Abiding Branches- Rev. Wendy Mccormick
April 28, 2024
My husband was the gardener. He had learned from his father who loved plants and flowers and prided himself on a huge, beautiful lawn and gardens on their 5-acre farm. While my husband’s available time and energy didn’t always match his aspirations, he knew a lot about making the yard and gardens flourish. I was good enough for pulling weeds and spreading mulch, but I did not and do not contribute gardening expertise. With basic training, I did have the annual assignment to cut back the mums over the 4th of July so they would not bloom too early and so that when they did bloom they would be full.
In particular, my husband was an aggressive pruner. The first time he pruned trees in our yard, I protested, I cried – are you out of your mind? Don’t you even care how they look? They looked terrible. They looked dead. I’m not exaggerating. Like the neighbors commented. What happened to your trees? But it only took a couple seasons for me to notice that we had some of the nicest trees around. Same with the mums. Other trees in the neighborhood, never given the opportunity that comes from good pruning to grow up and up – well, they looked different. Don’t those trees need to be pruned, I would ask him. Too late, he would answer.
I don’t know about trees, but when it comes to the properties of vines, even a know-nothing like me can observe the maddening properties of ivy. If it isn’t tamed, cut back, trained – in other words, pruned -- it can wrap around a tree and strangle it. Despite the romance of ivy-covered buildings, it can take over the brick of a building and eventually cause it to crumble. Not to mention the fact that it can take over the yard. Sometimes when you start pulling on one particular piece of ivy, you pull and pull and pull and all you really have is that long, long, ugly branch with all its tentacles and only a leaf or two at the end.
The ivy shows what true vinegrowers know: the farther the branch grows from the vine itself, the less productive it is. That’s why pruning is everything. The winery tour can explain it. The best grapes are those that are the closest to the vine, not those that are way out at the end of a long branch.
I am confident a lot of people here know more about all this than I do. I can weed, even if I hate it. But real gardening, including pruning, is more art. It takes skill and wisdom. People in Jesus’ time knew a lot about this. Today’s metaphor of the vine and the branches, including pruning and cutting back, would have made sense. We aren’t a society of vineyards and olive groves, but our backyards and our house plants, if not the occasional visit to a winery, give us enough context.
This is the final metaphor Jesus chooses in his last conversation with his disciples. As John tells the story, the words are spoken as part of Jesus’ final teaching to his friends, his closest disciples, following the Last Supper. In this setting, the words read as reassurance to the fearful and apprehensive first disciples on the last night Jesus is with them. But through the lens of Easter, they – and we -- know that this vine is not just our old friend Jesus who used to roam Galilee telling stories and doing signs. This is the risen Christ, alive as the power of God’s love in the world.
Hitch your wagon to that star. Keep connected to that vine.
John’s Gospel is known for Jesus’ “I am” statements. I am the light of the world, I am the bread of life, I am living water, I am the good shepherd . . . . This is the final one: I am the vine. Not only is this the final “I am” statement, it’s also the only one that includes a parallel “you are.” I am the vine, you are the branches. It’s about the ongoing identity and relationship of the followers of Jesus. We are reminded through this living, organic metaphor that it’s not about one and done belief, as we are sometimes led to – well, believe. It’s not passive awareness of Jesus as light or shepherd or bread. It is a living metaphor of what it means to be in living relationship with the living Christ. And about what happens when we drift away.
A long, long branch, extended far from the vine, with a single blossom or leaf at the end takes a lot of energy for that one lovely thing. And, of course, flowers and branches cut from their source may be beautiful, but they don’t last long at all. So Jesus talks about abiding, one of John’s favorite words, repeated 9 times in our little passage. It’s not a word we use a lot, but it’s a good one, a comforting one. It suggests dwelling, staying, resting. It’s like coming home. Where you abide is where you live, where you stay, where you spend a lot of time. Not your free time but all your time. We’re starting to see that this is about an orientation, a way of life, not just one thing to do among many.
Abiding is about staying closely connected to the vine, the source. For John, each of us is an individual branch, but more importantly, we the church are collectively a branch, interconnected with one another, the church. So we are abiding not just personally but collectively.
For John, the individual branches that do not produce fruit are those Christian communities that fail to live in love and that are only concerned about themselves. In the next section of his speech, his discourse, Jesus will talk about the commandment to love, to be individuals and churches characterized by deeds of love.
And all this happens – all of it works – because of abiding in Jesus, abiding in the true vine.
It’s no secret that ours is a particularly individualistic society. While there are some benefits to that, like individual responsibility, there are some real challenges and difficulties, especially for Christians. Because our faith and its long and rich history are fundamentally communal, focused on the inter-relatedness of God’s creatures, the interconnectedness of believers, and the fundamental responsibility we have for our fellow humans. As our church’s focus on transformational mission focus emphasizes, serving those – quote-unquote – less fortunate requires true transformation in our own hearts and spirits; it means seeing ourselves in mutual dependence and communal interconnection. Branches of the vine. Abiding.
And yet a go-it-alone, look-out-for-number-one culture is the water we swim in. Thinking first of ourselves and our security, taking care of our immediate families, and then seeing if we have leftover time or money for others is just the way things are. For many, even for those in the church, this extends to a kind of cafeteria approach to our spiritual lives – picking and choosing, flitting from one idea or trend to another, seeing what suits in the moment. While there are advantages to being open to new ideas and trends, there is a loss in depth when we lack discipline and focus on a particular path, when we get so far from the vine.
The remote lifestyle that began with the COVID pandemic shut-down has only amplified all this. There are benefits to these changes, and we can’t go back even if we wanted to. It’s just a fact that we have far less in-person contact than ever before, not just in how we do church, but in how we do everything.
But our new remote lifestyle does make us even more individualistic than ever before. “You do you” has become a mantra. Whatever works for you. You can do you and whatever works for you whenever, however, wherever you want. As long as you have good wi-fi.
And yet we are busier and more anxious than pretty much any generation that has come before. Are we withering on the vine? Are we extended so far from the source that all our energy goes into keeping a couple of leaves alive? When was the last time faith felt like abiding and not like just one more thing we “should” do but we don’t have time for.
Pruning is a pretty uncomfortable thought in this whole scenario. Like the way I was the first time my husband uber-pruned the trees.
There’s been a lot of pruning in churches in recent years. Pruning caused by fewer dollars and fewer volunteers. Pruning caused by COVID.
Pruning may find us mourning and wringing our hands. A seriously pruned plant looks terrible. It makes people stare. Those who don’t know better think it’s dead. And so the first reaction to the pruning that has happened in recent years is to try to figure out how we get it all back --- who is going to step up to do what we always did? What to do? More volunteers, more staff, more tasks.
Maybe. But maybe some of it was like that one ivy leaf at the end of a long, long strand miles from the source.
Here’s the thing: we can’t know if we aren’t abiding. Resting. Dwelling. Listening.
Because the amazing thing about pruning is that is also cause for hope. It requires patience. And faith. Abiding.
The challenge is to be a community connected to the vine. It has always been the church’s challenge. And it so, so, so our challenge today. To stay connected to the vine. I wonder how our community best connects to our true vine, how we abide. In worship, I hope. But how else? When we’re quick to jump to things aren’t the same as they used to or we when hear ourselves pick an choose what fits our personal spirituality and lifestyle, as if we don’t need anyone or anything else. . . .
Does that describe you? If you are hearing this, you are part of this vine, this vineyard . . . . are you a lone branch, way, way, way out there, maybe with a few leaves, even some lovely blossoms, but too far removed to be getting serious nourishment from the vine? Have you been pruned? By COVID, by life, and are you left feeling unproductive and lifeless and wondering when and if anything will grow again? Do you need to allow some serious cutting back, to rid your life of what takes a lot of energy but produces very little? Is all your energy turned outward without enough connection to the sources of energy, the vine, that give you life and ultimately make you fruitful? Are you living in ways that find you abiding, dwelling, resting in Jesus, or is this life-giving connection just one more thing on the to-do list?
It’s not easy. I wonder how we can help one another abide? Both those who truly can’t get here. And those who have become so busy and distracted that connection to the community feels like just one more thing and not essential like water and sunshine. How might we become a community that abides? The recent changes to how this church does governance were surely intended to do that. Fewer meetings, fewer tasks, more spiritual leadership, more paying attention to the vine. Those in current leadership on our session and board of deacons, as well as our staff, are experiencing that in between time when we have pruned but we can’t quite see what will grow next. It’s frustrating and a little scary. It’s so tempting to rebuild the old structure. Wrong answer. Abiding. That’s the answer. How can we help one another abide, how can we be a church that abides. Abides in the risen Christ, even if we don’t always call it that.
It's a rich metaphor, aptly offered to us in spring, in the Easter season. Before we fully let Easter go in a couple weeks, how might we reconnect ourselves to that vine of resurrection energy and reorient ourselves and our church to abiding there until sharing and living that deathless love is as natural and as effortless as the greening out of the trees in spring?
