May 10, 2009 - Easter 5

Jesus Gives New Life Through the Vine
John 15:1-8
Easter 5 – May 10, 2009

I'm not very good at keeping in touch with people much these days. Once upon a time, I was. When I went away to college, my high school friends & I wrote countless letters back and forth, talking about roommates and classes and new friends. And I racked up pretty decent phone bills back then too. But then time went by, and that slowed down to a very occasional letter or a once in a while phone call. I missed talking with them, but we just always seemed to be too busy.

And then, along came the Internet, and when I finally got a computer, I knew that was the answer to my communication laziness! I knew that my friends (college & high school both, by now) would keep in touch this way. How easy is it to sit down & shoot off a couple of lines about how your day or week was & then hit “send”? They get it instantly on the other end! Amazing!
And yet, as time wore on, I found out that e-mail really didn't solve my problem either. We could e-mail quickly & easily, but we didn't. Still too busy. But then along came the ubiquitous cell phone, with unlimited night & weekend minutes & long-distance calls included! Certainly, now I would talk to far away family and friends much more often & maybe even reconnect with those old friends I had lost touch with.

Well, you know the end to that story. Even with all of the quick & easy & cheap ways we have to keep up with each other (& I didn't even mention text messaging!), we don't. I've lost touch with a bunch of good friends from high school and college and my old job and seminary, because we all seem to be too busy to call or e-mail very often. There's just too much going on in our lives & we don't take the time to reach out & reconnect.

I don't know about you, but too often, that sounds an awful lot like my relationship with Jesus. We have lots of ways to stay connected, to abide with him – through prayer and reading the Bible and serving and worshiping – but even with all of that, there are a lot of days when I feel too busy to take the time to spend with him, to make the quality time to reconnect that every relationship needs. Instead, I'm running around, doing all sorts of things – writing sermons, visiting people, going to meetings, cleaning the house, walking the dog, grocery shopping. All good things, all things that need to be done. But sometimes I just get so caught up in my to-do list that I forget to do what Jesus says here. I forget to abide in him.

To abide simply means to remain with someone, to live with them, to dwell with them, to have your lives interconnected. That's what Jesus wants for us; he wants us to stay connected to him; he wants us to draw our life from him, the way branches do from the vine, but most of the time, we're so busy running around that we forget that there's even a vine there! We forget to just be with Jesus, to spend time with him, to let his life flow through us so that we can be healed and renewed. And then all of a sudden, we get to feeling dried up and worn out, brittle, ready to snap, & we wonder what's going on. We wonder why we're not experiencing the abundant, full life Jesus promised us.

But that's what happens when branches don't stay connected to the vine. When branches come off the vine, they're cut off from the source of life. They can't continue to grow, to be green and vibrant and full of the fruit they were meant to produce. After they've been away from the vine – and it doesn't take too long to see this start to happen, eventually they wither up and die away, becoming brown & lifeless.

You know, even when branches stay on the vine, there are times and seasons when growth stops. A few leaves start to wilt and go brown. Another part gets injured in a storm & growth stops while the plant tries to heal. Or maybe there are too many leaves and no fruit. That's when the gardener comes in, tending to the plant carefully, trimming the dead parts, healing the wounds, pruning the plant so that new life can sprout and grow, so that it will produce an abundant harvest.

So I ask you this morning as I have been asking myself all week, what does your branch look like? Are you still connected to the vine? What are the dead, dry parts of your life that need to be trimmed away? Are you busy everywhere, growing lots of leaves, but no fruit? What things are sapping away the life that Jesus wants for you? What prevents you from abiding in Jesus?
No matter what it is, no matter how disconnected you feel from Jesus, the source of life, I want to remind you that there is always hope. Recently, a lot of those friendships that I thought were long dead because of neglect and distance have started to send out shoots of new life through the wonders of the Internet and a little site called Facebook.

And if we humans can do that, imagine what God our gracious gardener can do! No matter what your branch looks or feels like, even if you feel disconnected and dying, God hasn't given up on us. God, who is tender and merciful, knows just what to do to bring us back to life again. God knows what parts of our lives need to be pruned so that new life can flourish. God knows what we need to sustain us, to help us grow strong in the vine.

God longs for us to have an abundant, fruitful life, and so God sent Jesus into the world, so that we might live our lives in him. Christ's very own life flows from him into us as we gather to worship, as we read & absorb his words, as we eat the meal that he provides. As we abide in him, and he in us, Jesus renews us, calling forth new life, making us sprout and grow. And when we are connected to the vine, when we draw our life from his, we can't help but bear fruit – the fruit of his love lived out in our lives, love shared with our brothers & sisters and the whole world! It is a fruit that nourishes & sustains others. And it might be just the thing that causes them to come looking for the source of all that good fruit & in looking, find Jesus the true vine.

So come. Abide in Jesus. Let him abide in you. Be brought back to life. Be renewed. Bear fruit for the sake of a hungry world. Amen.