May 18, 2003

Acts 9: 26-31 + 1 John 3:18-24 + John 15: 1-8

Those of us who have grown up hearing this gospel passage over and over again can easily grow comfortable with the image.  We have all heard countless homilies about unity and fruitfulness; and believe me; I’ve done my homework in past years about the care of vines and fruitfulness. I’ve begun to discover that all of that reflection was, in the end, just a distraction; an intellectualizing of the gospel that might make its demands less pressing. It’s easy to sit back and think about vines and branches and grapes and wine. It doesn’t take a degree in theology to find out that this is a time/worn image used in the Old Testament and a favorite of rabbis and prophets to describe Israel. It gets carried into the New Testament to suggest that there is a wild vine that doesn’t produce and a “True” fine that does. But when you finally exhaust all of that stuff, have analyzed all the “I AM” passages of John’s Gospel, there is nothing left but the human experience that must have given rise to this image in that community from which John’s Gospel springs.

I have a strong feeling that they were dealing with two issues that just did not go away with time, and so they leaned back on their collective memory of Jesus to keep their focus and maintain some balance in their lives. One of the issues is “dead wood”; the stuff that gets pruned away. In the context of a community, this is a delicate and sensitive issue: yet it is one we ought not avoid. There is dead wood here – it weighs down the fruitful branches – takes up space and blocks the life-giving light from the living/fruitful branches. Every time we hear this gospel, we need to wonder about ourselves

and whether or not we have become “dead wood” on this vine.

The other issue haunts us more than the community that shaped this Gospel. It is that issue of independence, of being isolated, cut off, and on our own. It is that illusion of being self-made and self-confident. It is the folly of thinking we can make it on our own. It is wrong thinking and wrong acting that threatens our nation, our neighborhoods, and the very roots of our faith. We cannot and ought not think we can “go it alone.” Isolationism in politics, Congregationalism in religion, and Individualism in personal behavior, all dressed up under the guise of “freedom” is a pretense that leads us away from the truth of this Gospel. It makes dead wood.

“Without me you can do nothing.”

Herein lies the truth of this Gospel. Being one with Jesus necessarily makes us one with each other. Nothing that we do is without consequence in the lives of others. That is what it means to be a vine. To think that we can do anything or say anything without affecting everyone else is to be “dead wood.”  Believing in the name of Jesus Christ is no private, personal issue. As soon as that belief is experienced says the second reading, we are connected with each other. When Paul came to believe in Jesus, he could not stay away or remain away from that group in Jerusalem. This Gospel then is not so much about vines as it is about relationships. If it is about Jesus and his identity, then it is also about us and our identity. To hear and believe in this Gospel leaves us with the challenge of acknowledging our relationships to one another. It calls into question our very presence here. It examines the depth of our commitment and the measure of our stewardship. It exposes the lie of false freedom as “independence” with the truth of responsibility and duty. It examines “choice” outside the boundaries of one’s own little life. It forces us from the shadows of lonely isolation to the light of truth, and into the glory of God’s own life.

May 11, 2003

Acts 4:8-12 + 1 John 3:1-12 + John 10:11-18

This familiar image carries some profound ideas about Jesus from John’s perspective, and some specific implications for us as well. This gospel isn’t about shepherds. It’s about the risen Christ: his self-understanding and his mission. Therefore, it begins to be about us, or about any who would make themselves one with Christ and take up a share in his mission. We do no justice to John’s Gospel by reducing these verses to sentimental portraits of pastoral landscape with soft lighting and lovely clean robes on a man with flowing hair. This Gospel is about the Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and it is John’s image of Christ that we hear of today:

the Christ who is no victim, who is not murdered or put to death by someone else, but who is in charge from the very beginning of his passion, who willingly suffers, willingly goes to his death, willingly lays down his life, all in order to take it up again.

It is willingness that John shows us – a Jesus who makes choices for the sake of others who is obedient to the wish and will of his father/God who understands that to lay down one’s life out of love is to rise up in the Kingdom of God. This image is not for admiration. It is for imitation. It proposes to us that we make choices, and that by those choices we shall find our place and our way into the Kingdom of God. To lay down one’s life is the way to rise up. Service, Sacrifice, Love given freely: this is what we proclaim as Gospel A life laid down is a life raised up.

The command Jesus received and spoke of in the last verse of today’s passage is not just his own. Those who will be one with him, one flock, one shepherd will have the same command. Those who will come here to eat his flesh and drink his blood share his command. Those who have gone with Him willingly to the grave of baptism rise up with him to glory. This is what we proclaim this Easter day. Our Gospel is not about the past, but about the present. It is not simply a story about Jesus; about what he said and what He did. It is about the present and what he continues to do in us. It is about our future and who shall become children of God. It is about the world coming to know Him because it comes to know us.

May 4, 2003

Acts 3:13-115,17-19 + 1 John 3:1-7 + Luke 24:36-48

Last week we took up John’s version of an appearance of the risen Christ. This week it is Luke. The verses today follow the Emmaus story. The two disciples are the ones who met him on their “way”. They have now returned to Jerusalem with their story. The Jesus who has reviewed the scriptures and eaten with them does it again. They are still in that room terrified and unbelieving. It is their shame that holds them back. It is the memory of their failure that they recall, not what he promised them. All they seem to remember is that they abandoned him. All they could see is failure, theirs and his. Their messianic dreams and expectations are over. The cross was the end of that. They thought it was all about them; and the truth of their failings is more than they can bear, so they hide. In their midst comes the risen Christ: a failed Messiah in the midst of failed disciples, and what we hear when they come together is talk of forgiveness.

This is the heart of the Christian story. It is the essence of the Gospel and the source of belief in the risen Christ and the greatest joy. What those disciples came to realize sitting in that room sharing their shame and admitting their guilt and suffering their terror was that the whole experience of Jesus had not been about them. It was not about their messianic expectations. It was not about their power and their victory over their enemies. It was not about how loyal they were as disciples. It was not about their religion either. It was about God and God’s love and God’s plan for them. It was about what God could do with failure and sin.

Until those two making their way to Emmaus had their eyes opened

and one more time went over all that Moses and the Prophets had to say, they didn’t get it. Until those others in that locked up room had the same experience, they didn’t get it. But once he came into that room of failure and shame and doubt, it was different.

Forgiveness became for them the moment of awakening and belief.

He did not avoid them in their guilt nor abandon them in their fear.

He did not reproach their denials of him nor the betrayal. He never mentioned it. He simply reproached their fear. Once they experienced that forgiveness and realized that their failures had not been the end of God’s plan, they understood and were overcome with Joy.

This Easter season can do the same for us. It is not about those disciples and something that happened in Jerusalem. This Easter is about us. We understand their part of the story because we are just like them. Our denial, our betrayal of Jesus and our quickness to abandon Him is just as real as theirs. We have just as much to fear as well. The only difference is that in addition to locking doors,

we set alarms, close the gates, and look the other way at the failures of justice and the suffering of the innocent. The wounds of Christ alive in our midst do not interest us. We want the sentimental Jesus with fair skin, long hair, and gentle voice. He stands before day in and day out inviting us to see and touch wounds, and he asks us for food.

It is to disciples who have failed that the risen Christ appears. It is disciples who are ashamed and hiding that Jesus sends forth in Joy.

It is people forgiven and redeemed who inherit the Gospel and its mission. Our own experience of failure and sin is what puts us in the company of the saved and the redeemed. To the eyes of his own and the eyes of his world, Jesus was a failure – no power, no strength, no miracles. Yet when he confronted with forgiveness the failures of others, he was exalted; and they came to believe. Our best prayer this third Easter day is that it may be so again that he may come into this room or our homes or our hearts with that message of Peace and that mission of forgiveness. When we have come to know that Peace, we shall believe in the risen Lord not because someone told us about it, but because we have known it ourselves.