Sunday, May 31, 2015

Sermon: Vine and Branches

John 15:1-11
Vine and Branches 
Moving with the Spirit
James Sledge                                                                                                   May 31, 2015

Back in the early 1990s, before going to seminary, I lived in Charlotte, NC, not too far from my grandparents’ home. The city was beginning to surround them, but they still had seven acres of land, a barn, a pond, and a big garden plot. And there were grape vines.
As a child I ate muscadines and scuppernongs from those vines and helped my grandmother make jelly from them. But by the early 90s there hadn't been grapes in a while. Some vines had been lost to a road widening. Other vines still grew on the metal and wire trellises my grandfather had constructed years earlier, but no grapes.
Our daughter Kendrick was a toddler then, and I often took her to visit her great grandparents. On one visit, I reminisced about grapes and making jelly. Too bad there we no grapes any more, and Kendrick would never get to do that, but my grandfather quickly corrected me. “Nothing wrong with the grapes,” he said. “They just haven’t been tended in recent years.”
Grandad had suffered a mild stroke that affected the vision processing part of the brain, leaving him nearly blind. He could no longer do gardening or yard work, but he told me that if I pruned the vines early next spring, there would be grapes.
So it was that he and I went out to the vines one day with pruning shears. He sat down in an old, metal lawn chair as I began to prune branches. He couldn’t see much, but he quickly realized that I was being far too timid. “You’ve got to cut them back hard,” he said.  “Get rid of all that growth from last year, all the way back to the main vine.” That seemed extreme to me, cutting off lots of perfectly healthy growth. But with his encouragement, I pruned them way back, leaving what seemed to me very little. 
Time passed, and just as Granddad promised, the wires supports filled with branches.  Then tiny grape clusters began to form.  Later that year, Kendrick and I ate grapes and made a batch of jelly with my grandmother’s supervision.
It’s a special memory for me. I don’t know if Kendrick remembers it, but I cherish that she got to make jelly with my Grandmother, just as I had once done. It’s a small link to a rural past that has vanished. A drug store now sits where my grandparents’ home once was.
That memory also helps me understand when Jesus says he is the vine and his Father the vinegrower who prunes the healthy branches so they will bear more fruit. And I have to admit, I find that image both comforting and disturbing at the same time.

It is comforting to think that I can abide or dwell in God’s love and it can abide in me. The notion that I am never alone, that God loves me and comes to me, that Jesus abides with me through the Spirit, that I can draw life from him, is a wonderful reassurance. But it turns out this is not simply a resource for me to tap into when it suits me or when  times are tough. Not only is Christ’s indwelling presence essential for true and full life, such a life requires God to prune and form me to God’s design, shaping me in ways I would never do.
As the product of American culture, I’m not so sure about this. I was raised in a society that celebrates individual achievement, that mythologizes the self-made man or woman. In this myth we are what we make of ourselves, yet Jesus says, “apart from me you can do nothing,” and God must prune us for us to bear good fruit.
I often reject such notions. In my own vocational life, I have a distressing tendency to turn to God only after my ideas or plans don’t pan out. I try to be a totally independent branch, doing what seems best to me. I can be oblivious to God much of the time, until I notice that I’m drying up and withering.
I wonder if Mainline Protestantism isn’t having a similar experience these days. One hundred years ago we were at the center of culture. That’s how we got the name Mainline. We dominated culture, and so we assumed the culture was Christian. That culture did expect people to say they were Christian and assumed they would affiliate with congregations. And I think many assumed that participation in this “Christian culture” would somehow form people into Christians.  Clearly that didn’t work out.
A recent Washington Post op-ed piece quoted historian George Marsden who said, “Liberals have learned that it’s difficult for the church to survive if there’s nothing that makes the church distinct from culture.” The op-ed itself went on to say, “The assumption of faith has gradually — now more rapidly — fallen away. There may or may not be a decline in Christian practice. But we are certainly seeing the collapse of casual Christianity and of religious belief as a civic assumption.”[1]
I might put it another way. We are seeing the collapse of Christianity that is not firmly grafted into Christ, not pruned and shaped by God. There may not be a decline in actual Christian practice, in deep faith that seeks to follow Jesus and stays attentive and alert to God’s call. But what the op-ed piece calls “casual Christianity” and others have called “cultural Christianity” – Christianity as a civic institution, an accident of birth and circumstance – that is fading away, just as Jesus told us it would.
There’s actually good news for the church this – not for the civic institution sometimes called church, but for the living body of Christ. Those who long for the revival of cultural Christianity will likely be disappointed. But for those who seek to be a part of the body of Christ, to bear fruit in the world, there are many signs of life and vibrancy.
Brian McLaren’s chapter for today opens this way. “The wind can be blowing, but if your sail isn’t raised, you won’t go far. You can be surrounded by oxygen, but if you don’t breathe, it won’t do you any good. The sap can be flowing, but if a branch isn’t connected to the vine, it will wither. If you don’t have kindling and wood in your hearth, a lit match won’t burn long. It’s the same with the Spirit. We are surrounded with the aliveness of the Spirit. All that remains is for us to learn how to let the Spirit fill, flow, and glow within us.”[2] I might add, We must learn to stay connected to the vine and allow the vinegrower to prune and shape us.
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In a few moments, we will celebrate the sacrament of baptism. For casual, cultural Christianity, this was just something you’re supposed to do. I’ve even heard people refer to it as “getting the baby done.” But today, we graft Maggie into Christ, into the vine. Her parents promise to lead a life shaped by God as faithful disciples of Jesus their Lord. They promise to help Maggie learn what it means to live a life pruned and shaped by God’s call. And we as community promise to do our part to help, support, and encourage them.
There is still enough residual, casual Christianity left that such promises are sometimes made without much thought or meaning. But when they are truly rooted in Christ, when we truly open ourselves to the life giving movement of the Spirit, God will shape Maggie and us for our place in the body of Christ, and we will bear much fruit in the world.

We Make the Road by Walking. The practice begun in Advent continues through summer of 2015. Scripture and sermons will connect to chapters in Brian McLaren’s book. This week’s chapter is 41, “Moving with the Spirit.”



[1] Michael Gerson, The Washington Post, May 25, 2015
[2] McLaren, Brian D. (2014-06-10). We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (p. 207). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.

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