5th Sunday of Easter, May 14, 2006, "Series B"
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Nourishing God, wellspring of life, you give us everything we need to sustain our lives. But, we cannot live as you desire unless you give us even more – the power of your redeeming grace. Graft us into Christ, that into our barren existence, the surging power of your Holy Spirit might nourish us spiritually. Make us into green, growing, and loving branches, that your love might flow from us to those we meet in our daily life. This we ask in the name of Christ, the vine. Amen.
I used to really enjoy gardening. But as I got older, and my schedule for the month of June got to be so busy, with synod assembly, confir-camp and vacation Bible school, I found that I just didn’t have the energy to keep ahead of the weeds. And if you can’t get to the weeds during the first month after you plant, they tend to take over. As a result, I reluctantly gave up my garden, even though I still reap and can a few vegetables thanks to the generosity of a good friend.
Now, I had a fairly good-sized garden. It certainly wasn’t as big as Dean Snyder’s garden, but I raised all kinds of vegetables – and more of them than my family could possibly eat. I kept several relatives and friends well supplied. I even tried some Luffa, and grew my own sponges. I used to think that I could grow just about anything, if the weather was in my favor.
But there was one thing that I just could not get to produce. Shortly after Josie and I moved to Greenville, I bought some grape plants. I planted them in our back yard, put in a trailing fence, and watched them grow. I knew not to expect any fruit the first year or two, but the vines grew, and looked so healthy.
But it didn’t take long before I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about raising grapes. After the fourth or fifth year, seeing the grapes form, only to wither and die on the vine, I got frustrated. So I shared my problem with my friend, who told me that I needed to prune the vines. After telling him that I had no clue how to do that, he came over one day and cut off so much of those plants that I thought he had killed them.
But he didn’t. New vines soon came out from the remaining branches, and later formed grapes – but that fall, the grapes still died on the vine. So I went back and asked him what else I had done wrong. I was then asked if I had used some kind of oil spray, which had to be applied at a certain point of the year to prevent some insect from boring into the vine.
Of course, I hadn’t. And so the next year, he gave me some spray, after he had finished spraying his own vines. But then it rained for several days, and since the spray had to be applied during dry weather, I waited a week or so before applying it to my own plants. Well, I had another repeat of the previous year. In fact, to this day, Josie and I have never gotten a grape off of those vines. We are about ready to yank them out of the ground and put an end to our misery.
Thus, I have got to admit that when it comes to understanding the image that Jesus uses in our Gospel lesson for this morning, I am certainly not an expert. But then, that might just be the first point that we can learn from our text. Jesus says, I am the vine, and my Father is the vinegrower! Think about what this means! The person responsible for the growth of the vine and the produce of fruit, is God, not me!
Oh, when I planted those grapes, I had visions of providing grapes for Josie, who unlike me, loves fruit. I had visions of giving grapes to my Grandmother, who was noted for her Jellies and preserves. I even thought of making a little wine. But I didn’t know how to raise grapes! It takes a vinegrower to produce fruit.
How often we think that we can do something on our own, only to find out that we don’t know as much as we thought we did. How often we think that we know what is in our own best interest, only to find out that that we have made a mistake. And if I can say this about the very natural process of trying to raise grapes, how much more does this apply to our growing in our spiritual life with God?
Too often we think that we can cope with life on our own, that we don’t need any help from others, that we can muster the strength and courage to make the best of our life. But every once in a while, we discover that our choices and decisions in life do not bring the result that we had hoped for. Too often, we find that the paths that we have taken do not bring us the answers to what we were truly seeking.
It is then, when we reach the point of frustration, that we reach out to someone to whom we can admit our mistakes, trust to help us correct our failures, and enable us grow. When Jesus says that God the Father is the vinegrower, he is telling us to place our trust in God, for God knows how to raise his vines – how to produce the fruit we all desire at the deepest level of our being.
In other words, Jesus is telling us that God, the vinegrower, can be trusted to prune away those branches in our life, which may have looked healthy to us at the time, yet, did not produce the fruit which God had intended. God can be trusted to know what is needed and healthy in our relationship with him, and with each other, and to help us cut away that which is unproductive and hinders our spiritual growth.
In addition, Jesus tells us that he is the vine! Jesus is the one who has the roots, who brings up the nutrients from the soil, to feed the branches that grow out from his stalk. Jesus is the one whom God has sent to reveal his word and will for our lives. Jesus is the one who is able to feed and nourish us with God’s redeeming grace. Jesus is the one through whom flows God’s gift of forgiveness and the ability to amend our life and to live more productively. Jesus is the one, who, through his death and resurrection, offers power to the branches that grow out from his roots, power for new life, not just as we live our life here on earth, but power to become children of God, heirs of life eternal in God’s heavenly kingdom.
Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. Unless we remain connected to the vine, the spiritual life that is in us will wither and die. We need the constant nourishment that the vine passes on to us in order grow and to become productive. We need to abide in the vine, in order to maintain a vibrant faith and witness to the life God has promised us.
How do we remain connected to the vine? What does Jesus mean when he says “abide in me?” Richard Jensen, in his book, The Crucified Ruler (C.S.S. Publishing Co., Inc., 1987) puts it this way: “How do we abide in Jesus and how does Jesus abide in us?… First of all, we abide in Jesus and he abides in us through hearing the story of Jesus – by hearing that story over and over again.
When we spend time reading the Scripture, we hear the story of Jesus. When we listen to God’s Word preached, we hear the story of Jesus. When we gather with two or three persons in Jesus’ name, we hear the story of Jesus. When we remember the promises that God made to us in our baptism, we hear the story of Jesus. When we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s Supper, we hear the story of Jesus.
Such hearing is abiding. To hear Christ’s story with the ears of faith is to abide in his love. To hear Christ’s story is to grant him inner access to our lives. Through the telling of his story, Jesus the Christ comes to abide in us…
The matter could hardly be more clear. [There are things that we just can’t do on our own.] Willing life with God is one of them. Life is one thing that we can not will into existence. Life, God’s life, is something we can only receive from God’s hands.” End quote.
That is how we have life with God. That is how Christ abides in us and we abide in him. We remain immersed in his Word. We continue to hear again and again the story of God’s Word – his will for our lives and his redeeming and forgiving grace for us in Jesus the Christ. We continue to receive his life-giving Spirit through our participation in worship and in receiving his body and blood in the sacrament of communion – communion with our crucified and risen Lord and with each other.
And as God continues to sustain our life in Christ, he also empowers us through his Spirit to bear fruit – to share the story with others, and to witness to the life we have received. We can not do this on our own, but through the power of God’s Spirit, all things are possible. Except, perhaps, getting any grapes off of my own grapevines.
Amen.
