"Abiding in Love"
A meditation by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett
Preached at Pleasantville UCC, May 10, 2009|
1 John 4:7-21 & John 15:1-8

"Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you.
In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine,
you can't bear fruit unless you are joined with me.”
(John 15:4, The Message)

One of the most frustrating things about breaking my elbow and being in this contraption is the fact that it has gotten in the way of my gardening.  Now, I am more of a wannabe gardener than I am the real thing.  But the wannabe part in me is strong.  I’m one of those people who live in hope every spring that this year things are gonna’ be different.  This year I’m gonna’ have the garden I’ve always dreamed of.

A friend of mine is the real deal.  She can make anything grow.  She can even start her garden from seed – a feat I can only dream of.  Every year, her window sills are lined with tiny peat pots, filled with tender seedlings.  Weeks before true spring begins, they are reaching for the warmth of the sun, just as much as she does.

It won’t be long before her fields will be full of growing things -- furrows of fresh asparagus, mountains of squash, a virtual jungle of tomato plants, vast stands of giant Zinnias, cosmos, and cornflowers.  Everything she puts her hand to just seem to grow.  It’s one of the many things I admire about her -- this ability she has to nurture growing things.

I, myself, have never been very successful at starting gardens from seed.  Every year I want to try, but then I forget to water them, or I leave them out in the sun, or I get them started and never get them into the ground -- one thing or another and the poor things never seem to get a chance. 

One year I actually managed to get a little stand of something going from seed: I had the most magnificent little row of carrot shoots coming up in my garden.  It made me ever so proud.  But when it came time for me to “thin” my little carrot garden, I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it.  You know what thinning is: you must pull out some of the tender shoots in order to make room for the others to grow.  As a matter of fact, you must pull out most of the tender shoots.  And I just couldn’t do it.  They looked so cute and healthy all in a row like that – so I just left them grow that way.

Those of you who are gardeners know what happened of course.  My carrots thrived and grew and come harvest there they were -- fifty tiny little carrots about the size of miniature pencils.  Thinning, it turned out, was a fairly crucial step in the health and strength of the garden.

That was just one of many important lessons that gardening taught me -- though it is not much easier for me to accept it now than it was then.  Sometimes you just have to sacrifice some growing things in order to enable others to grow.  It seems to me it takes a wise and experienced gardener to come to terms with that reality.

That hard lesson about thinning and sacrifice is one of the points that Jesus is trying to make in this morning’s scripture passage from John’s gospel: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.  He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.  Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”  Pruning, like thinning, requires a wise and experienced gardener to understand how sacrificing one part of the plant needs to occur in order to strengthen the other part.

Gardens are good places for learning about the spiritual life.  That must be why Jesus decided to use the metaphor of a grape vine to describe what our life in Christ looks like.

Our life in Christ looks like a grapevine.  God alone is the Master Gardener.  Christ is the vine.  We are but branches on the vine – and two things are true about branches of a grapevine: they will perish if they are cut away from the vine, and, the remaining healthy branches have to be pruned in order to produce good and abundant fruit.

Last week, Jesus told us we were like sheep and he was the Good Shepherd.  This week he wants us to think of ourselves as branches.  Either way, you gotta’ admit, this ain’t real fancy stuff.  It’s not like Jesus was saying that he is the Great Lion of the Universe and we are His pride.  At least then we’d be something fierce and impressive to reckon with.  But instead we’re sheep and branches – which is to say, if we leave the shepherd or separate from the vine we’re doomed.

And that is pretty much the point of the lesson for the day.  We are like sheep who, when we have gone astray are in mortal danger.  And we are like branches which, when cut off from the source of life, will quickly perish and die. 

It’s a simple lesson – made simpler if you decide to take yourself to the garden for first-hand observation.  Jesus wants us to remember that our lives are best lived with a very clear sense of our dependency on God.  But this level of dependency is an important lesson for people who have a deep investment in believing that they can stand on their own two feet.  And many of us do.

This injury has been a powerful reminder of my dependency – and the lesson is already getting old.  I myself am tired of typing with one hand.  I’m tired of not being able to cut my own food.  I’m tired of not being able to get dressed by myself.  And even though I should be really appreciative of everything that my family is doing to help me, lately I’ve just been real grouchy.  I don’t like needing this much help.  I don’t like having to face the humbling reality that I can’t stand on my own two feet –not without falling that is.  I don’t like being reminded of just how dependant I am.

Do you notice the shift from last week?  Last week it was just swell to be that little vulnerable sheep in the arms of Jesus.  This week it really bites.  The truth is – being continually reminded of how dependent and fragile I am is wearing me out.  I’d much rather think of myself as a lion – something way more impressive.

But there is a lesson worth knowing in this; a truth laid bare by this experience.  Being reminded of our dependency upon God can be a relief.  When we are too weak, or too wounded, or too exhausted to keep up the charade of competency, it is an amazing thing to find that we are still loved – by God, who first loved us – and by our friends and families, who daily put up with us.

So there’s an up side to being a branch.  There’s an up side to being reminded that we can do nothing well unless our spiritual lives are drawing life from the vine of Christ.  In order to thrive and be fruitful we must abide – dwell with; take up residence with, make our home with the spirit of Jesus, who strengthens us.

There is however another side to this vine growing metaphor – one that is a little tougher to swallow:

”I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. ²He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.  Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.

I told you when we started that pruning is not easy.  It is painful to experience the pruning knife in our spiritual lives.  Sometimes we are cut off from people we once relied upon.  Sometimes we are cut away from a relationship that is no longer healthy.  Sometimes we experience financial hardship, and find that there are multiple places in our lives that need to be cut back in order for the rest of the plant to thrive and produce fruit.

But no matter how healthy we may be when the Master Gardener has done His pruning, those who have experienced the pruning knife in their own lives know that it is a hard part of the journey.  This kind of pruning can be harsh indeed, and sometimes it remains mighty difficult for an inexperienced gardener like me to see the wisdom in such things.

In her small book, The Faithful Gardener, Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ tells the story from her childhood about a different kind of pruning that gardens (and people) can undergo.  She learned it from an Uncle who had survived the ravages of war, but not without deep wisdom and deep wounds. 

One night, after a great injustice, her Uncle heads out into the fields on a completely windless night and carefully sets it ablaze.  The next day, the field was still smoking but fire-dead.  With his razor-sharp hoe, Uncle skinned back blackened roots and stubble here and there, thereby exposing the earth even more.

“So you see,” Uncle said, “this burning and blackening of the soil here?  Soon much will come of it, so much that you will not believe it...[The ground must be sent] through the fire in order to prepare it for its new life...No one wants this kind of burning, this kind of fire.  We want the field to remain as it once was, in its pristine beauty, just as we want life to remain as it once was.  But fire comes.  Though we are afraid, it comes anyway, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose, sometimes for reasons no one can understand -- reasons that are God’s business alone.

“But the fire can also turn everything to a new direction, a new and different life, one that has its own strengths and ways to shape the world.”[1]

 “[The ground must be sent] through the fire in order to prepare it for its new life...No one wants this kind of burning, this kind of fire...But fire comes.” 

There are experiences in life that leave us feeling that we have been pruned right down to the core of our being.  There are times when we may even feel like we have been sent through the fire like one of these fields.  Those are the times when we are left to dwell most starkly and clearly with the fact that our life apart from God, our life cut off from the source of our being is a life bereft of meaning and hope.

Whether Jesus is calling us sheep or branches, the lesson is the same.  Our lives are dependent upon the power of Christ at work within us.  Trying to pretend that they aren’t will only leave us empty and exhausted.

These days I’ve mostly come to accept what I’m good at.  Generally, I don’t start things from seed anymore.  But I do have a couple packages of lettuce seeds I’ve been meaning to get in the ground.  Nowadays I focus more on hardy perennials that simply won’t die.  And of course, there are my roses, which are still trying to teach me that first lesson I never was quite able to get so long ago.  Roses of course, do better the more you prune them.  It is a hard lesson, and I am trying to learn it.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.”

I am trusting that the Vinegrower is pruning me for glory.  I expect the same is true for you.  Amen.