Jesus Gives Fruitful Life!
Easter 5 – May 6, 2012
I'm not much of a gardener. I've talked and written about that before. I don't exactly have a black thumb, but I don't really have a green thumb either. I've had my fair share of houseplants over the years, usually the ones that are supposed to be easy to take care of and easy to grow. But what I've learned is that easy to grow is not the same as hard to kill.
Back in my college and post-college years I had a philodendron. You know the kind I mean – kind of heart-shaped green leaves, and a vine-y kind of plant; if you'd give it something to hold on to, you could get branches to snake around the room. And I had one of those that lasted and lasted and lasted – but really, this was one of the kind of plants that's more hard to kill than easy to grow. I mean, it survived, but the longer I had it, the uglier it got. It would grow nice long vines, but they were spindly-looking things, the leaves would get fewer and farther between, and you just knew that the plant was not all it was supposed to be, all that it could be. It was just getting by, but it wasn't thriving. It wasn't lush and full the way it started out. Some of you less-than-green-thumb gardeners can probably imagine your own scraggly plants in the place of mine.
As I listen to these words from Jesus this morning, I get an image of that old philodendron in my mind's eye. The lectionary is messing with our timeline again, and we hear Jesus speaking on what we call Maundy Thursday, the night of his betrayal and arrest, and these are part of his final words to his followers – he's got three chapters and a long, last prayer altogether, but as he gathers with them for this farewell meal, Jesus wants to leave them with words of wisdom and encouragement, promise and hope – words that they can carry with them through the tough days that will follow – not just his crucifixion and death, but all of the struggles and persecution that will come even after he has been raised from the dead and they go out into the world to share this incredible story. And so he talks to them about their relationship. Jesus talks about they way they are all interconnected. About what they will need to do in order to do more than just survive, but how it is that they can grow and thrive.
He uses this image of the vine and the branches. Jesus says to them, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” I am the vine, Jesus says – I am the root, the source. I am what gives you life and strength and nourishment. I am what you need to be hooked into if you want to have a deep, vibrant, meaningful life. I am what you need to sustain you, so abide in me. Dwell with me. Make your home in me. Let your life intertwine with mine, and you will have an abundant, lush, full life.
He also talks about God, his father and ours, the vinegrower. I may not have a green thumb, but even the best master gardeners in this congregation are nothing compared to God. God is the ultimate gardener. God knows how to work in our lives to help us to grow – to be more than a spindly, sparse philodendron holding on to a stake or a rod and inching along, but not really putting out leaves or growing into the fullness of what we were created to be. And so Jesus speaks these words that, quite frankly, make me & probably many of you nervous – He talks about God removing branches that bear no fruit, and pruning even those that do bear fruit so that they will bear more. And the ones who don't abide in Jesus – well, they're thrown away like a branch and wither and are gathered up and thrown into the fire to be burned. I hope that when we hear these words, they make us pause, that they make us stop at least for just a little bit to look at our lives and wonder where we land. Are we bearing fruit? Are we disconnected from Jesus, from the source of true life? I don't know about you, but neither of these possibilities seems all that great. Pruning doesn't seem like such a great alternative to being tossed on to the burn pile. Can't we just live our lives on our own, letting our branches go where they want, getting along the best we know how without God the gardener coming to interfere?
The thing is though, that that's not really living. Think again of whatever plant you've owned or seen in someone else's house or in a restaurant – wherever you've seen something like my philodendron, getting along, but not really thriving. That's how a life that's lived disconnected from Jesus looks. It may be hard to kill, but it's hardly a lush, full plant. And the longer those vines are allowed to grow away from the roots of the plant, without pinching them back and pruning them, the worse they look – the less leaves, the less beautiful, the less vibrant, the less healthy they are.
But the life that God designed us to live, the life God longs for us to have, the life Jesus invites us into in this gospel, is one that is symbolized by those full-leafed, gorgeous plants you see in the store before we bring them home. They're lives that are full, abundant, joyful, lives that are connected to the root of life, Jesus – and that life, Jesus' own life, flows through them. There's pruning involved sometimes, because even this amateur gardener knows that plants and trees need to have the dead spots trimmed back and cut off periodically. Those dead or dying parts all pull at our connection to the vine that sustains us. They sap the strength that could be going into new growth and abundant fruit. They're all of those things that promise to fulfill us and our need for true connection, to nourish us, to give us that abundant life we desire, and yet leave us trailing out there, far away from the root and source of true life. So even though is sometimes seems that way, pruning isn't a punishment, it's just part of the natural process that makes space for new life to grow.
I know which kind of plant I'd rather be. And the great news is, our part is just to abide. To stick close to Jesus, to make our spiritual homes in him and to let him live in us. Branches don't have to worry all the time about whether or not they're producing fruit, or which parts need pruning. If they stay connected to the vine, fruit is a natural outcome, and the vinegrower will take care of the rest.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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