Sermon, 5/2/21. Branching Out: A Different Image of Intimacy

5 Easter

Psalm 22:24 – 30; Acts 8:26 – 40; I John 4:7 – 21; John 15:1 – 8

I am the vine; you are the branches. John 15:5

A spoiler alert to my reflections on this Fifth Sunday in Easter 2021:  When reading the gospel lesson for this Sunday, a fairly long string of nouns raced through my mind: commitment, dedication, devotion, connectedness and, yes, intimacy.  And all of this gets told under the cloak of how to cultivate a stock of grapes so that excellent wine can be produced.  Because these reflections are biblically based, they are suitable for all ages.

I am not a farmer, have never been a farmer, and have no intentions of becoming a farmer.  Indeed, even household plants seem to struggle under my well-intended care.  Still, because of the lessons learned during my childhood and teen years on the farms of relatives, I have an appreciation of farming.  And thanks to those summers and visits to relatives, they and I came early on to the conclusion that I was not suited for that interaction with nature.  That notwithstanding, I am able to say with fervor [that] farming is at once a rewarding and essential occupation.

In the course of becoming the industrial nation that we are, we have moved away from our beginning, essentially a primarily agrarian society, where at least 60 percent of our productivity—cotton, tobacco, rice—was in tilling the soil, and only ever so slowly are we inclined to admit that that success was reached via slavery, namely at the expense of unpaid and maltreated human beings.  The Industrial Revolution had not yet reached the shores of the USA.

Now, farms are mega-businesses, and specialized.  We have chicken farms, pig farms, soybean farms, lettuce farms, sheep farms, big enterprises, whose outputs are charted with computer accuracy, and subsidized by government financial support.  Thanks to these businesses, we eat well, and we do so without any direct labor on our part to produce what we eat.  We talk instead about commodities.  The mega-farmers grow those commodities, and we work at other jobs in order to pay for them at our Star Market, Wegman’s, Stop and Shop, and Boston Market.  Gone forever are those day of the small farms.  To be sure, we have still the boutique road stands, the county fairs, but these are not able to provide nourishment for the hundreds of millions in our nation, not to mention for international export.

The imagined and real simplicity that marked an earlier agrarian state is a thing of the past.  We do not lead simple lives.  We may recall, with nostalgia, the day when lettuce meant Iceberg, and iceberg only.  Now, there are more varieties of that green vegetable than whose names I can correctly pronounce.  Generations now no longer know the origin of their food.  I recall with a smile an excursion that I made as a graduate student with several youngsters via a Boy Brother Program at Phillip Brooks House at Harvard.  When I announced that I was taking them to see where our milk and eggs came from, one boy announced proudly and loudly that he knew that already: at the supermarket!  There is little or no direct contact with Mother Earth.  So, when we come to passages in the Bible, such as today’s gospel, the story seems to lose something.  The directness of the metaphor was not lost, though, on those who heard it from Jesus.  (Nor, if we are honest, is it lost on us.)

Despite our removal from direct involvement with farming, the image in today’s reading is one of the most enduring and endearing images recorded of Jesus.  “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower” (v. 1) “I am the vine, you are the branches.” (v. 5) One does not have to have tilled the soil in order to know that more than tilling the soil is being here discussed.  There is a closeness, an intimacy being placed before us, a personal investment, a commitment, the likes of which I experienced when I lived in Germany and had the privilege to visit a vineyard on the slopes of the Rhine River.  There was a sense of pride on the part of the owner of the vineyard in the product that he and his family produced, a readiness to discuss how the product was nourished.

Jesus puts people first.  And despite his apprenticeship as a carpenter, he demonstrates his sharp eye.  That he should use the example of the vineyard does not at all surprise.  Would he have gained the same level of attention, had he talked about the grain in the wood that he handled?  He understood that the common folks themselves had a greater knowledge of and appreciation for what was easily visible to them.  Moreover, was not wine a staple of daily life?   To speak to a pre-industrial, agrarian society of wells, to elevate the value of shepherds, to describe a fig tree or a bush that has grown from the tiny mustard seed—that is a logical and sensible means of communicating.  

And despite our lack of direct contact with the soil in our modern world, even those with no visit to vineyards in the Finger Lakes of New York State or the chicken farms of Maryland, or to county fairs, as I have done, we are not exempt from our responsibility to the earth because, in executing our responsibility to the rightful use of nature, we take care of each other.  Concerned individuals make us aware of climate change and how changes affect our daily existence.  A prolonged drought, devastating floods, improperly tilled and poorly managed soil have direct impact on our care for ourselves and those in our society. 

Jesus is unrelenting in reminding his hearer of yore and us today of our responsibilities and he applies an imagery that even we moderns understand.  He describes three kinds of branches.  There are the dry, broken branches, good for nothing but the fire.  Then there are the branches that are removed, because they bear no fruit.  And, third, there are the green branches that show evidence of bearing, or the potential of bearing fruit. 

Indeed, in this Fifth Sunday in Easter, we have continued our pivot, began last Sunday with the story of the Good Shepherd, from those accounts that inform us of the resurrection to those accounts that serve to reinforce Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ, as a leader, as the human emissary of the steadfastness of God the Creator.  And although recited in the period of Easter, it might serve us well to remember that both the image of the Good Shepherd and that of Jesus as the true vine were laid before the people prior to his crucifixion.  And there were folks, religious civic leaders, who saw and heard in his usage of a simple language a frontal assault on their misuse of power. 

As Christians, we have a choice to make.  And I put it to you (and to me) in the form of a question.  Which branch off the vine is that which most closely, most accurately, describes our own activity in Christ’s name?   We can let the openness and generosity of Jesus’ heart and hand guide us, or we can say that this image does not reflect who we are because we are not farmers, because we do not grow grapes, we do not herd cattle and sheep and goats.  

If, as we are taught in Church School and reminded at Mass that Jesus expects that people will know us by the fruit that we produce, then our lives are filled with and enriched by the opportunities to demonstrate that image.  People who abide in Jesus Christ can develop the capacity to bear fruit.  It is also true that God does not always use all the new growth we exhibit.  The focus in our lens is sharpened.  We are asked to spend our energies efficiently in ministry.  We must submit to the wisdom of the pruner and God’s own investment in our ability and capacity to bear fruit.  We must evaluate, or to use churchly terms, pray that we are using our resources wisely to produce the fruit that is unique to our vine.

And then there remains that indisputable truth that underlies today’s gospel.  We are not independent agents.  We are nourished by our connection to something, someone greater than ourselves.  Although addressing what comes from being attached to the vine, this allegory really is about God’s generosity, God’s commitment to us.  Jesus makes the ultimate claim: “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit.” (v. 8) After all, no one looks at a beautiful garden and compliments the tomato plants, “Gee, you’re doing a good job of making fruit.”  Instead, the compliment goes to the gardener.  It is God who is to receive the glory.  Choosing to do nothing and wither, or to simply look good but have no fruit (other than our good outward looks) is not the intent of the gardener.

At the end of the day, in very simple words, Jesus teaches us of the connectedness, the commitment, the intimacy needed to sustain growth.  Jesus assures us of his commitment to us, that, as the vine, he is our abiding source.  Jesus asks us to trust the vine grower to provide for our future physical and spiritual well-being.   And when I reflect on the surety promised in this saying of Jesus, I am moved to break out in song:

Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord:
Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice;
tender to me the promise of his word;
in God my Savior shall my heart rejoice. (Hymnal 438)