April 24, 2008
Connections
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 and his radio reports from Lake Wobegon with the salutation, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”
The reason I see a similarity is because there’s something of what is called a “stinger” in both stories. For Jesus, it’s the fact that unless we abide in him, there won’t be any 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, about being connected, about keeping in touch. We are created for that. 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. Maybe the image and metaphor of the vine and the vineyard is not all that useful in our urban time. But Jesus must have thought it of some value, and, as is said, what’s good enough for Jesus… If we can just bear the picture for a moment, the vitality, even the osmotic and, indeed, the cosmic power symbolized in the vine is essential if our ministry would bear the fruit of peace and justice and love.
So how come?
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 which is 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 else not be trusted, not make it as members, faith as an assent to a set of propositions. When they speak of a “people of faith,” that’s usually what is meant.
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,” but he didn’t leave it there. He also said that just in case that’s not enough, I am also “the Truth, and the Life.” When Jesus said, “I am the vine,” that was probably shorthand for much the same thing. He was obviously not being literal in either case, but in both cases offering a powerful and energetic symbol of his life of peace and justice, 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 so much contained in our belief or in truth as doctrine as it is in our will. It is not creedal life so much as it is covenantal life. It is not some sterile system, but a living, changing, and vital life in which we commit ourselves to that Way of peace and justice 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. The Sabbath is not something we’re tied to. The Sabbath is something we harness.
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, that we could be well, that we could do good work, and that we would have a way to keep in touch, so that we could come to understand as God continues to make all things new.
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 creeds of our tradition, but the freedom of others, and may we seek to enhance their capacity as well as ours to make a difference.
May we choose always to serve together and to achieve a collegial bond of caring and witness that the world may then know that we are in Christ and he in us and know this to be so by the way we love one another and by the fairness and justice that is found here. That kind of poetry can only cleanse. There is no greater and no more faithful and no more winsome 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, not just a story of bachelor Norwegian farmers, but also a story to be told of this rather peculiar vine and its sometimes errant branches.
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