Reflection for May 10, 2009
Acts 8: 26-40, Psalm 22: 25-31, 1 John 4: 7-21, John 15: 1-8
Last week, the Gospel of John provided the image of a good shepherd to describe the close, caring relationship between God and Jesus, and between Jesus and us. Perhaps we're not sheepherders, or haven't spent much time in an agrarian setting, but we get the idea of what John is talking about. First of all, the shepherd image is familiar to us from the much-loved and often-memorized 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd...." And, from childhood, we've seen many paintings of Jesus with a little lamb over his shoulders, the flock grazing peacefully around him. Our theme last week, Enfolded in Love, was reassuring, and reassurance was what the disciples and the early Christian community needed, especially John's community. Just as the disciples must have been bewildered by some of the things Jesus was saying and anxious about the negative response of religious and political leaders, so the early Christians a generation later, expelled from their religious home, also needed a word of tender reassurance from the risen Christ, telling them that they weren't alone or abandoned.
In this week's reading, John uses another image, that of a vine and its branches, to help–and challenge–that early community, and ours today, to claim our close relationship with Jesus. In Jesus' time, people would have been familiar with the vine metaphor; it appears in the Hebrew Scriptures several times to describe Israel. But even if contemporary Christians have never tended a vineyard, most of us have seen a grapevine at one time or another. Looking closely, we see the many entwined branches, winding their way around one another in intricate patterns of tight curls that make it impossible to tell where one branch starts or another one ends. This is not just intricate; it's intimate, and the vine shares with its branches the nutrients that sustain it, the life force of the whole plant. Even closer than the shepherd there on the hillside, this vine is one with the branches.
We hear the word, "love," often in John's writings. Love is at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Love is the measure of faithfulness. Our readings this month linger on this line of thought, but they're not legalistic or detailed. "Love" feels like a state of being, so the word "abide" almost jumps off the page in these readings from John. Fred Craddock understandably calls it "the central verb" in the passage, and "one of the most significant words in the Gospel." Eugene Peterson translates "abide" in verse 4 a little differently, but with the same meaning: "Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you" (his translation of the Bible is The Message). Just as we need the air to breathe, we need food and nourishment to live. We need shelter and community; we need a home. The early Christians, who had in a very real sense lost their spiritual homes and perhaps, along with them, their family ties and their physical homes, were undoubtedly comforted by this thought. Thus the mark of a faithful community is how it loves.
Just before this passage, at the end of chapter 14, Jesus has finished the Passover meal (the Last Supper) with his disciples and is ready to move on. "Rise," he says, "let us be on our way" (14:31b). But the very next verse, which begins this week's reading and chapter 15 as well, continues his long farewell speech, full of instructions and exhortations for the disciples. Jesus' words are a call to get moving. The talk about the indwelling between Jesus and the disciples is not meant for a community at rest that has settled in for business as usual, but for a community engaged in service, a community whose distinctiveness from the world evokes the world's distrust and hatred (15:18-19)." In a way, there's a tension here: the word "abide" could suggest "planted" (like a vine, perhaps?), in place, rooted, fixed. But Jesus' command to "rise up" puts us in motion, in mission, in works that bear witness and bear fruit at the same time. Sarah Henrich writes: "Bearing fruit does not create disciples," she writes; "bearing fruit reveals disciples. Both of these activities are dependent on abiding in Jesus, the real vine."
Scholars take two different approaches to this passage. Some focus solely on the community: "The command to 'abide' in the first instance is directed to the church, whose communal life and ministries of social justice are no more than branches to be tossed into the fire, apart from the indwelling Christ." In this image, words that are front and center for a church that seeks new life could be : "connectedness, permanency, vitality." I love the image of green plants for church vitality, and perhaps the image of the fruit suggests other associations such as growth, usefulness, and nourishment.
But what about this notion of "bearing fruit"? If bearing fruit reveals disciples rather than creating them we might take a look-back at our church's history to see how often "abiding" in Jesus can cause all sorts of trouble, just in case we've forgotten that the early Christians were not the only ones to face opposition and persecution for their faith in Jesus. Stephen A. Cooper calls the roll of such disruptions caused by Jesus' "radical" instructions: Paul (who baptized Gentiles without requiring circumcision), Anthony (who went out to the desert to pray), Francis (who chose simple poverty), Luther (who initiated the Reformation), Anabaptists (who challenged state-sponsored violence), anti-slavery activists (who were even earlier than the abolitionists). The question for the church today is whether we find ourselves speaking and acting a word contrary to the "comfortable" within us and around us, where we face together, not alone, the forces arrayed against justice and mercy. What would happen if our congregations spent less time talking and worrying and working on our survival and more time on putting ourselves in the line of fire, as Paul, Anthony, Francis and the rest did?
And while we are contemplating our church’s survival let us not forget our own person relationship each of us has with Jesus, the vine. The best grapes are close to the vine, "where the nutrients are the most concentrated." Making a home in God, Christ and the Holy Spirit offers us a sense of the peace that we long for in our hearts. This kind of abiding is the way God "sustains" us and showers us with "shalom, which speaks of wholeness, completeness, and health." Here, up close to the vine, immersed in shalom, we find not only nourishment but also hope and joy, and we let God's word "find a home in us through faithful devotion." Here, close to the vine, we find peace about all the things that we face, and all the things that we pray for: "When we remain that close to Jesus, we attuned to him and he to us, the remarkable result is that what we want will be what God wants, and it will surely come to pass." Even that painful pruning is redemptive; all that is extraneous is carefully and lovingly removed. What remains, then, is centered and focused on God's word.
How do we bring these two streams of thought together or, to be closer to today's image, how do we graft them together, the personal and the communal? The Risen Christ in John's Gospel is warning his followers in every age and every setting that "they cannot go it alone, trusting in their own strength. On their own they would be cut off from their life source. They would bear no fruit." This is really good news for us, no matter how much it flies in the face of everything we're told about success and measuring up. It's not up to us to dig deep down inside and make happen what needs to happen. Blakely reminds us that, if we stay close to Jesus, we have a source for all the grace and strength we need in our lives, and the result will be joy. The result will be fruit that blesses the world and reveals us as the followers of Jesus, a community of love. Together, we are so much more powerful than any of us can be on our own. However, this "together" isn't out there, on our own even as a community, because our life force flows from the vine with which we are one. The community that Jesus calls forth is one that embodies an African proverb: Because we are, I am.