St Paul Lutheran Church, ABQ NM – the Rev. P. L. Holman
Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8
Abiding in Christ
Pruning is scary business. It wasn’t until I was a homeowner myself, in Iowa, and had trees to tend that I paid any attention at all to pruning. By then my brother Ken had become a city forester. He gave me expert advice on just how to decide what to prune, and stressed that city trees needed pruning in order to grow into the beautiful trees that enhance every community. It was hard to make that first cut, but after a few successes I have learned to trust the process. It’s scary, but the result is so rewarding!
In those years I first learned the consequences of not trusting the process at my neighbor’s expense. I offered to prune her overgrown bush inviting her to see how lovely the crabapple in our front yard had become in just one year. She refused. Two years later her tree was dead.
To this day I can’t help but notice trees, rejoicing in the ones well-cared for and lamenting that ones that could be more than they are if someone would just take a little time with them, take the risk of cutting to shape a more beautiful tree, a more beautiful future…
“I am the true vine, and my heavenly Father is the vinegrower,” says Jesus. “He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit…Abide in me as I abide in you.”
The good news God offers us this day is the reminder that we don’t go it alone in life – we are created to live in community with Christ and as the body of Christ in the world. We have this network we are grafted into through baptism, the network of the church -- the body of Christ, the vine and the branches -- through which we are intimately rooted to the source of all life. The trouble is, Jesus reminds us, that while we like to think otherwise we aren’t in charge – God is. Just as Jesus trusted God with his life, we are called to trust Christ with our lives. So Jesus invites us: Abide in me –together we’ll grow into the fullness God desires. Together we can bear much fruit.
The verb “abide” has two meanings – to remain stable, and to sojourn. To abide in Christ – to be a part of the community of the faithful -- means to live the paradox of stability and movement, of place and process according to the purposes of God. Just like the vine, or your rose bushes, or my trees.
There are many ways we could look at the metaphor of the vine and the branches today –from soil prep to grafting, from watering and fertilizing to pruning and harvesting. I invite you to take the gift of that image home with you and talk with family or friends about what it means to be a branch on the vine of the living Christ. There are two clarifying points in this passage from John’s gospel that I hope you will take with you to those dialogs: bearing the fruit God desires requires dying, and healthy branches or not we’re going to be pruned.
My mom was never allowed to help my dad with the gardening. She tells me it’s because she could never tell a weed from a good plant. Truth to tell, we can’t either. While we may think we know, when it comes to human beings the only way to tell is by the fruit we produce, and the only way to produce fruit is by dying. Baptist pastor Stan Wilson in an article on this gospel text tells this story: “My home church, a big, flourishing congregation with lots of ministries, was once an old-style, small-town church, When new neighbors began to come to Dunwoody Baptist, the old members met and decided to disband. They weren’t leaving the community. They [just] recognized that they were going to need to start over if they were to embrace their new neighbors. They disbanded one week and started over the next.” These followers of the Jesus way let go of a church they loved to make room for people they didn’t even know.
All dying is not simply a medical process; it is a process with “profound emotional and spiritual dimensions” [L. Gregory Jones, CHRISTIAN CENTURY ay 2, 2006, p. 37]. Within the community of the faithful the Holy Spirit gives us opportunity to grow in faith every day by dying to ourselves in order to live for others. Today we commission for ministry 20 folks who have said yes to the opportunity to serve as eucharistic ministers to the home bound of this community. On the second Sunday of the month, twelve months out of every year, communion kits are prepared and placed on this table for blessing. After worship those kits are given to visitation ministers who go out usually that afternoon or during that week, to spend time in caring conversation to share this holy meal with sisters and brothers who aren’t able to join us in worship. Every month, as any have need, this caring ministry happens. Reports are submitted and shared by the ministry coordinators on the Thursday afternoon of that week, and pastoral or other needed follow up is arranged. Visitation ministers often say they receive more than they give – yet without their willingness to open themselves in this way, a wonderfully life-giving ministry would simply not happen, and so many good gifts would simply die on the vine…
For the past several weeks we’ve been highlighting the many volunteer ministries of this faith community, and every week several opportunities are listed in the announcement insert. What do you need to die to – what needs pruning in your life in order to make room for the fruit-bearing God desires?
Of course, the pruning ultimately isn’t up to us. It’s the work of the Vinedresser, whose pruning is always for the purpose of life.
This past week an ABQ Journal article shared with us the story of Madina Jarbarkahil, a Del Norte high school senior who arrived in ABQ four years ago from Afghanistan knowing very little English; today she is an honors student and reporter for her school paper who spends her free time working with young children or tutoring her classmates in math and science. Her family immigrated to the USA in 2002; a year later Madina’s father died from stomach cancer and the next year her sister died from a rare form of childhood cancer. That’s a pruning no one would choose. For Madina, it has clarified her resolve to make something of her life. She wants to become a pediatric oncologist hoping to save others from the disease that took two family members. Memories of her father and sister give Madina strength to pursue her goals and to give back to others – this is a pruning already bearing much fruit.
Pruning of another sort is taking place now as well in the life of a young woman of similar age – I’ll call her Patty -- now in her sixth month carrying a child whose father wants nothing to do with, struggling to sort out the heart-tug of emotions to keep and raise him over against the mind’s reason that knows open adoption is an option. Choices that lead to the bearing of life AND the call to let it go, whatever our age or the circumstance, lead to a pruning that defies understanding, yet even this pruning by God’s grace can bear much fruit.
The question is not whether we’ll be pruned – if you’re sitting here this morning you’ve been around long enough to know that – it’s just a matter of how we’ll respond to the pruning.
Our God is the one who has pruned the people of God throughout all of history; and, as someone once said, this “God will continue clipping until so-called Christians repent of racism and bigotry; until Skid Rows are replaced by avenues of compassion and streets of hope; until child neglect is replaced by child nurture; until murder, abuse, and rape yield to mutual respect…God will keep on clipping until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God and until the government rests on God’s shoulders [author unknown].”
This is what abiding in Christ is all about – and it is very good news indeed.