Spiritual Raisins
05-10-09
This morning we hear one of six I Am narratives from the gospel of John. In the vine imagery, Jesus gives us another image to remind us of the importance of an intimate and organic relationship with the Divine.
I want to start with a story. In my first pastoral appointment, I found myself serving two small churches in the Willamette valley. One church did not have a janitorial staff of any kind, several of us, including myself, took turns cleaning the church on Monday mornings. Needless to say, sometimes things were missed.
One year, for our Maundy Thursday service, both of my congregations met for a service in Harrisburg. We gathered to remember the last meal Christ shared with his disciples before his crucifixion. I wanted to decorate the altar with some visuals to help us enter the story a little more fully. Among the items up front were several bunches of grapes to remind us of the fruit of the vine. The effect was nice.
Well in the course of setting up or cleaning up, I don’t know which for sure, a grape fell off one of the vines and landed up near the pulpit. It took a while for me to discover the grape. Oh sure, I thought about picking it up several times, but in the midst of thinking about it I merely stepped over it. About every other week I would remember that it was there. The cleaning crew never saw it. And, each consecutive week I watched that grape begin to look rotten, then start to shrivel. Five weeks later as I was cleaning out the pulpit, low and behold, I had a big, ugly raisin beside my foot. "I am the Vine, you are the branches." Jesus’ words came to mind. And I thought to myself, "Hmm, look what happens when you are separated from a source of nourishment."
Being separated from the vine, we run the risk of becoming spiritually dehydrated. We can lose a sense of Christian identity when we are not involved in a community of faithful people…and when we separate ourselves from the vine, then Christ is no longer a factor in our spirituality. We can lose perspective, we can lose a sense of purpose, we can feel disconnected from grace. Now, this particular imagery is so often used in the church that it practically preaches itself. Yet, I believe if we were to unpack it a bit, we still might be prompted to reflect on the current state of our spiritual lives.
The gospel writer tells us that Jesus is the Vine. Jesus is the core, the channel that stores, saves, and distributes necessary water and nutrients to the branches. Jesus is the thickest part, without the vine, there would be no branches and no fruit. The image of the tree, vine or plant is a rich source for spiritual reflection. It invites us to sense the divine as beneath us, rising up, rather than above us condescending. The top down model has its attractiveness, but it is often associated with notions of power which confuse or abuse. The simplicity of the image of life from below suits John’s spirituality well, where relationship is what matters, and how we live is determined solely by that relationship, what flows from it. The vine and its resources enable the branches to grow and bear fruit. The image invites us to transcend its contours and imagine ourselves as being able to connect and disconnect from the source. Our spirituality consists in letting the flow happen. Staying connected is not automatic. It needs encouragement, instruction, leading.
We are the branches. When attached to the Vine, we receive nourishment, and that nourishment prompts or stimulates growth…it stimulates fruit. Notice that the disciples of Jesus aren’t the "fruit," the end product, but the conduit for the vine’s nourishment. The quality of the fruit thus depends on the branches’ connectedness to the vine itself. What Jesus is describing here is the interrelationship between himself and his disciples — a relationship characterized by mutuality and indwelling, but one that is also focused on growth. Just as vitamins and minerals from our food help our bodies grow and mature physically, the spiritual nourishment that comes from our metaphorical vine, allows our spiritual selves to mature and grow.
I suppose this is where I should remind us of the importance of spiritual discipline. In order to stay connected to the nourishment of the vine, we absolutely must take time to listen to and learn from the Vine grower. I can’t stress enough that one must take time in their busy day and lives to pray, to reflect, to engage in acts of justice, to participate in church community, to read and meditate on scripture…heck to meditate on the newspaper theologically! Spiritual discipline helps us to know the vine’s and the vine grower’s intention for the branches. Spiritual discipline helps prevent Spiritual raisins.
Now, in Christ’s day, grapevines weren’t trained up a lattice, or trained up a pole.
The vine spread out along the ground. When you grow grapes along a lattice or fence, you can more easily distinguish the individual branches. et, if you look closely at the untrained grapevine, one of the first things you notice about its branches is that it’s very difficult to tell them apart individually. All the branches twist and curl around one another to the point that you can’t tell where one starts and another stops. Jesus’ use of branch imagery is thus a way of expressing that it’s not the achievement of an individual branch or its status that matters. The quality of branches and fruit depends solely on the quality of their connectedness to the vine, and even to each other. It is important for a community to be rooted and nurtured by Christ and point to quality of the vine, not necessarily the branches. We need to remember that branches are fruit-bearing, not fruit-making. We are conduits and not the end product. God’s grace and love always come to us on their way to someone else.
In the vine metaphor, God is the Vine-grower. God tends to the vine. I’m glad its God. You know I have a black thumb. I love plants, and yet somehow, I tend to kill every plant I have ever touched. I honestly try to do my best, but last time my mom was at the house she threatened to report me for plant abuse. Even when I hold up my end of the deal, feeding it, watering it, placing it in the proper heat and light, sometimes still a plant doesn’t cooperate, it sometimes is unresponsive.
I bet God can relate. There are probably times when we have all suffered from spiritual dehydration; when we have shriveled into raisins, merely going through the routine of life, empty, and longing for connection. The Vine-grower relies on a symbiotic relationship with the vine and its branches. They depend on each other to respond and do their part. And when they respond to each other they produce a vine so great as to feed many people.
There are some important steps to the health of a vine and its fruit. First their must be a anchor location to grow the vine. It helps, if the Vine is able to attach itself to a structure that it can grow in. That structure most be stable and solid, to bear the weight of the vine, the branches, and the fruit… hmmm, kind of like a church with vision. Most vines grow towards light by elongating their stems and attaching themselves to whatever support is available. The environment must be at the very least, a semi-suitable environment for Christ to have any effect. This place must not be hostile but open to the working of the Vine-grower and the vine.
Secondly, the vine must be pruned. Vines need selective pruning to keep them healthy and attractive -- and in bounds! And it is necessary to begin the process when plants are small or young by pinching off stem tips to encourage branching. It is especially important to remove dead stems. If the branch is unwilling to produce fruit, than it needs to be encouraged to do so, or it will lead to disease and dysfunction of the whole vine.
Pruning is Painful! I bet it is difficult for the branch to distinguish between cutting back and cutting off. The words of John 15 are almost frightening because they suggest that things we do that are not fruit-bearing are liable to be lopped off like dead branches! However, when we reflect upon our successes and failures in life and as a community, some of us have stories of how some things that have failed in our lives, were not on the right track in the first place. Our successes and our failures help define us. Our failures, and corrections, help us grow.
John 15 is one of those passages that squeeze us into reflection and introspection. Of the many things that consume our time, even those things that are church-related, how many are productive and help us to the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control? How many should be (or have been) pruned? Pruning allows new growth and new vision.
Now branches can become a tangled mess if not encourage to move a certain direction. The vine and its branches must be encouraged by the vine-grower to grow a certain direction so that it will have opportunity for the proper light and space to grow. Now branches can be stubborn. Anyone who has grown a vine knows that the direction of the branches is not always as you envision, and so the Vine-grower must coax the community into a new direction from time to time.
God continues to position this congregation for new opportunity, for new possibilities in ministry. The vine will continue to grow, the question is will the fruit continue to bud, will you stay attached to your life source, or will you allow yourselves to become spiritually dehydrated? Do you have a vision of what direction the vine is growing? These are questions we need to ponder on a daily basis.
It is my hope that as we grow and work, and live in an intimate and organic relationship with God, Christ, and each other that we may as disciples of Jesus, the true vine, embrace our role as branches, channels for God’s grace, so that when the world samples the fine vintage of God’s love and grace, they will want to know the vine grower!
Blessings,
Melissa