Growing in Grace and Love

14th October, 2007

John 15 

     Some of you may recall a much beloved off-Broadway musical called “The Fantastiks.” It premiered back in 1960 and ran for more than 17,000 performances over the next 42 years; thereby becoming the world’s longest running musical. Currently it is being revived in New York once again. The story involves two neighboring fathers, Hucklebee and Bellomy, who connive to get their teenage offspring to fall in love. At one point the Dads sing a duet in which they share their frustrations over the vagaries of child-rearing and long for the more predictable world of gardening:

Plant a carrot,

Get a carrot,

Not a Brussels sprout.

That's why I love vegetables.

You know what you're about!

    Whatever the crop, the truth is fundamental, encoded on the DNA of each living thing. It’s helpful, to keep that natural, universal truth in mind as we consider the scriptures we’ve heard this morning. Each of the readings is about bearing fruit. The sayings of Jesus are full of agricultural metaphors—of sowing and seeds, crops and weeds, vines and vineyards. Most famously, he uses an image from viticulture to reveal his own identity and to define his relationship to those who place their faith in him: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them, bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

   In John’s gospel, Jesus describes himself and God’s ministry in a series of statements that we have come to call the “I AM” statements. He says I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am both the gate of the sheepfold and the good shepherd; I am The resurrection and the life; I am the way, the truth and the life and here, in Chapter 15, the last of the sayings, “I am the vine.”

    “I am the source of all spiritual growth,” he tells his friends, “I am rooted in God and the love that flows from God I now offer to you, for you are branches off the vine.”

    Everyone in Jesus’ audience knew that branches are completely dependent on the vine out of which they grow. You would not even have a branch if there were not a vine in the first place. Further, once the branch grows from the vine stem, it will never outgrow its need for that same stem. When a child is conceived, she is totally dependent on the nourishment of her mother's womb for nine months. For some time after that she may well be dependent on mother’s milk too. However, children get weaned eventually. They get independent. Their physical well-being and ability to flourish will not depend on mother any longer--they can and do get along fine without the umbilical tethers that once represented their very source of life.

    But not so with branches--a cane or branch off a vine stem will be as completely dependent on the nutrients coming through the vine when that branch is 50 years-old as when it was one-year-old. There is no such thing as a weaned branch or an independently minded section of a vine, which shuts itself off from the main stem! The stem is the only part that has roots in the ground and so it is every branch's connection to water. If you are a branch, therefore, it pays to stay really tight with your main vine stem.

    However, we are not just branches left to grow wherever we want. Not only has God chosen to be our trunk, our life giving tree, but God has promised to tend and care for us branches and will do what it takes for us to bear fruit. Pushing the agricultural metaphor a bit farther Jesus uses two images, grafting and pruning.

    In 1870 John McIntosh, a farmer in Dundela, Ontario, crossed two apple varieties, the Fameuse and Detroit Red. Soon, the MacIntosh apple became one of the most popular apple varieties known for white, tender, crisp flesh, an apple that was highly aromatic, and full of juice. The original tree was badly scorched when a fire burned down the McIntosh farmhouse in 1894. But the old Mac limped on, yielding its last crop in 1908. The tree finally fell over two years later, and a stone memorial now marks the site. But the tree lives on in various grafts. In Moncton I had a sapling grown from a graft off the original tree.

   My uncle grew up on an apple farm and each year he would come to house and carefully bore a hole in the trunk of that tree. He would sharpen a branch and gently insert it into the hole. The result was a graft which added variety and vigour to the tree. So it is with the church. Each of us is a graft onto the vine. Each of us brings varietals flavour, something unique and special to the whole vine. Together we cross pollinate producing something entirely new. Each branch, each of us, is important to the whole, each adds something that makes the vine produce more intense and abundant fruit. (At baptism we are reminded of this. Today Emma and Kathryn are grafted onto the vine, strengthening us by their presence.

    But Jesus also reminds us of something that any good farmer knows. All branches need pruning.

     Just for a moment, picture a vineyard in the late fall or early winter.  It is time for pruning: a vine grower walks into his vineyard with a very sharp knife.  Beginning at one end, and working his way down the rows, each plant is pruned; no plant is ignored.  He picks a leaf from the vine and examines it for scabs; he reaches up and plucks down a small bunch of grapes, rolling them over in his hand recording remarks about their shape, size and its colour. He pops a grape into his mouth, savouring and noting the flavour. He comes to a series of vines whose leaves are brown and shriveled, whose branches are brittle and frail and bear no fruit at all. These are obvious dead branches sucking away the life-giving force of the vine.  They must be pruned to save the vine. 

     Other branches are pruned back too so that they will bear more fruit in the next growing season.  Then there are the branches that are just not strong enough to hold the weight of the fruit.  It is better to prune those back now rather than let the inevitable break happen.

     Some of the vine branches just don’t seem able to hold up to the early heat or the dryness of the season.  Or maybe it was the moisture of the increased rain in the spring that stressed the vines.  These vines need some extra help.  The vine grower may cut into the vine and graft another more viable variety onto it to make it stronger and hope for the new fruit that will come from the joining. 

   It does not seem like an easy job to be a vine grower.  You have to know what a healthy vine looks like and when to prune.  You can’t prune in the spring or summer because pruning causes bleeding and weakens the vine.  If you make a mistake and prune too late you know there is no cure for the sap bleeding that occurs, but the problem will decrease when the leaves finally emerge. It can only be done with great care and tenderness.

     It is a wonderful image, Jesus the vine, all of us branches and then God, sweat on the brow, work hat, strong, rough hands with pruning shears. In the world of grapes and vineyards, pruning is pretty serious stuff. It is not at all optional, it is crucial to the health of the vine, if you are serious about a harvest. It is labor intensive for each and every vine needs attention with the careful pruning so that the energy of the plant goes into the branch that produces the grapes instead of being sapped off to sucker branches or random shoots that take resources but produce nothing.

    This image of the pruning God is particularly appropriate for our time and day. Many of us have lives that are full, sometimes too full. The question for many is not, “what shall I add to my life?” rather, “What can I get rid of or put aside?” Many of us are full but unsatisfied, busy yet bored, going in ten directions but not sure if any one counts. If you feel at all full, stuffed, overdone or pulled in too many directions, then consider the image of the God who prunes for the sake of the fruit.

    Meister Eckhart, the great 14th Century mystic, wrote, “God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.” Eckhart and the mystics warn us against the human propensity to run and run, to do and to do, to fix and control and to substitute the depth of a spirit filled life with all kinds of superficial stuff.

    And stuff, we have as Canadians. Stuffed might be a better word. Many of us are overweight. We have a tendency to build houses and cars that are just too large. Stuff; lots of it yet not necessary a better life. And there is God, the vine dresser, deeply interested in our well being and the possibilities of us producing fruit, his pruning shears in hand.

    I recently read a brief story of a monk visiting friends in a large American city. The monk and his friends were making a mad commuter dash into the city. One of the friends checked his watch and exclaimed, “My we have saved ten minutes.” A short time later, in middle of their dash through the city, the monk sat on a lovely park bench. The others turned around with an inquisitive look then the question, “What are you doing?” The response was simply, “I’m enjoying the minutes you saved.”

What needs to be pruned from your life? What do you need to let go of?

   Actually, in verse 2 the Greek word used is katharei, from which we get the word "catharsis." It does not really mean "to prune" but to cleanse There is more than a hint of purifying here, of an almost baptism-like cleansing of our lives. By the careful pruning of Christ our lives are cleansed and we are made ready to produce fruit. God’s pruning is meant to be cathartic and freeing.

   Careful pruning and grafting of the branches of the vine of Christ are intended to do the same thing. It can be either individually, as Christ is infused into each one of us in baptism, or corporately as the Spirit blows through us with a mighty wind and alters our course as a congregation. Whatever the process, it is not painless, nor is it fast. But in time, it produces the fruit of the kingdom. That fruit is not numerical increase in members. Nor is it something that will benefit us individually in some meaningful way. Instead, it is the life of the kingdom that comes in our midst, giving us a vivid taste of God’s future for all humanity. It is those things that mark us as God’s own people that are evidence of that fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness (Gal. 5:22). These things show that the pruning and grafting have taken root.

These are also things that we cannot do for ourselves. Not only has God chosen to be our trunk, our life giving tree, but in addition God has promised to tend and care for us the branches and will do what it takes for us to bear fruit. This includes the painful work of lightening our lives and taking away the things that weigh us down. Friends, God is at work right now, re-grafting us to the tree with his forgiveness and pruning us to grow again in Christ. It is an act of grace by the one who is devoted to our growth and wants nothing more for us than to bear abundant fruit for the sake of the world. Come grow in grace and love.