No Rooting, Shooting, or Fruiting... Just Abiding

John 15: 1-8

Jesus said, ”I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. 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.

So, do you prefer cane pruning or spur pruning?  Cane pruners, do you like the Guyot or Guyot Double?  Spur pruners, the Cordon Simple, the Cordon Double, or the Goblet?  When Jesus first said, “I am the true vine” the people he was talking with would all have had first hand experience with viticulture.  Either they would have owned a vineyard or they would have worked in a vineyard during pruning and harvest time.  That knowledge of viticulture isn’t as universal here in the Berkshires in 2024! 

 

So, if we’re going to get something out of this Gospel lesson, we’re going to need to learn a little about growing wine grapes!  The first thing to know is that left to their own devices, grapes will grow very long vines and make lots of leaves leaving little to no energy left for fruit.  So, in a vineyard, grapes are RADICALLY pruned so the plant if forced to put a lot more energy into fruit production than it would on it’s own.  But we also need to know that with too much fruit, you’ll damage the health of the vine.  The skillful pruner will shape the vine, while it’s dormant in the winter, so that in the summer there’s a healthy balance between foliage and high quality fruit. 

To get that right, a shocking amount has to be pruned.  90% of the previous year’s growth is cut away!  The first time you prune grapes it feels TERRIBLE and because of that the biggest mistake people make is that they are tempted to keep too much from the past.  “It was so good last year!  I don’t want to get rid of what was SO good!” BUT, here’s the truth about grapes... GOOD FRUIT DOES NOT GROW ON LAST YEAR’S BRANCHES.  

The vine grower prunes 90% of last year’s branches away because the Vine Grower KNOWS that healthy fruit only develops on new growth.  So after the pruning there are only a couple of two inch long branches on each side of the vine and on each one of these stubby branches there are only a couple of buds left.  It is from just those couple of branches, each with a couple of buds that come all of the coming year’s foliage and fruit.  

Jesus is the vine.  You and I are those stubby, two inch long branches.  And still, we want to be the ones telling the Vine Grower how it should be done, aren’t we?  We’re tempted to hang on to what was..  After all, what we had was WONDERFUL!  It grew AMAZING fruit!  It was so SWEET.  It was SO PLENTIFUL and so, even though our IQ as two inch long branches isn’t in the same league as that of the Vine Grower, we often try ANYTHING to keep what was from being pruned away.

  

Jesus didn’t randomly pick GRAPES to illustrate his points.  Jesus picked GRAPES on purpose, because Jesus knew that we, like grapes, grow wild on our own.  Jesus knew that we, like grapes, when we hold onto the parts of us that grew good fruit in the past, we too would become unbalanced, unhealthy and less productive going forward.  This lesson then implores us to trust the Vine Grower EVEN when that means 90% of what happened before gets cut back to just a little branch with a couple of tiny buds!  

This lesson also teaches us that after our pruning, our job as two inch little branches is not to grow vines or leaves or even fruit.  Our job, as branches… in fact OUR ONLY job, is to ABIDE.  Our job, as individuals and as a congregation, is to live deeply connected, both to the vine… to Jesus… and to the other branches… one another… and to the world around us.  Here at the church end we’re fed and nourished.  Here on this end we take in all the love, compassion, grace, and generosity that God in Christ gives us. THEN as a congregation, we turn right around in the length of our short two inch branchyness and send it all out into the new-this-year shoots where the fruits of God’s sweetness will counter the bitterness and sourness of our world.  Jesus said, “I am the True Vine” and you and I… we’re the branches.  The stubby, two inch long branches.  We’re not in charge of rooting, shooting, or fruiting!  Our job is abiding, we’re the highway that moves God's love, compassion, and hope out into the world.  We’re the vehicle baby!…  the rest is for the Vine Grower to worry about.  

I don’t know about you but I need help remembering that.  That’s one of the many reasons we gather here each week… to support one another in our mutual struggle to genuinely trust the Vine Grower and the True Vine.  That’s hard!  We’re being asked to trust the Vine Grower with the pruning shears!  Let them take all the dead wood they see fit to take.  It’s hard with all that chopping and changing going on around us to simply abide.  To trust and embrace… to be still and know that our collective job is abiding intimately and fully with one another in the True Vine.  It’s hard… which is why we really do need each other giving each other constant reminders that the Vine Grower really does know their business better than we ever could.  We need each other so that we won’t forget that the Vine Grower will, in the right time, make THROUGH us, an abundant and memorable, beautiful and glorious harvest of fruit, sweet enough to balance our all too often bitter and sour world and then, as Julian of Norwich said,… “all will be well and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”  Amen. 

Oddly Specific Fish

Luke 24: 36b-48

Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

When Jesus said, “Peace be with you” he wasn’t saying, “Hey, guys you look super stressed out.  You should really like, you know, get some peace, man.”  No.  Jesus was ORDERING peace to get into the disciples!  “Hey Peace!  See these disbelieving, wondering, freaked out disciples still hiding behind a locked door?  Get in them now!”  Those disciples couldn’t get peace on their own!  Heck, they couldn’t even go OUTSIDE on their own!  In their entirely understandable, overwhelmingly human, completely flesh and blood, shocked disciple brains… they needed peace, not SUGGESTED to them… No, they needed to be grabbed by the shoulders, thrown in the shower and the handle labeled “peace which passes all understanding” turned on them full blast until they were soaked to the bone with it!  

We forget, I think, how traumatic this was for them!  We’ve heard the story our whole lives.  It’s familiar rather than shocking for us.  But remember, the guy they had been following for years, who they gave up jobs, family, friends and everything to follow… had just being brutally crucified!  Then his grave was empty!  Then BAM!  Jesus just appears!  Out of nowhere!  Into their living room! 

Do you remember how hard it was to even think straight during the hight of the pandemic?  That might be as close as we ever get to where the disciples minds were at in this time.  So it was into that sort of mind-numbing stress that Jesus appears and says, “Hey, you got anything to eat?”  Wait!  Huh?  Jesus Christ!  They’ve just been through a horror that’ll be told for millennia to come and you want… SNACKS!?  Apparently so… and so the disciples found him some broiled fish.  Not grilled, fried or poached but strangely and specifically broiled.   

It turns out that Jesus is pretty smart, and a bit tricksy too.  By asking the disciples this everyday question, “Hey, you guys got some snacks?”  Jesus helps them rise out the place they’ve been stuck.  With that simple question, Jesus gave their brains a chance at doing something more than just worry if the door is REALLY locked or not.  Human brains can’t resist thinking about a question.  It happens subconsciously, so a question asked is a question wondered about, and in that moment of wondering, locked mental doors are opened and that created the chance for the disciples to at least consider unlocking the physical door as well.  

Jesus first ordered the peace they needed to get into them, then he gave them a chance to step out from constant panic and onto The Way they had walked with Jesus before Good Friday.  The fact that Jesus came to them, through locked doors, gave them first the peace they couldn’t find on their own and then gave them a way to get unstuck… simply because those two things were what they needed most… that fact that Jesus did that, is something worth remembering.  Because THAT is something that Jesus does… not just for those original disciples, but for all of us disciples when our lives are at their worst.  

Luke was also up to something sneaky in this story as well.  You see, at the time Luke was writing this Gospel, there was a debate over how the faithful were to follow Jesus on this side of his death, resurrection, and ascension.  Some argued that since Jesus was now up in heaven, his disciples should now only concern themselves with spiritual things.  The worries of the flesh… physical, fleshy, earthly things like sickness, injustice, wounds, and hunger were simply inevitable consequences of a broken, flesh-filled world… and therefore should no longer be their concern. 

But Luke included this story because when HE saw that the resurrected Jesus had real, earthly, flesh and blood wounds and real, earthly, human, stomach-growling hunger… HE could see that Jesus was JUST as concerned with those physical things NOW as he had been before his death!  And if Jesus was still concerned with those things, then we disciples sure better be concerned with those things now as well!  

Luke reminded those early followers… that Jesus was PHYSICALLY present, giving his peace.  They touched his PHYSICAL wounds, and fed his PHYSICAL stomach with an oddly specific piece of broiled fish so there would me no mistaking it for just a symbolic or spiritual meal.  All those human, earthly concerns that Jesus had for people before Good Friday… THOSE were still Jesus’ concerns after Easter as well!

This story is included here in Luke’s Gospel to remind us that our focus is to be here… in THIS world, caring for our neighbors.  That there is nothing that should stop us from that work… AND when we inevitably get stuck because of the horrors of this life, Jesus will come to us… will break through our fears no matter how locked in them we’ve become… and will send his PEACE into our lives.  Then with that peace we will once again be set free from our fears and once again start walking again the Jesus Way amongst our neighbors, transforming a world that deals in death and crushes life, into a world that lifts all of creation into the abundant life God created for us all to live.  Amen.

Loon-a-palooza

John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Tomorrow a solar eclipse will be visible along a swath of the country from Texas to Maine.  While the moon has, from time to time, ever since there was a moon, come to a point in it’s orbit where it passes between the earth and the sun and has cast a shadow on the earth as a result, this has not kept the right wing conspiracy theorists from their appointed rounds.  On the contrary, they’ve seemed to take this very normal thing and turned it into some kind of Loon-a-palooza!   

From the path of the eclipse forming the Hebrew letters that signify the end of the world, to the ushering in of a new world order led by billionaires, to an opportunity for masons, occultists, satanists, and gnostics to perform rituals that will do unspeakable things, or NASA’s “rocket launch” that is ACTUALLY a cover for the government’s worship of an Ancient Egyptian snake god… the conspiracy theorists have, in this past week, cranked Loon-a-palooza up to eleven!  

But this coming week’s craziness over a shadow, and today’s Gospel lesson do give us an opportunity to talk about how the Church has handled conspiracy theories in the past.  The first opportunity is in the way the Gospel of John and his community use of the phrase, “The Jews”.  While John didn’t intend this phase to be used to create an antisemitic conspiracy theory (John and his community were Jewish, after all) it’s been used that way by the church and others in genuinely horrific ways over the centuries.  For that, parts of the Christian church including our parts, are now trying to make amends and figure out how to keep that misuse from moving forward.  

Some suggest just eliminating that phrase and substituting something else, such as “The Judeans” but for me, the best way to address this conspiracy theory is to address it the same way we address any conspiracy theory.  Ask questions.  Use our minds, and intellect.  Consult with experts, do the research, and share the truth.  When we do that we find that in John’s community “The Jews” were shorthand for the religious leaders who had sold out to the Romans and were doing whatever they needed to do, right or wrong, to stay in power.  

So, with some good questions and research into those questions and the use of a relatively few brain cells, we can easily find out BOTH, that NASA is NOT using the eclipse as a chance to worship an Egyptian snake god AND that John did NOT intend for anyone to demonize or persecute people of the Jewish faith!  With that knowledge and understanding we are now able to do our part to ask forgiveness for the sins of past generations, repair the rifts with our Jewish neighbors that we’ve inherited, and build new, healthy and fruitful relationships with our Jewish neighbors going forward.    

That idea that asking questions, using our minds and intellect and sharing the truth is the best way for us to combat all sorts of destructive conspiracy theories is actually EXACTLY what we see Thomas doing in today’s Gospel!  Thomas, very understandably, told the rest of the disciples that he wasn’t going to believe… he wasn’t going to give his heart to the idea that Jesus had been raised from the dead… he wasn’t going to buy into their conspiracy theory without using his brain, doing the research, and seeing for himself.  Then, when Jesus showed up the next time, it looks to me like Jesus was just fine with the way Thomas handled that unbelievable news!  Jesus didn’t shame Thomas.  Jesus simply showed him the evidence.  Jesus didn’t get mad at Thomas for not leaving his brain at the door.  Jesus didn’t chastise him for asking questions.  It seems to me, when you set aside all that’s been drummed into our heads over the years about "Doubting" Thomas and just read the text, Jesus was just fine with the way Thomas came to believe.  Jesus, it seems, is just fine with Thomas using his intellect and experience to not just immediately dive into the deep end of a crazy conspiracy theory.  Jesus seems to be just fine with Thomas bringing his brain into that locked room with him and not just hanging it on a hook out in the hallway.  So once again, in contrast to those attending Loon-a-palooza this week... reason, experience, hard questions, and intelligence turn out to all be VERY welcome EVEN by Jesus. 

I would like to be able to tell you that this week’s Loon-a-palooza will be the world’s last… but it won’t.  But what I can tell you is that as you go about your day to day lives, both inside the church and out…  and as you think about things both secular and religious, taking your God given brain with you into any room including this one, asking questions of any kind, even the hardest kind, and taking the time to talk to experts and do the research using your intellect and experience... doing that is not just OKAY with God, but is FULLY and COMPLETELY endorsed by God in Christ Jesus in the resurrected flesh!  

It is okay to doubt.  It’s okay to ask questions.  It is absolutely required for you to take your brain with you into every room you enter.  Because if we don’t learn anything else from this story, we should learn that when God wants to show us what we need to see, God, it seems will find a way.  So blessed are those… blessed are us... who have not seen exactly as Thomas did… but who have come to believe because God, in one way or another, has found a way to show each of us the risen Christ none the less.  Amen.