John 15:1-11
“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. 9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
“So that your joy may be complete.” It seems like sort of a throw-away sentence at the last of this long, repetitive reading of “abide in me”; “abide in me”; “abide in me”. I’ve been chewing on this all week, because I really do want our joy to be complete. I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling so joyful, at least not now. Maybe you’re in the same place or worse. Last week we explored Romans 8 and that “all of creation is groaning towards redemption and hope”. This week we look at hope and its relationship to joy in this concrete, but also really complicated text.
A few years ago, (when we had no idea how good we were having it), it was 2018 and we were using this text as the very centerpiece of our entire Lenten journey. One of the natural aspects of this particular text, especially in Lent, is to deeply ponder which of our behaviors, mindsets and words are useless, because they are fruitless to God’s role and God’s will for our lives. They bear no fruit. We prayerfully seek for the vine grower, (the Father), to prune and remove every branch that bears no fruit, and yet…we really don’t want that to happen. We want to keep living the way we want.
But now… we find ourselves in a different place than three years ago. We’ve been hunkered down for way too long. We’ve been forced to be physically detached from one another and not much fruit was born in the last year. And, even if it was, it was hardly a bumper crop! We’ve been homebound and, as much as we want to believe that we endured it well, most of us have not abided in God’s love, at least the way God intends. Our self-centered and rugged individualistic ways were more apparent than ever as we dealt with disappointment after disappointment. We ramped up our hostilities as petulant children and petulant spouses and co-workers and we sought to place blame on every corner we could.
If we are honest with ourselves and with God, we keep wondering if we’re ever going to feel joy again, even in part. The lament of “when are things going to get back to normal?” continue to come. Even as we begin in-person worship again today, there’s only a portion of the vine here, able to come, albeit it’s still without singing—although it’s a joy to hear the five of you singing in parts. I almost started to burst into tears.!!! And those hugs that we can’t give each other?? I’m tired of “air hugs”! Even people who don’t like hugs want hugs now!
But that’s the end of the bad news, because we are a “good news” people and we are still attached to the vine and the vine, this vine, wants us to turn towards the sun and to begin to bear fruit. This is not my sales pitch to catch up on your offerings and volunteer for events and projects and get work done on your committees, although that is needed, too; and we’re a little behind but It’s deeper than that. It’s a call to visualize and to reimagine community–this community–and what’s possible, and what’s needed in this new paradigm.
Abiding in God’s love and bearing fruit, as scholar Gail O’Day says, means to “completely abandon our self-centered ways where there are no free-standing individuals, but branches who encircle one another completely. Branches that are actually almost indistinguishable from one another…impossible to determine where one ends and the next begins. Where there is [an integral] mutuality and indwelling”. This needs to be a place where there are no individual accomplishments or position or gifts better than another. Instead, each branch seeks only to grow the sweetest fruit—not to win the contest at the county fair, but to be part of the best wine to be served at the table, this table.
I realize what I’m talking about is not easy. Not everyone has the depth and maturity to be honest with themselves about their self-serving ways. But ask yourself, if you were one of the disciples coming to the Passover, knowing that this dinner was going to be different and special, because Jesus kept talking about it and foreshadowing it, where would you sit?
Would you fight over the best seat, next to Jesus?
Would you take the last seat at the table, because you wanted to be as far away from all the difficulty and strain?
Would you be on time? or casually show up after everything started?
Would you bring gifts of bread and wine, so that no one would run out?
Or would you, yourself, open up your own home for the meal?
Or would you be so distracted at this table by the sidebar conversations and the complaining?
Or would you complain about your position, not close enough to Jesus?
Or gossiping about who really is the betrayer at hand?
Or, would you actually let God abide in you?
Would you be the one at the table being the loving presence of Christ and for everyone else there, who was scared out of their wits?
Would you offer to serve everyone else or wait to be served?
Would you hang on to every word that Jesus was talking about or just go on as things go—eat, drink, talk?
Would you be aware of the intensity of what’s about to happen and want to be a part of preventing that? Or truly helping Jesus accomplish his full mission?
These are questions, my friends, we need to start asking ourselves; because, unfortunately, we are going to be worshiping apart, not fully together as one single vine, for quite some time. We don’t know when that’s going to be. Elaine just asked me this morning, “When do you think we’re going to be back together?” I said, “I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s anytime soon.” So, now more than ever, we need to allow God to abide in us and show us how to grow new branches and develop new fruit, because this community matters to one another and to the greater community that now relies on us heavily.
I had to do an internment in the memorial garden yesterday morning and the family arrived early and came to the Loaves and Fishes entrance. Kim Robbins was in the food pantry and texted me, “The family is here but I can’t leave right now. We’re getting slammed.” Our larger community relies on us to literally feed them. So, friends, it’s today—the day to look at now—that we are coming out of our homes and we are getting outside to reach back out to everyone we haven’t seen, that we haven’t talked to, that has been in pain, that has been in crisis, that has been in trauma or is going through those things and just check in. Tell them that you miss seeing them at the Table. Tell them that you want to break bread together, even if it’s over the phone or over Zoom or in a beautifully written email. My friends, this is a metaphor that we cannot forget. It is the centerpiece of our faith. And you can make a choice today to start developing and creating new fruit.
I was praying on this text this morning, again. I thought, “Huh? I wonder who made and provided the very bread that Jesus broke? Who made the wine that day or six months prior that they drank, and He moved from an ‘ordinary to an extraordinary purpose?’ That could be us making bread and growing fruit, so that no one feels like they’re not being fed physically, spiritually or emotionally from here on out.
May it be so. Amen.