Sermon Seeds May 3, 2015
Fifth Sunday of Easter Year B 
Lectionary citations:
Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:25-31
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
Sermon Seeds
Focus Scripture:
John 15:1-8
Additional reflection on Acts 8:26-40 for Immigrants Rights Sunday
Weekly Theme:
Abiding in Love
Reflection:
by Kathryn Matthews (Huey)
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 herders of sheep, 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 Psalm 23, "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 by 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 the image 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.Intimacy and anonymity
Intimacy, and anonymity. Gail R. O'Day finds the "anonymity" in this metaphor "stark." John isn't interested, she says, in "distinctions in appearance, character, or gifts." The many voices of the New Testament give us a fuller, richer picture than one voice would have provided, so here we could do a little Bible study by comparing this passage with the writing of Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. O'Day contrasts John and Paul's writings, with Paul using the differences between the members of the body to define "what it means to be a body." On the other hand, John, instead of highlighting our individual gifts and roles, "challenges contemporary Western understandings of personality, individualism, and self-expression." For John, O'Day writes, "The mark of the faithful community is how it loves, not who are its members" (John, The New Interpreter's Bible).
We hear that 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 emphasizes its importance in the entire Gospel of John (Preaching through the Christian Year B). Eugene Peterson translates "abide" in verse 4 a little differently, but with the same meaning, as Jesus teaches his followers, "Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you" (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.
Rise up and get moving!
The setting for these words holds great significance. 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. Charles Cousar doesn't skip over the significance of that last verse in chapter 14 or its connection to what follows: "Jesus' words are a call to get moving." Jesus is speaking to his followers, a community whose witness and service (perhaps it would be better to say "witness of service") expresses a "distinctiveness from the world" that provokes "distrust and hatred (15:18-19)" (Texts for Preaching Year B). 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 is helpful here: "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" (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 2).
The corporate: a word of reassurance for the church
Scholars take at least two different approaches to this passage. Some, like Charles Cousar, focus on the community, on the "corporateness" of this image, and on the centrality of "the indwelling Christ" to its ministries. Cousar finds words that are front and center for a church that seeks new life: "connectedness, permanency, vitality." I love the image of green plants for church vitality, and Cousar would seem to agree when he associates the image of bearing fruit with "growth, usefulness, and nourishment" (Texts for Preaching Year B). Gail O'Day also emphasizes the communal nature of this life, a "model" of "interrelationship and corporate accountability" that challenges our unceasing attempts to stand out from, and rise up over, one another (John, The New Interpreter's Bible).
But what about this notion of "bearing fruit"? If bearing fruit reveals disciples rather than creating them, as Sarah Henrich claims, we might search our church's history to see how often abiding in Jesus can cause all sorts of trouble, just in case we're forgotten that the early Christians were not the last 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, Anthony, Francis, Luther, Anabaptists, anti-slavery activists (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 2). One 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 Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Archbishop Romero and the four American churchwomen murdered in El Salvador, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and the rest did?
The personal: a word of reassurance for each one of us
However, the corporate reading of this passage is not the only way to approach it; in fact, this beautiful text deserves a fuller, deeper understanding. Not surprisingly, Nancy R. Blakely's pastoral reflection on the text considers the personal relationship each of us has with Jesus, the vine. She reminds us that we find the best grapes close in to the vine, "where the nutrients are the most concentrated." And she uses Peterson's image of "making a home" in describing the peace that we long for in our hearts. This kind of abiding for Blakely is the way God "sustains" us and showers us with "shalom, which speaks of wholeness, completeness, and health." Here, 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." There, close to the vine, we find peace about all the things that we face, and all the things that we pray for, because our will will be aligned with God's own will. She even reminds us of the value of a painful but redemptive pruning: "All that is extraneous is carefully and lovingly removed. What remains is centered and focused on God's word" (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 2).
A word of challenge for us all
How do we bring these two streams together or, to be closer to today's image, how do we graft them together, the personal and the communal? Blakely does just that when she reminds us that the Risen Christ in John's Gospel is warning his followers in every age and every setting not to "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 (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 2). 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. Barbara Essex perhaps puts it most succinctly: "The community that Jesus calls forth is one that embodies an African proverb: Because we are, I am" (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 2). Amen!
The Rev. Kathryn Matthews (Huey) serves as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio
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