Jesus and the wine vine of love...

The Reverend Deon K. Johnson

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brighton MI May 6. 2012

John 15:1-8

Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 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. 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. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples."

Jesus in our Gospel reminds us that he is the vine and we are the branches and he invites us to abide in his love. But if you've ever seen pruned bushes, you know it's not pretty. Yesterday as part of the parish cleanup we pruned and dug and divided a bunch of the plants from the front garden. If you came by here around 11:00 it would have looked like a war zone and the plants certainly weren’t winning. Roots and rhizomes, leaves and stems were everywhere!

But as any gardener can tell you plants need a good pruning every now and then. Cutting away the dead growth -- whether of a single plant or from the whole garden -- is the only way for new life to take place. So what is Jesus really saying here? I suspect that what he means is that we need to be connected to something real, to something life sustaining or we run the risk of withering up and being pruned. What Jesus is reminding us is that we are in need of life giving love and connectedness in order to thrive. But connected to what?

One of the challenges of our modern life is that we're more connected than ever, yet more people feel increasingly isolated. We have more and more friends on Facebook, but fewer friends that we actually see and talk with in person. We are "linked in" all over the place, yet rates of reported loneliness and depression are skyrocketing. Think of all the ways we are connected, we are connected to more sources of news and information and entertainment and even to each other via email and social media, yet seem to be almost drowning in information while at the same time  starved for actual experience, particularly the experience of being in real relationships.

Jesus is saying is that by being connected to him we are also able to be connected with each other. Jesus invites us to be honest, to be real, and having confessed our hopes and fears, our dreams and disappointments, our accomplishments and failures, our blessing and our sin, to know what we are accepted, loved, and forgiven. 

The question is do we live like we have real connections? Do we accept, love, invite and forgive others as we have been? Are we willing to be pruned, to let the dead, dry, barren places of our lives be burned away,  in order to let new life and new growth flow from us?

What the world is saying in things like Facebook and LinkedIn and BranchedOut and all the other social media is that there is a yearning for connection, for realness, for relationship, for experience. And if we are honest with ourselves we will realize that the church, the Christian community was the first ever social network with Christ as the vine and us as the connected branches.  That doesn’t mean that the church isn’t messy and complicated and at times in need of a good pruning itself.

But do we live our lives as though we know that we are loved and connected through Christ with each other? Can we honestly say that showing up here in church on Sundays makes a difference in our lives, in how we treat other people, in how we go about our business Monday through Saturday?

This past week I came across a quote by Desmond Tutu (you remember him...he kissed a Seminarian around here a few years back). In a sermon Archbishop Tutu commenting on his faith and on the role of the church in the world said “We have imagined that Christianity itself is a religion of virtue. But no, Christianity is not a religion of virtue; it is a religion of grace. And there's a difference. A religion of virtue says, 'If you are good, then God will love you.' A religion of grace says, 'God loves you. Period!' God loves you despite your foibles and failures, not because you're so good but as a sinner in need of mercy. God loves you; live then as one who is beloved, who has been forgiven.”

I am convinced that Desmond Tutu has a profound connection to the Divine. He hits at the heart of who we are and what we need as followers of Christ. All we need, all we want, all we long for is love. But sometimes that love is hidden under layers and layers of the dead branches we have accumulated over the years. Sometimes we have been hurt so badly by others that it is hard to let love in or even to reach out in love.

 But the thing is we already have love, we have God’s abiding and life-giving love but more often than not we don’t realize it, more often than not we don’t share it.

What our faith requires of is that in light of God's acceptance of us, we can then turn and try to accept each other, living with the imperfections of even our best relationships because we know ourselves to be imperfect and flawed and yet also so profoundly loved.

You see Love is at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Love is the measure of faithfulness; love is what connects us to each other if we let it. Love is the nourishment that flows through the vine that is Christ and sustains us as branches.

What we as a church, as a community, as outposts of God’s love and hope gathered together must ask ourselves is this: Can we allow Jesus to be at our center? Can we be a congregation that becomes a place where we admit who we are and allow others to do the same?

Just as we need the air to breathe, we need food and nourishment to live. We need shelter and community; we need a home. We need love and connectedness. We need the vine to remind us that we are all connected and in this together so that we can be faithful to our calling. “I am the vine, you are the branches…” Amen.