually helps those plants and doesn’t harm them – that you are helping the plant rather than hurting it by scaling it back some. The more branches, the more vines, the more leaves a plant produces also means more effort has to be made by the plant to keep itself in good shape, to get nutrients to those new branches and foliage. I am probably not alone in some of ridiculous cluelessness about how all these things work – my parents were gardeners, but I am honestly not very interested in the whole thing, though I like green stuff. And I’m probably not alone in my efforts to try and relate to some of these stories that Jesus told, ones that rely on farming and fishing and vineyards, all of which were so prevalent in Jesus time. We American Christians in the 21st century are asked to understand a parable or a metaphor based on a way of life that most of us don’t live in nowadays, though the meaning of those early texts referencing nature and using it as a spiritual metaphor would have been so obvious to those early listeners of Jesus – unlike me, they would had a clue about what Jesus is speaking about here in our text today.

And what is Jesus talking about here? What he is trying to get us to understand about life, the spiritual life, the kind of life connected to him and to God? As always, context matters here, because we find Jesus speaking to his remaining eleven disciples on the night of his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane – indeed, Judas has already left them, skulking off to betray Jesus to the Romans, telling them where Jesus will be so they can make a clean arrest, far away from the crowds that swamped Jerusalem during the Passover season. As Jesus walks with the disciples to Gethsemane, there is urgency to his words, surely, as he is trying get them to understand that he is about leave them, and yet not leave them, that he will give them the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, they will become bearers of God, the carriers of Divinity itself – they will not be left alone. And then he speaks these words, speaking of himself as being that Divine Vine, and that if they, who bear the divine in them through the Holy Spirit, do not produce good fruit, fruit like compassion, generosity, kindness, righteousness, then God who is the gardener will do what a good gardener would do with a vine that produces no fruit, no grapes – it will be cut off, cut back so that the rest of the plant can thrive. Jesus even points out that already branches and vines have been trimmed off, surely a reference to the ways the crowds coming to hear him have thinned out after a week of him explaining to them that to follow his way, a way of love and justice, will be a difficult thing, a challenging road and that he will not be their violent revolutionary. Remain in him, abide in me, Jesus says - stay connected to him, and he will remain connected to them, to us. And then he points out the obvious – vines, branches die when they aren’t connected to the center vine, the trunk of the tree, the source of their life. The best grapes are the ones closest to the vines, where they can more easily soak up the nutrients, the goodness of vine itself. I remember visiting my aunt and uncle in rural Alabama in the early summer and finding piles of burnt leaves and branches – useless they were, not even worthy of being used in the fireplace. The trunk, the center vine, is the source of life – and if we who are the branches, the recipients of the good stuff, remain connected to that source of life, we will thrive, Jesus implies here, whatever our circumstances. If we become disconnected, moving further and further from the source of life, we will not thrive, and we will be pruned back by God, our Mother and Father, doing what Douglas does each spring in the Zbinden garden, much to continuous wonderment and, frankly, continuous shock. There is even a promise in Jesus’ words here – stay connected and God will connect you with what you ask for in your life – and though that it is a promise not without its problems when it comes to the whole topic of asking and receiving, it is surely meant to be a reminder that the more we abide in God, the fuller and generous and bountiful our lives will be, simply because of simple choice to abide, to remain within the Christ.

And the lesson is so obvious, isn’t it, the metaphor Jesus is using here, when you get how this whole pruning and vine stuff works, about what it means to follow after the way of Jesus, to abide in his words, his teachings, his spirit. We are simply stronger when we attend to our relationship with the Christ, our connection to the Divine. The closer we are to God, the stronger we are as human beings, and the further afield we find ourselves, the further away we are from the vine, from the center of the universe, the weaker we are, and in some ways, we become useless to what God is trying to do in the world. Imagine a pastor telling you that we ought to attend to our connection with God? But also imagine a pastor being brutally honest that even he struggles with attending to his own spiritual life, to his own connection with the Vine that is life itself. So I don’t want to berate those of you who struggle with it as I do, with attending to that connection through attendance in worship or reading Scripture or having some sort of daily spiritual practice – amidst the many thing we do in life, so much of which seemingly must be done, day in and day out, it’s sometimes hard to do, even for me, the professional religious guy. And yet, what I’ve seen over and over again is that the more I abide in the Christ, the more I attend to the life of the spirit, of the soul, the more grounded I am, and the more I am able to do – or, better said, the better I am at doing the things that matter, the things that should be done. There is something about focusing on what matters that clarifies all the things that don’t really matter, that shouldn’t capture my attention or my worry. Somehow, in my effort to become closer to the vine itself, the more I am able to do my own pruning off of all those unnecessary branches in my way too busy life. To abide in the Christ, to remain connected to the Source, means also being able to see how we too have grown useless branches, worries, agendas, obsessions, that need pruning as well. When we refocus on what really matters – God and people, human beings, so many of the other worries like money and career fall away, or at least don’t place themselves as the sole and overwhelming force in our lives. Simply put, refocusing on that which matters refocuses our whole lives.

For me lately, in light of the tumultuous times we are living in and my increasing need to vocalize my disappointment and distress at the direction of the country, I’ve spent more time attending rallies, protests, and the like, which I’ve certainly done over the years but never to the degree that I’ve done lately. These times call for action, at least they do for me, and I’m doing what I can, though I am humbled by all those who do more, the great prophets among us, especially the young prophets, the young truth tellers, which are what prophets do, telling us the difficult truth, the young prophets dealing with DACA and scourge of gun violence in our country. What I’ve found is the more I feel I need to add my voice to speak up and out, the more I’ve gone back to the Source, which for me is the Christ. I’ve found myself clamoring to reconnect to the Vine, to the hope found there, hope being the very nutrient needed by those of us who are despairing at the recent cruelty and meanness that seems to have overtaken this country. Perhaps I do not hate as easily as some – I have other sins like envy that I struggle mightily with – but there are times in these days when my soul just “ain’t right” and then I remember who the Vine is, and what the Vines is and that “who” and “what” is Love, a love embodied for me in this One from Nazareth, this love given flesh and bone. As I think I’ve already talked about in an earlier sermon, the confirmands, whom we’ll actually confirm next Sunday, have been asking some great questions, especially on how we know we are making the right decisions in this life – and I’ve replied with commandments Jesus highlighted – love God and love each other. Love is the vine, and for those tempted to react with something other than love, the Vine, the Source, pulls us back, reminding us that if we abide in Christ, we ultimately abide in love itself, which makes it impossible for hate to be our final response to the cruelties of others. How do we know we are connected to the Vine, to the Source, to the Spirit? We know it by our good works, the fruits of our lives – if love is our response, as difficult as it may be for us to actually practice it, then we are one with the Vine, with the Source. If our response to the cruelties of others or life in general is something else – bitterness, hatred, meanness, then it probably means that somehow and somewhere we have become disconnected to that which matters, the Source of everything, including all of the love within us, and the love we have for others.

It is ironic that we nowadays we spend a lot of time debating how connected we should or want to be with the rest of the world, through such technologies like Facebook, or even how disconnected we want to be with those who are like a toxin to us. The Modern Lesson today surely reminds us of this truth, when Pastor Maclean speaks of the division, the disconnection happening within in her own congregation, and people’s own struggles with how connected they want to be with those they vehemently disagree with. But at times, perhaps like some of you, I feel over-connected, with too much social media, too many connections, and then at other times I feel deeply disconnected from the world. I think for those of us struggling with such issues, of connection and disconnection, the challenge is to become connected or stay connected to that Source – and then from there we will know what and who needs to stay and what and who needs to go. All of us have probably gone through times in our lives when we realized that we were over committed, emotionally and physically, and some things, or even some people needed to be let go. If God prunes away those branches that produce no good fruits, that are no longer life giving, I suppose we can do that as well, though we always need to be careful about this, remembering we are not God, and always keep asking ourselves the question of what love requires of us, what being connected to the Vine might mean when it comes to others. But know this: remembering our own need to connect more deeply to that Vine is a way we can discern what needs to go and what needs to stay in our lives – does this thing, this person, this activity, this career, bring me closer to God or does it continually pull me away from that which matters most, which, according to Jesus, is loving God and loving people? Those are hard questions, but sometimes the pruning of our lives need to happen, just as it seems to happen in our dealings with the Divine. But we must remember this – all of pruning is meant to get us closer to God, and when we are closer to God, we are closer to people, closer to the ones that are easy to love and even closer to those who are bit harder to love. Fuller, healthier and more beautiful shrubs and trees was the whole point of Douglas’ continuous work in the garden, the trimming of the plants so they can thrive in all their greatness. It is the same with us, when God does the same with us in the spiritual vineyard in which She is the gardener. For us, becoming healthier and more beautiful is a side benefit of the pruning we do in our lives, but in the end, it’s actually love that’s the real harvest, love really is the point of the garden itself, and so when we tend to our life in the Spirit, when we intentionally remain, when we intentionally abide more deeply within the Christ, love in all of its beauty, its complexity, its goodness is the gift we receive for being so connected to that which matters most in this life. Amen.