In the hands of the Vinegrower, abiding in the Vine

Among the last things Jesus says to his disciples is to tell them, "I am the vine, you are the branches."  Life flows to us from Christ as life-giving nutrients and water flow to branches from the vine.  However, for the vine to be healthy and bear fruit, it must be pruned from time to time.  What might the Father, the vinegrower, be pruning away in our lives?  How is God pruning us as a community of faith?  What dead wood must be cut away for us to bear fruit?  But no matter what is pruned away, we will remain always connected to Christ the Vine, for he has made us to be his branches now and always. 

5^th Sunday of Easter (Year B) – Sunday, May 6, 2012

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA

Text: John 15:1-8

This weekend while I was driving it struck me how different the world looks once the leaves come out. The world looks more full, more dense. You can't see very far away. The fullness of God's creation is right in front of you. It's the beginning of May here in Lancaster, and the leaves are green, and growing, and growing. Today we hear Jesus talk about vines and branches. Now I don't know a whole lot about the business of vinegrowing. I've been to vineyards for weddings, and for wine tastings, but I didn't get a detailed lesson about the ins and outs of tending the vines while I was there. 

 

To be honest, I've lived in built-up areas all my life, and last time I checked we were right smack dab in the middle of a city here at Christ Lutheran. We don't have too many vineyards around, but we do have block after block of row houses, one after another, on and on all around us. I live in one of them and many of you do too. Yet it is springtime here in the city and all the green plants are growing, and growing, and bearing fruit. But the time will come when all this growth becomes too much. Some branches will crowd out others. Some will need to be pruned. As Jesus knew, vines are the same way – vines that keep growing and growing have to be pruned for the vine to be healthy and so that it might bear good fruit. Cities, like vines, like all living things, have a life-cycle. It was once “springtime,” in a sense, here in Lancaster, and the city was growing, and growing. There was a day when Cabbage Hill was new, and folks from Germany were arriving in droves, planting seeds and dropping roots all around us. Factories like Kunzler and Hamilton Watch and Slaymaker Lock were like magnets drawing in workers. The streets were like vines, conduits of this new life, we can name them: Dorwart and Manor, Lafayette, Strawberry, High, and well, Vine Street. Houses sprung up like branches, crowded together, filling every block. The whole community was new, and innovative, and growing in all directions. 

 

And, of course, these people brought their worship life with them from Europe. It wasn't long before the Lutherans up and down Manor Street founded a mission Sunday School and then became a congregation in their own right. Before too long, the house of worship in which we now sit rose up to glorify God at this important crossroads. 

 

But today who would call Cabbage Hill a new, or growing, place? Historic, yes, perhaps traditional. As you walk down any of these streets today, what do you see? You often see rotten, damaged wood on the outside of houses. Chipped paint, occasionally boarded-up windows. Uneven sidewalks, vacant, overgrown lots. We're all well aware of the changes age has brought to this building right here. Of course, it isn't just Cabbage Hill, but virtually all the neighborhoods of Lancaster feature older homes in need of repair. When all these dead branches are simply left, it is hard for fruit to grow. People don't want to put down roots. It's hard to keep these kinds of places safe, and welcoming, and fruitful. 

 

But you also see, and hear, the sound of pruning going on all around us. It sounds a lot like hammering and digging. The past few weeks a contractor has been re-roofing a house just down Lafayette Street. People are putting new windows in their homes, and repairing rotten wood and re-painting their outside walls. Houses are being renovated and creatively re-used as offices and workshops. New businesses are springing up in abandoned warehouses. They've been ripping up Orange Street (the one I live on) for weeks. Here we're considering ways to repair, restore, and re-use this building so that it might be more able to bear fruit, that is, to fulfill its purpose. The older, dead branches are being pruned away all across our city and in our neighborhood, so that other branches may bear fruit. Abandoned places are being reoccupied. And the branches of this city are bearing fruit in abundance.

Sometimes, the branches have to be pruned, and the hard thing to hear is that Jesus says we are the branches. Not buildings, but you and me, living people, children of God, are the branches God has made, the branches God tends, so that we might bear fruit for the sake of the world. And so Jesus invites us to the difficult task of considering what in our lives might deserve a faithful pruning. What addictions, obsessions, or idols steal away our time and energy and resources from being there for our families and friends? How do they keep us from following God's call for our lives? What stumbling blocks like fear, or prejudice, or self-absorption, have we allowed to grow unchecked like branches choking out the fruit God is trying to grow in us?

As God's people gathered together as the church, where have we become too attached to a certain pattern of doing things? What golden calves do we worship instead of the living, creating God? Where have our branches sprouted weeds that prevent us from bearing the fruits of faith, like trust, respect, forgiveness, hospitality, hope, flexibility, prayerfulness, reverence, and above all, love?

But my fellow branches, the truth is more stark than this. As we consider where we need pruning, we come face to face with the reality that we cannot prune ourselves. Jesus says his Father is the vinegrower. He's the one with the pruning shears in his hands. Jesus' Father is the one who planted the vineyard. Like any branches, anywhere, without the life that flows through the vine, we wither up and die. Jesus tells us, “I am the true vine.” Without the life we receive through the self-giving grace and love of Jesus the Vine, through his death and resurrection, we cannot live. Jesus says, “apart from me you can do nothing.” 

 

In baptism, we believe that we die to sin and are raised to new life with God. Simply put, through baptism, God lops us off as the choking weeds that sin has made us to be. As humans helplessly captive to sin, to turning away from God, we are withered branches gathered up and burned in the fire. Yet as God brings us up out of the cleansing waters of his grace, we are grafted onto the vine that is Jesus Christ, once and forever. We are re-born, re-grown, as branches that can bear fruit. Jesus promises, “I AM the vine, YOU ARE the branches.” 

 

And so, for us, pruning is no longer anything we need to fear. It is Jesus' Father, our Father, who is the tender of the vines. And because we have been reborn in baptism as the fruit-bearing branches of Christ the vine, we need not fear the pruning shears. They are not meant to cut us off from Christ, but to enable us to abound with fruit for each other and for our neighbors. 

 

If you've ever looked at a pruned tree or vine, and I have once or twice, it often doesn't look very good. It's hard to believe that this cutting and shaping is for the benefit of the plant. So God's pruning of us often doesn't look good to our eyes. Wherever God might be cutting away the weeds and dead branches in your life, it may very well be unsettling, scary, disorienting or even painful. But God does not toy with us and God does not abuse us. It's important to distinguish between sinful human acts of abuse and God's transforming work. When God shapes us, God is tending us out of love into branches that bear fruit, and he does so as the one who gave his life for us.

I believe we can see God's pruning work all around us at Christ Lutheran Church. As we're being forced to do more with less, as we're left with the work of renewing two aging buildings, we're forced to ask ourselves what is most important for God's work in this community? As we're trying out new things in worship, we're witnessing more of the diversity of music and prayer in Christ's church. As we're facing difficult questions together and going through conflict, even seeing beloved members depart, we are learning to entrust this ministry to the God who creates it and sustains it. We are learning how to leave it in God's hands, hands that will shape it into a fruitful future, but a future that will come with changes and surprises we can't anticipate and might not even like.

This pruning is hard. I know it has been hard for all of you who are pouring so much of yourselves into this church, who have witnessed so much change in this place. But Jesus gives us advice that we would do well to take. He invites us to abide in him as he abides in us. He dwells in us, and he invites us to dwell in him. He asks us to let go of our worries, our fears, our insistence that anything has to be one way or another, and to dwell in his overflowing grace and love for us and for the world. Christ's church, by which I mean all of you, along with the institutions and buildings, is always being pruned, renovated and reformed. We, as individuals and as Christ's church, have always and will always be constantly changing. But we remain always in the hands of the vinegrower. We have a promise that will never be broken, that Christ is the vine and we are his branches. No matter what pruning must occur, in him we shall always have life in abundance. Amen.