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May 14, 2006 I had a roommate whose past included a fair amount of partying. Trading stories one evening after dinner, she told me how years before, long before she got her life straightened out, she had staggered home after hours of rowdiness out on the town. Rather than go directly to bed to sleep off the effects of her late night, she decided that she would have just one more beer and then turn in. She stumbled into the kitchen, fumbled through the fridge, and then bottle in hand found her way to the living room couch. As soon as she sat down, her much-ignored cat climbed up into her lap and demanded attention. She relented and began to scratch the cat's ears. Her cat, being a true cat, wasn't satisfied with just ears, though. Making her wishes known, she stretched herself out as long as could be so that no part of her furry self would go untended. The woman was happy to comply. She laid her inebriated hand on the top of the cat's head, and drew it firmly down over its silky shoulders, over its long torso, and then as she got to the tail, she wrapped her fingers around it for the long, firm stroke that her cat so dearly loved. And as she did, as the cat's tail passed through her grip, part of it broke free and came off in her hand! The woman leapt up screaming, certain in her drunkenness that she was responsible. Only later when she had sobered up and could listen to the veterinarian's reasoned explanation did the woman learn that this was not the case at all. The best the vet could figure was that the cat's tail had been sliced badly in a fight. Rather than mending normally, that section of tail had cut itself off from the rest of its body. And so as with the docking of a lamb's tail, the vet had gone on to say, it was only a matter of time before that part of the tail withered, died, and fell off. In order to stay alive, a tail needs the rest of the cat, just as Jesus reminds us that a branch--in order to grow and bear fruit--requires a life-giving vine. Neither tails nor branches are equipped to sustain themselves. "I am the true vine," we hear Jesus say to his disciples here at the end of John's Gospel. He says this while preparing them for the eventuality of his death. Because this is Eastertide and not Lent, because we are standing on the solid ground of Christ's resurrection, we know that when he speaks of himself as the vine and the disciples as the branches Jesus is speaking mystically. "I am the true vine," Jesus tells his disciples. His abiding presence will continue even when he is not among them in body. Even when Jesus' life is cut short, they will not be cut off from his life-giving love. "Abide in me," Jesus invites them, "as I abide in you." An invitation the disciples can joyfully accept and even bank on. Or an invitation they are free to decline. Because Jesus knows how human they are, he knows they won't just make this decision to rely on his vine-love just once but many times in the days and years ahead. So Jesus offers this wise counsel: "Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing." Let me tell you something you already know. Every living thing, in order to stay alive, needs to remain connected to its source. Not one solitary twig, not one slender shoot can grow to fullness on its own. Not a single one of those cuttings I see so carefully bundled and set out on the neighbor's curb will experience the joy of growth, the delight of maturity later in the season. Why? You know why. Nothing lives long that loses contact with what sustains it. Abide in me as I abide in you, Jesus says. In my imagination, I hear him giving this wonderful soliloquy: Despite what your eyes might tell you, despite how it seems and even sometimes feels, we are not separate one from the other, you and I. We are intertwined, woven together, linked so inextricably that the life I have I readily share with you and the life you have is shared with me. Call this love because it is love's nature to offer itself in this way. Live with me in the very same way that I live with God--connected always. Let me give you everything you need to be fruitful, because this is my joy. A joy that will complete yours. The vineyard image Jesus chose that day with the disciples was one deeply rooted in their experience. Grapes glistening on the vine was a familiar sight in their world. And grape growing a vital vocation. But Jesus meant more than to employ a metaphor drawn down from the hillsides of the disciples' lives. He was drawing upon the richness of their Jewish tradition, a faith rooted in the understanding that God had always been Israel's vine-dresser and Israel always God's beloved vineyard. Had Jesus been in a maternal mood that day he gathered the disciples together and spoke in vineyard metaphor, he could just as easily have spoken of pregnancy and been every bit as successful. Invoking the image of a woman bearing a child, Jesus could have emphasized how happily God carries us, how God gladly nourishes us with God's own self while we grow held and protected by the embrace of God's perfect love. Or, had Jesus lived in our time, he might have adjusted a popular phrase to suit his purposes. You know the saying "Everywhere you go, there you are." Jesus could have quickly reshaped that saying into "Everywhere you go, there I am, too." No matter the metaphor or phrase, the challenge for us is go beyond grasping the notion to embodying its truth. That is, to really live and move and have our being grounded in a vibrant relationship with a God whose deep joy it is to support and sustain us anywhere and everywhere life takes us. Anywhere. Everywhere. On the day of his wife's funeral, a father was struggling to put his young son to bed. "Daddy, where is Mommy?" the little boy kept pleading, no answer enough. "Where is Mommy? When is she coming back?" Unable to satisfy his son, the father picked him up out of his little bed and set him down in his own. As they lay there side by side, the boy reached his hand through the darkness and placed it on his father's face, asking, "Daddy, is your face toward me? If your face is toward me, I think I can go to sleep." Offering his son words of assurance, the father was then moved to prayer. "O God, the way is dark and I do not see my way through it right now, but if your face is toward me, somehow I think I can make it." Everywhere we go, God is there with us, abiding with us so intimately that we are free, like branches, to do what we were born to do: reach toward the light and grow the fruit of faith. But remember that Jesus speaks of vine and branches. Branches, plural. Not branch, singular. Jesus is speaking to us all together, not privately. He is speaking to us as a community, not as a collection of individuals who worship together in the same place at the same time. When Jesus says abide in me as I abide in you, what he really means to say is "abide in me as I abide in y'all. All 'you'ens.'" Now churches, like individuals, have a choice. We can hear Jesus' words, commit them to memory, and then go on about the business of being the church. Or we can hear them and commit ourselves to letting them spring to life in us. Nearly every church I know experiences reluctance to take Jesus at his word when he says he's the vine and we're the branches. Wander outside any sanctuary and into a committee meeting and you'll know exactly what I mean. Even if we don't say it in words, our actions are telling. We church folk are quick to rely on our own resources and reluctant to actively draw upon the reserves of the Christ-vine present among us. "Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing." Jesus isn't on some kind of ego trip here; he's simply stating a spiritual truth. To the extent that we open ourselves to God's working and God's will, we will receive all that we need to bear the fruits of love. But because leadership in the church has so often been
about bearing responsibility, we don't enough
know how turn to the ever-abiding Christ as we go about
being the church. Which helps explain why we so often
keep pumping financial and human resources into branches
whose fruit-bearing days are long gone. But not always. One of the heartening, enlivening things about pastoring here is seeing how open our Council is to trusting in a new way, a more faith-filled way, to go about being "leader-branches." Instead of believing that it is our task alone to grow the church--numerically, financially, and in every other way--the Council is coming to the increased awareness that God has a huge investment in us and that if we will let God, God will supply what is needed. Now don't get me wrong. No one on the Council is standing around, just waiting for God to produce everything. Branches need to be about branching out, reaching out, growing strong. This we must do. But what we must never do is attempt to be the vine. Because if we try this, we will die trying. Council member, committee member, regular or occasional helper-outer, you and I can never allow ourselves to fall prey to the notion that it falls to us to sustain and support the life of the church. Only God can do this. Bless their beautiful, Christ-filled hearts, the Council has trusted my suggestion that we come together in new ways. So when we meet now, the Council doesn't start with a roll call and a review of the evening's agenda. We begin with worship so that we are fed spiritually and so that as we move into deliberations, we aren't relying on ourselves to make decisions so much as we are discerning God's direction and indicating our willingness to go where God wants to take us. From where I stand in the vineyard of the Lord, I see lots of tender, lively shoots on this branch called church leadership; ones that weren't there even a year ago. Shoots that seem to me to have loads of fruit-bearing potential. Rather than doing what so many churches (dying churches) insist on doing: clinging to the dead wood of yesterday's lifeless habits, what a joy to see our Council branching out in faith to rely on God's greening power. I'm not alone in this joy. After all his talk of branches and vines, Christ spoke of it. Do you remember what he said? Here, let me help you. He said this: "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete." I don't know about you, but joy like this is hard to say no to! Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen
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