Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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It seems that I’ve opened my last few homilies saying something along the lines of, “today’s passage was a challenging one for me…” and today’s Gospel lesson continues that theme, which likely says a little more about the homilist than the text. The Gospel lesson we just heard proclaimed contained the last of Jesus’ I AM statements in the Gospel of John. And here Jesus’ uses the image of a vine and its branches as a symbol and extended metaphor for the rich life of mutual indwelling that God invites us to. But before we get to the good news, I think it’s important we acknowledge a few challenges with this passage. We should acknowledge that the broader reception history of this passage in the church has, at times been very harmful when it has been used as a tool for anti-Jewish replacement theology. We won’t dissect that today, but I do want to acknowledge that history and reject that approach. My own personal reception history is a bit complicated too. I fell in love with Scripture as a young teenager (As I imagine many of us here today did). That text felt as if it was teeming with life and overflowing with the love of God for me and others, but this passage, in particular, was one of several that brought me more angst than hope whenever I would read it, as I struggled to discern whether I was truly abiding in Christ and producing fruit that endured, or was destined to be lopped off for being an underperformer. Because Jesus doesn’t just describe deep, mutual interconnection, in this text, but also pruning, and even chopping off and burning of branches that do not bear fruit.
So just in case there’s anyone here today wrestling with those valences of the text, let's engage with them first. Is Jesus really saying that if we don’t bear enough fruit, we get lopped off the vine, and is that image meant to convey some sort of ultimate or eternal separation from God? While it can be easy to read the passage this way (and many of us have been conditioned to do so), we are called to read canonically, and situate this text within the broader message of Scripture and revelation of God. I believe that when we do this, we can answer that question with a firm, resounding, “no.” As our Epistle lesson reminds us, “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Once we have established that resounding “no,” and our security in the love of God, we find ourselves free to get curious about what Jesus might actually be describing in this passage, and in truth it is nothing short of breathtaking.
John’s Gospel contains seven, stirring and startling “I AM” statements that describe fundamental aspects of Jesus’ identity and the abundant life he invites us to join him in. “I am the bread of life;” “I am the light of the world;” “I am the door;” “I am the good shepherd;” “I am the resurrection and the life;” “I am the way, the truth and the life;” and, our statement for today, “I am the true vine.” This particular I AM statement is situated within Jesus’ farewell discourse with his disciples. And this placement, as you’d imagine, does indeed matter. Immediately prior to this passage, Jesus has encouraged his friends not to be troubled or afraid, but in almost the same breath let them know that he is leaving them “I am going to the Father,” he said, and “I will no longer talk much with you.” Pastorally, this text is situated in a rather fraught moment where the disciples are becoming increasingly aware that something is up, Jesus is leaving, and their hearts are likely yearning for some reassurance of connection with the one they love, and reassurance is precisely what the metaphor Jesus uses is designed to do.
Of all the 7 (Pred. Nom.) I AM statements, this is the only one that has an accompanying “you are” statement. Jesus tells his disciples that he is the vine and they are the branches. And while it may not strike us as such at first glance, this is an image of a deeply intimate and mutualistic relationship. The vine provides the structural support, nutrients from the soil, and the vascular system the branches need to survive and thrive. The branches act as the primary photosynthetic organs for the vine, producing the energy needed to sustain the vine's growth, propagation, and reproduction. The glucose produced in photosynthesis is used to fuel the plant’s metabolic needs, as a primary component of the cell walls that must be constructed if the vine is to continue to grow, and excess glucose is transported back to the main vine and stored as energy reserves for the next growing season.
This image is full of vulnerable, tender, mutuality that I believe we have become conditioned to miss. We are radically dependent upon the vine, but in the mystery of God’s humble, self-giving offering of love, this text hints that on some profound level, God has chosen to not flourish without us too.
Another reassuring note in this passage is that the author has Jesus speaking in the present tense. Jesus is not telling his friends that in some distant future, after they have achieved a certain level of education, enlightenment, detachment, or meditative prowess that they will be intimately connected to him, but rather right now, they are already as intimately interconnected as vines and their branches. You and I, right now, are as intimately interconnected with Jesus and one another as vines and branches.
“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” Jesus invites us to abide in him. What might he mean by this invitation?
On one one level, we could say that it is rather impossible for us NOT to abide in the ocean of the love and mercy of God. Our faith maintains that Christ, through his death, resurrection, and ascension has entered the heart of all things. “It is,” after all…, “ in him that we live and move and have our being.” Simply by virtue of our existence we have been given the gift of dwelling in the love of God.
But as always with God, it would seem that there are greater depths we are invited to traverse. Jesus’ phrasing does seem to indicate that this abiding he has in mind isn’t just ontological; there is a volitional component to it as well.
Paradoxically, it would seem, there is a kind of organic movement associated with deeply abiding in God’s love, and it’s a movement similar to the flow and dynamic interchange of nutrients and energy between a vine and its branches. Theologian Raimon Panikkar describes the dynamism of abiding with the following words, “I am one with [or abide in] the Source insofar as I too act as a source by making everything which I have received flow again -- just like Jesus.”
In Jesus, we see this striking example of the free flow of love. His life and ministry of opening the eyes of the blind, healing the sick, creating community for the forgotten and listening to those who society said should not be heard -- all of this was a dynamic participation in his deep abiding in the love that flows within the Godhead. Jesus invites us in this passage to awaken to the fact that we dwell in this flow of kenotic love and are in fact called to participate in it!
However, if you are at all like me, there may be parts of you that still struggle to believe in our lovability and ability to love and this, I believe, is where the pruning comes in.
But first, a clarification. I often confuse pruning and trimming. Jesus is not saying that the Spirit is going to come along with a hedge trimmer and mow us down and shape us up, into a uniform size and shape approved of by our suburban HOAs. I’ve learned from a dear friend who is rehabilitating his family’s apple and pear orchards that pruning is a profoundly intimate process where they get to know each plant as a unique individual, with its own needs for growth and flourishing and particular tendencies for fruit production. His job is to help steward the natural flow of life in that plant, by inspecting nearly every branch and bud and gently guiding it into the most fruitful possible growth by a series of careful snips here and notches there as they clamber among the branches. And so it is with us, the Spirit, carefully tends to us, pruning us with that same posture of respect, tenderness, and deep attentiveness to our individuality.
Pruning, for us, is the process of being opened up to experience love in the places we’ve never been able to before. And it is precisely in those places where we have not yet experienced love for ourselves that we struggle to let it flow for others. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but pruning is not always pleasant; it can indeed be painful for moments and seasons, but, to quote the Jesus Storybook Bible, it is intended to open us up to a fuller experience of the immense, “unending, never-giving-up, always and forever love” that God for each of us -- precisely as we are.
Pruning, then, carefully peels away the falsehoods of who we thought we needed to be to discover who we actually are, and then experience the surprising truth that it is that person -- that real person -- the real you, the real me -- who is connected to the vine. And that is that person whose life will be able to keep that love flowing, and in so doing, will produce fruit that remains.
What might this process look like? At times it can be the painful process of discovering that the patterns of behaviors we had once identified as loving on our part, were actually patterns of enabling in a web co-dependence. Or you may be called to first awaken to your own own beauty and worthiness of love before you can give it to another. The Spirit may reveal to us patterns of defensiveness in our lives, that keep us from mutually life-giving relationships -- defenses that will only fall as we come to rest in the immense, unending love of God for us. Whatever our particular case may be, it is when we are able to release into the tender pruning of God that we open up to receive the love of God in surprising and refreshing ways, and as we do that we can then turn and allow that love to flow through us to others.
So may we find hope and joy in the reality that you and I, precisely as we are, are deeply loved and are as intimately interconnected with Jesus and one another as vines and branches. As we are being pruned to open up more fully to this love, we are being cared for with all the tenderness and wisdom of a master Vinedresser. And my prayer is that this hope will sustain us with deep, paradoxical, joy and peace that glimmer through the growing pains.
In the name of God, Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing.
Amen.
