Sermon by Pastor Mike Buttonnn
A Walk in the Vineyard
Text: John 15: 1-8
NRS John 15:1
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.2He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.
4Abide 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. 5I 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. 6Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
God’s grace and peace be with you now and forever. Amen.
For years I had been studying today’s gospel of the vine, the branches, and the vinegrower. I’d explored the Old Testament roots of the image, and I read extensively in a variety of commentaries on how Jesus developed this metaphor in the Gospel of John. Raymond Brown’s two-volume opus The Gospel According to John was especially helpful. But I didn’t really begin to understand the depth and breadth of this message until I took a tour of a working vineyard.
A couple of years ago, my niece Becky invited me to preside at her wedding in California’s Livermore Valley. Besides being the home of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, it’s also one of that state’s many winemaking regions. Becky’s soon-to-be husband Jake arranged for us to tour the Concannon Vineyards, the valley’s largest vineyard with about 300 acres under cultivation. I’d read that growing grapes was time and labor intensive, but I had no earthly idea of how much time and how much labor until they started showing us around. Every vine, every branch, every grape cluster is separately cared for, nurtured, and cultivated. There’s constant monitoring of a whole range of environmental variables, with many vineyards now using GPS devices and remote sensors to keep up with the slightest changes in light, temperature, and soil. Great art and very sophisticated science are combined toward the one goal of getting the most nutrients to the best grapes to produce the most intense flavor. It sounds simple, and yet it’s anything but.
Several things about the vineyard struck me as having particular spiritual significance. The first is that the vineyard is really one big organism. While there are individual vines each growing their own branches and grapes, as those vines grow along those long, horizontal trellises, the branches soon become so intertwined that it’s practically impossible to sort out one branch from the other. That also explains why the vine growers have to pay such close attention to pests and plant diseases. The health of any one vine is inseparable from the health of every other, which is also something that Jesus directly implies in his use of the vine metaphor.
Simply put, we’re all in this thing together, on all sorts of levels, but especially the spiritual one. I don’t know how else to say this, except that there’s no such thing as go-it-alone Christianity. Now, I know, this flies in the face of a lot of popular culture. From its founding, America has emphasized individual rights and individual freedoms, and most American Christianity has focused on individual conversion. This focus on the individual explains, I think, why many people who profess Christ don’t necessarily feel a need to go to or participate in any kind of church. Why bother with other people when you already have Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? But the vineyard imagery insists that we can’t be connected to Christ without at the same time being connected to every other branch growing from the same vine. We need one another.
In one of his most famous essays, Martin Luther described what he considered to be the seven signs of the true church, one of which he called “the conversation and consolation of the brethren.” That was his way of saying that one way we know Christ’s presence is in the care and affection and support we offer one another in the Body of Christ. I mean, if we can’t take the time and effort to love, nurture, and forgive our own brothers and sisters in Christ, then how in the world are we going to be able to reach out to those who don’t know Christ?
Christianity is a communal faith. You can’t pick up a Bible without acknowledging the debt we owe to the thousands of generations who have passed on the Word of God to us today. But the Body of Christ is also made up of individuals, which is likewise apparent in the vineyard. Vine growers devote a whole lot of time and effort to what they call canopy management, or what I’d call pruning. The canopy are those parts of the grapevine visible above ground, and the vinegrower has to shape the vine, branches, and leaves to manage the most effective light capture as well as to increase yield and prevent diseases. This includes a practice called green harvesting. That’s when an individual grape cluster is pruned of green or immature grapes so as to increase the flavor of the remaining grapes. In the vineyard, less is sometimes more.
This is what Jesus is getting at when he describes his Father as the vinegrower who prunes the branches. Now, obviously, God doesn’t take shears to us or whack away at us with a machete. Rather, God uses the power of the Law. In Lutheran lingo, the Law is not just the Bible’s commandments and ordinances. The Law is the Word of God that reveals our need for the grace of Christ. Without the Law, we’d all be living in a fool’s paradise, oblivious to our true condition, like a man with a dread disease thinking he’s in the prime of life. But the Law is like a mirror, in whose reflection we are confronted with all our frailties and imperfections. It’s not a pretty picture, but if we never come to terms with the person we really are, we can never know just how deeply and desperately we need Christ.
I read a quote this week from Richard Rohr on how spiritual growth happens in our lives. He writes:
"It's not addition that makes one holy but subtraction: stripping the illusions, letting go of pretense, exposing the false self, breaking open the heart and the understanding, not taking my private self too seriously."
The Law is how God moves us to clear out the stuff in our lives that would keep us from fully connecting with the life source who is Jesus. In every life there’s all sorts of debris that’s continually accumulating – you know what I mean: resentments, unresolved conflict, anger, hurt feelings. And if we let that stuff accumulate, the seed of faith can neither grow nor prosper and the fruits of love will die on the vine. In Galatians 5 St. Paul makes a pretty thorough catalog of the stuff that has to go to keep our souls alive, but do you remember how Dr. Seuss described “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas?”
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.
Through the Law God prunes us so that our small hearts may grow and receive more fully the love of Christ, who empowers us to love others with the love we ourselves have received.
As I walked through the Concannon Vineyards, I saw these beautiful grape clusters hanging from the vines. They were so perfect looking I thought they might have been artificial, you know, like a display for the tourists. But no, they were real. In all their beauty and color, they were a testament to the glory of God, which also happens to be God’s plan for each and every one of us.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
