April 29, 2005
Vine
Easter 6A Jn 15.1-8
This gospel story of Jesus as the vine makes me think of the way Garrison Keillor closes out his daily Writer’s Workshop with a salutation something like this, “Be well. Do good work. And keep in touch.”
It may seem that I have to go all the way around the barn to make that comparison, but it won’t be the first time, nor the last, and I won’t be the first preacher to do something like that. The reason I see a similarity is because there’s something of a “stinger” in both stories. For Jesus, it’s the fact that unless we abide in him, there’ll be no grapes. For Keillor, the reminder to stay healthy and to work hard is obvious, but pointless, if we don’t “keep in touch.”
For life is about connection, being connected, about keeping in touch. We are created for community. One of God’s first reflections in the Garden of Eden as he imagined us into being was that we not be alone. Abiding in Jesus — and in one another — is a way of keeping in touch. And keeping in touch is the groundswell of the church’s ministry to ourselves and to the world. The vitality symbolized in the vine is essential if our ministry would bear the fruit of peace and justice and love.
So how do we do that?
Some communities, some churches, do it by requiring members and potential members to believe alike, by requiring them to make and adopt a common confession. They’re actually called “confessional churches.”
The great negative energy in our beloved Anglican Communion currently driving us toward schism is the desire by some that we become that sort of church. When they speak of faith, they mean a system of belief, an orthodoxy that must be adhered to in every dot and tittle, a statement to which members must sign their names or not be trusted. When they speak of a “people of faith,” that’s usually what they mean.
The disciple Thomas wanted something like that from Jesus. Early on in that first Easter, he asked Jesus to show him the way. And Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” When Jesus said, “I am the vine,” he meant much the same thing. He was obviously not being literal in either case, but in both offering a powerful symbol of his life of peace and justice and healing and love.
This abiding, this keeping in touch is a way of faith which we freely choose to follow. It is a way of being a responsible branch of the vine and of bearing fruit. It is not some sterile system, but a living, changing, and vital life of commitment and love. Jesus spoke of keeping the Sabbath in this way when he said the Sabbath was made for us, not we for the Sabbath.
I wish and pray for a church like that. This Anglican Communion and our own ethnic spin on it in this land comes as close as anything I’ve seen or experienced. God gave us Holy Spirit so that we could continue and grow in such community, to abide in Jesus, and that we would have a way to keep in touch.
May we not be here, then, just to influence others and make them think as we do, but may we be open to influence, not only to acknowledge and respect the freedom of others, but seek to enhance their capacity to make a difference. May we choose always to serve together and to achieve a collegial bond of caring that the world may then know that we are Christ’s and know so by the way we love one another. That’s a kind of poetry that can only cleanse. There is no greater and no more faithful evangelism.
Oh, and one last note from Garrison Keillor. Maybe Lake Wobegon is a possible metaphor for the church. You know, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and the children are all above average. And where there’s always an exciting story to be told, even a story of a vine and its branches.