Easter 5 Year B

Can we city folk really know anything about vineyards?

John 15:1-8

In today’s Gospel, Jesus compares himself to a grapevine, and he compares us to the branches on that vine; he further compares God to the vine dresser. Jesus tends to use a lot of allegories and metaphors that would conjure up familiar images for his first century listener.

Last week we were dished up the image of shepherds caring for their sheep.  Elsewhere Jesus talks about farmers growing wheat, and sowers sowing seed and laborers in the vineyard. And this week we hear of vines and branches, pruning and bearing fruit for the harvest.

These are beautiful representations, but the only problem here is that I grew up in Los Angeles, and the closest I ever got to farm animals, while growing up, was on a one-day trip to the petting zoo at Knotts Berry Farm!

Let me put it this way; if I were to tell you all that I know about grapevines in a sermon in church, we would already be about halfway through the recitation of the Nicene Creed,

However, this Gospel of the vine and the branches is one of the most beautiful in the New Testament, so I thought it was worth a little extra investigation.

I did live in Amador County, California for 22 years. It’s a place that is famous for its Shenandoah Valley wines. I ought to be able to give a little first-hand knowledge about vines and their branches.

I remember I left the office one day, and I drove up to a large vineyard near the town of Pine Grove. I pulled over, got out of the car and took a little walk through the vineyard. I looked at row after row of vines and their branches, and I observed a few things about them that I think might be of interest to all of us in the church.

The first thing that I noticed was how well-pruned they were.   I mean these plants were literally sculptured, but do you know what? I must have walked by a hundred or more vines, and I didn’t see one branch pruning another branch! I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the job of pruning, shaping and otherwise trimming those branches must be the job of someone besides the branches themselves. 

And Jesus said, I am the true vine, and Abba, my God, is the Vine grower.  It is God who does the pruning and shaping of the branches. It is no one else’s responsibility! 

Oh, if only we, the church, could learn that lesson, really learn it!

So many seem to be worrying about the church’s decline these days. Well, is it any wonder?  For so long we have been handing out pruning shears complete with explicit instructions on how to trim and shape our poor wayward and withering neighbors.

It happens every time the church sees herself primarily in the role of the dispenser of moral uprightness instead of the giver of the Good News that says, the Vine loves every single branch equally!

It happens every time the church says, I’m sorry, you don’t conform to our creed. 

It happens every time the church says, I’m sorry you don’t meet the minimum canonical standards.

It happens every time the church talks so loudly about shoulds and should nots that one can’t hear a whisper about the forgiveness of sins.

Abba God is the vine grower. Leave the pruning and the sorting to God.

Along those same lines, it’s unbelievable to me that people turn this beautiful and poetic Gospel into an allegory on judgment.

The primary purpose of pruning isn’t to teach the branches a lesson or to give them their just deserts. Pruning is an act of caring and nurturing for the branches.

Why is it so easy for us to take the image of God as a vine grower and turn it into an image of God as the threshing machine operator?  God is a loving grower. God isn’t afraid to get a little dirt on the hands. God doesn’t even consider the dirt dirty! God loves and nurtures, shapes, stands back, and then says, it is very good.

Now I noticed something else about the vine branches I visited that day. I noticed that they didn’t seem to be able to DO anything on their own to be fruitful.

At one point, I looked around to make sure no one was watching me, and that no one except the branches were close enough to hear me. I walked up to one of the vines, and I yelled at it. I really did.  I had to be sure. I told it to START PRODUCING FRUIT.

But nothing happened.  Nothing.

You see, once the vine growers have done their jobs, all the branches must do to bear fruit is to stay connected to the vine.

And Jesus said, I am the vine, and you are the branches.  Those who live in me and I in them will bear abundant fruit.

There is a fable about a very large, industrial-sized grease-making machine.  It was, in fact, so large that it took up an entire building.

One day, some people were given a tour of this huge machine.  The tourists were amazed at all the gears, pistons, giant springs, hydraulic lifts and shut off valves. The guide told the tourists that this machine literally produced tons and tons of grease every week. They were all amazed.  Then someone asked, How do you ship all that grease once it is manufactured?

The guide said, Oh we don’t ship the grease anywhere.  All the grease that this machine produces is used to grease its own gears, pulleys and hydraulics.

Unfortunately, this has been an apt metaphor of the church for far too long.  

But Jesus is telling us today, that the church isn’t meant to run like a machine. The church was never meant to be an organization. The church was meant to be an ORGANISM, a living, breathing organism.  I am the vine; you are the branches.

It’s so easy to see this Gospel as being all about prescribing ways for people to become more fruitful. It’s so easy to take this Gospel and stand in the pulpit and say, You people need to be more productive. You need to strive harder. You need to get more involved. You need to be more loving, more patient, more self-controlled, more energetic, more this and more that, and then some more, and if you start doing that, you will somehow find that connectedness to Christ that you’ve been looking for and that brought you to this church in the first place.

My dear friends in Christ, I know that’s the mathematical equation that we all grew up with, but it’s time for a new math! Run the equation backwards, and it will all add up.  This Gospel isn’t about results, it’s about relationships.

Jesus says very simply, I am the vine; you are the branches.  Those who live in me and I in them will bear abundant fruit.

The church doesn’t need to be in the business of coaxing people to work harder. The church needs to convince people that they are connected.

Some of my colleagues tell me that if I keep preaching this stuff that soon there won’t be anyone doing anything. I usually just laugh when they say that. I don’t tell them that there isn’t a day go by when I don’t hear some story about parishioners preparing meals for the sick, or mowing lawns, or fixing plumbing for someone who can’t do those kinds of things, or visiting in the hospital and the list goes on. I preached it for over 30 years, and I had many of my folks doing just those kinds of things.

I think they did all those things not as a means of getting connected, but because they knew that they ARE connected. Because they believe that they are THAT close to Christ! 
Because they believed that Jesus Christ the Vine is their source of divine nourishment. Because they believed that Jesus Christ the Vine saves them. Because they believed that Jesus Christ the Vine makes them whole. Because they believed that Jesus Christ the Vine gave them purpose.

And because they knew that should they ever disconnect themselves from the Vine, the Vine Grower will forgive them and even graft them back onto the Vine which is their true home. 

When you believe these things, then bearing fruit will not be a problem. Your branch will droop with good fruit. 

Finally, the last thing that I noticed when I surveyed those grapevines is that the vine seems to get lost in the branches.  The branches so intertwine and encircle the vine that all you see is the plant and the fruit.

I think that’s exactly the way Christ lives among us. As Robert Capon, the author of the Astonished Heart, puts it. Christ doesn’t come to save us FROM the world, but to save us IN the world. . .

The Incarnation wasn’t a one-time event, but an event for all time!

Christ among us . . . Christ within us . . . Christ around us.

Is there no end to the Good News?

But if, after all of this, you are still just dying to have me tell you something that you should be doing. If you want more than anything else for me to give you some homework this week, then I will say this to you:

Go out there and make sure that all the other branches know about this wonderful Vine!