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long ago dropped it s time to move on we are trying to honor the movement of the spirit and the yard sale deadline which also happens to be my birthday we have a few days left i sent in my check for clinical pastoral education tuition the other day and got my pre employment drug test first one ever something that shows my age i suspect so i am all ready technically and procedurally to start cpe on may 18 that happened monday number one daughter got her driver s license that happened yesterday these are linked events as being fully occupied 5 days a week by cpe is possible only now that she can drive herself to summer swim team practices and whatever else she might have to do on summer break of course our goal as parents is to keep her alive and get her through childhood and into adulthood and independence and capability and solo flight but i had significantly underestimated the immediate impact of that particular milestone on my daily routine and how i would actually feel about it and i sit here fully aware that there are people people i know dear friends who would give their right arms for the chance to feel this very excruciating ambiguity this awful empty sorrow along with its crazy joy and uncomprehending astonished pride but dear god it hurts so this is grace i wanted to be such a good mother and i have failed in that in so many ways great and small and nevertheless there she is alive ok better than ok a whole world and us still a part of it leave a comment posted in progress notes tags family growing up milestones ministry motherhood personal rites of passage time posted by hat may 3 2015 fifth sunday of easter vinedressers at work hi gang here is the sermon i preached this morning to fill in for our pastor who was on vacation sermon john 15 1 8 all we have to do is stay today is the fifth sunday of easter the gospel text recommended by the revised common lectionary for this sunday of this church year comes from the gospel of john chapter 15 verses 1 8 which is on page ___ in your pew bibles it s a familiar passage some people here will know it as the one about the vine and the branches it s one of jesus seven i am sayings in john s gospel which are the subject of the windows in this sanctuary so we even have this text illustrated in stained glass in the window directly behind this center left section of the sanctuary the text is a surprising choice for the easter season though maybe because it is a little out of order in time it is actually a speech that jesus gives to his close disciples before easter in fact on the evening of the last supper so before everything that makes the easter season the easter season before jesus betrayal arrest crucifixion death and then as we know on the fifth sunday of easter but as they did not his resurrection i stress all that because it seems important to keep in mind this morning that we know things that the first disciples did not just as they knew things that we do not and these different things that we know and they know may affect how we hear these words of jesus to his would be disciples so let s listen for the word of god to us in john 15 1 8 1 i am the true vine and my father is the vinegrower 2 he removes every branch in me that bears no fruit every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit 3 you have already been cleansed by the word that i have spoken to you 4 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 5 i am the vine you are the branches those who abide in me and i in them bear much fruit because apart from me you can do nothing 6 whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers such branches are gathered thrown into the fire and burned 7 if you abide in me and my words abide in you ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you 8 my father is glorified by this that you bear much fruit and become my disciples the word of god for the people of god thanks be to god what do we understand in this lovely image jesus uses of the vine and the branches and the vinedresser because one of the interesting things about human beings is that we are naturals when it comes to images to metaphors we get symbolic thinking metaphors are literally what humans do so when jesus says he s the vine we know he doesn t mean he s got grape dna we know he means something deeper something spiritual that the image of the vine represents and helps us visualize for instance i expect we all assume that when jesus says my father he is talking about god i admit i didn t even notice for a long time that jesus never actually uses the word god in this speech he only uses the word father because as soon as i hear jesus say my father i automatically translate it as god and i suspect i m not the only christian bible reader who does that i am not even going to suggest that we shouldn t do that either at least not this morning in a different context on a different sunday morning it would be worth talking about other excellent ways to think about god other names we could use for god and the reasons it s a good idea to use those different names from time to time but for now i only bring this up because i want to make sure that we are all on the same page when it comes to assuming jesus is talking god when he says my father that seems to be the general consensus of the experts who talk and think and write about this scripture the disciples probably knew this too or at least had an inkling of it the other gospels tell us that peter had already blurted out that jesus was the christ the son of god one day when jesus came right out and quizzed them on who they thought he was john doesn t tell that story but does remember jesus friend martha as having worked out that jesus was the messiah the son of god back in chapter 11 so when jesus starts talking about being the vine and his father being the vinegrower we are probably right there with the disciples in knowing that jesus is not just talking about grapes and whatever he means by it it involves god but to really understand what he s saying it would definitely help to know something about vines because what a metaphor communicates depends a lot on what people know about the literal thing the person is talking about so they can use something they know about to understand the intangible thing they know less about it s pretty important to be on the same page as the person using the metaphor the image of the vine and the branches and the vinedresser would have made immediate sense to those first disciples since they lived in a place where vineyards were commonplace they would have known all about the vinedressers who worked in them and the seasonal rhythms of their work and their equipment and all of that and with a few exceptions because i know there are a few of us who do actually grow grapes and are probably thinking about them right now most of the people in this room know more about soybeans and corn or tomatoes and zucchini than we do about grapes i thought i could say i am one of the exceptions because i admit i was attracted to this text because it was about grape vines and reminded me of my father and his brothers in california because they grew up in the san joaquin valley of california and did a lot of work on vines and it reminded me of growing up in california and taking trips with my dad to visit his family in kingsburg and seeing orchards and vineyards and passing the sign for selma raisin capital of the world and listening to dad tell stories about pruning vines and turning trays for raisins and visiting my uncle george who worked for a vine and orchard grower and my uncle pete who used to work for sunmaid and loading up the trunk of the car with fruit and feeling that we lived in a good and beautiful place but honestly when it comes right down to it it was my dad who knew all about vines and grapes i don t know anything at all about growing grapes or what it takes to take care of them or branches or any of that so to try to get closer to the same page as the disciples i turned to the internet and i learned a new word viticulture which is the science and art of growing grapes a viticulturist a vinedresser or vinegrower is the practitioner of this science and art it s a highfalutin word and it s not the word jesus used jesus used a homelier term that basically means farmer or earth worker anyway what this crash course in viticulture taught me is that when jesus mentioned the vinedresser the disciples would probably have thought right away of someone who at that time of the year in the springtime when the vines that had been pruned in the fall after the harvest are waking up from their dormancy would be walking up and down the vinerows pinching off many of the little shoots of the vines that are just starting to bud to keep them from having too many leaves and not enough fruit how much fruit is enough would depend on what the grapes were being grown for because wine makers and raisin makers seem to have different ideals when it comes to fruit someone growing table grapes that are going to be made into raisins pretty clearly wants lots of fruit but someone who s going to make wine may want a balance between quantity and quality because fewer clusters of grapes make for more intense flavor and better wine down the road in other words when jesus says his father god is the vinedresser or vinegrower the disciples would have thought of someone very very active and highly skilled doing the work and actively making the decisions involved in tending this vine but mainly what it has taught me is that there is a lot to know about grapes and that i know almost none of it certainly not from personal experience so i am really not on the same page as the first disciples at all but we may not know much about grapes but we do know something about plants and i expect we can all agree that plants don t move around a lot ok they do move sometimes in 1861 for instance a nobleman from hungary agoston haraszthy who is known as the father of california viticulture brought 100 000 wine grape cuttings from all over europe to california several years later an english immigrant named william thompson who had travelled west with his family in two wagons and set up a little farm a few miles from yuba city mail ordered some cuttings from a new york nursery including a variety called lady de coverly which was supposed to have come from constantinople unfortunately after he had grafted these cuttings into his existing stock two were destroyed by flooding and the third seemed to have been overpruned and didn t produce any fruit when it finally did produce it turned out to be almost miraculously perfect for making raisins and now all the raisins we buy came from these thompson seedless grapes so plants can move but not usually on their own so when jesus tells the disciples to abide in him that is to remain in him to stay in him to live in him the way we live in corydon or live in our homes it seems a little redundant because abiding staying is just what plants ordinarily do staying is just business as usual for the branches which is a good thing for them since that s what keeps the branches alive is their connection to the vine with its root system as long as nothing catastrophic happens like a hail storm an earthquake a plague of locusts the branches are going to keep growing out of the vine they are growing out of they don t actually have to do anything out of the ordinary to keep doing that to abide they d actually have to do something not to abide they d have to to disconnect to get separated kind of like that song by taylor swift for those of you who listen to pop radio all they have to do is stay so jesus is telling the disciples the branches not to do something that if they really were branches they wouldn t even think about doing namely getting detached from the vine granted if a branch did think of doing that it would be a bad idea since a branch needs to be connected to the vine the source of its life to stay alive we don t have to be viticulturists to see that and we don t have to be theologians to understand what that means spiritually that just as the physical life of a branch comes from this connection to the main plant the source of its life the spiritual life of the disciples comes from their connection to jesus to the christ who is the source of their spiritual life but the disciples know their connection with jesus is life giving and that they re not thinking about ending it i think we know they re assuming will continue tomorrow and the next day and the day after that but at that last supper jesus knows and we know that tomorrow and next day and the day after that is not going to be business as usual it is going to feel like a catastrophe like a hail storm or an earthquake the disciples could know this too because jesus has told them bunches of times but they don t seem to have gotten that message and when it comes right down to it people are not really that much like plants unlike plants people do get ideas people do make decisions people do take action and leap to conclusions etc when things don t go as expected people do think they might have made a big mistake do wonder whether they just wasted the last three years of their lives following after a messiah who ended up being crucified by the romans and looking like an abject failure so upon reflection it makes a whole lot of sense that on this night of the last supper jesus would keep talking about abiding would try to give these disciples a vision of themselves as branches of a life giving vine as having a kind of life that is integrally connected to and sustained by his remarkable life and constantly in a position to flourish a vision that can support the confidence to continue to trust jesus through the thing that is about to happen that will shake their faith in him so much trying to get them to understand that the way a branch has a living connection to a vine so whatever happens they do have a live connection to christ they ll need to understand it as something that s real here now not as something that s over and done with that s lost considering what s about to happen it makes a whole lot of sense that jesus would give them this vision of a vine rooted in eternity if you will in an eternal kind of vineyard where my father is the vinedresser a good and beautiful place where all they have to do to experience this flourishing life is stay stay faithful to jesus stay true to his message of the kingdom of god stay committed to his way of presenting god s way as the day to day practice of love in the service of the neighbor as oneself all they have to do is stay and because they are not plants but people they don t do that all that well spoiler alert later in the gospel jesus has to show up after the resurrection and call them back into his service and i expect th...