Message 05-14-06 [Mothers Day]

 

Series:            Lectionary

Scripture:            John 15:1-8

 

Title:                                                    Much Fruit

 

Have you ever heard the phrase “you can’t go home again.” It may have a particular meaning to you, but to me it means that things change and you shouldn’t expect that what you left behind is what you’re going to find again. This was made graphically clear to me and Beckie, my wife, when we visited our old house in Pennsylvania.

            When we moved into that house Beckie and I were dismayed over the first year to learn that it was a gardener’s paradise. There were beds of Iris and daffodils scattered in various places. There were shrubs of different kinds and fruit trees – two apple trees and a pear tree. There were a few fir trees and 17 oak trees. There were shrubs of all different sizes, dogwood, a Japanese maple, and there were two cedar trees. The area had once been called Cedar Hollow and these were two of the only cedar trees still standing. They stood on either side of the end of the walk way that led from the street. Along the driveway there was a bank of azalea bushes of various colors and lots of ground covering plants with perennial flowers scattered within them. In the center of the backyard there was also a pair of grapevines – Concord grapes.

            Beckie and I were dismayed because we moved into a rather simple looking yard in February and over the next few months more and more and more things came to life. My mother is a gardener and on one of her first visits to our new home she almost danced around the yard in ecstasy making a map of every planting, every bush, every tree. She presented this to us so that we would be even more confident in taking care of the treasure of plants that were our yard.

            It was like being handed a Gordian knot. Have you ever heard the story of Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot? It’s an enormous, intricately woven knot that is an incredible puzzle. The legend around the knot was that the person who solved it would go on to rule all of Asia. Alexander comes to the conclusion that the puzzle is impossible to solve in the usual way and so he takes out his sword and slices it through.

            Which is sort of the way Beckie and I went at pruning. When we got to our house in Pennsylvania and everything started to grow it wasn’t long before it was clear that it needed pruning. Beckie’s approach to pruning was whack it down to the ground and see how it does. We had a stick in one garden on the side of the house that remained a stick the entire time we lived there. We were waiting to see how it did. My approach was to carefully snip and cut branch after branch away… and pretty soon every plant I pruned looked the same as every other plant. We had chrysanthemums that looked like evergreen shrubs. Beckie and I had no knowledge of what gave life through pruning. It was just a knot to us, an unsolvable puzzle, and we whacked away the best we could.

            Some how things continued to come back to life each year. We found out there actually were plants that could be cut way back and they did do well. The grapevines were like that. The apple trees bore great fruit after I learned what I should cut and what I shouldn’t. We actually had apple pies made with apples from the trees in our yard. Little by little we grew a connection to the earth and the plants and the cycle of life. We learned that some things should just be left alone and other things needed to be trimmed and cared for.

            Life changed for us as we abided in that house, in that yard. We changed. Beckie worked at planting little gardens and added more flowers. Each year she tried to build a bank of impatiens across the front of our yard under the cedar trees. Each year she learned how to do that differently and finally in our last season there she grew mounds of impatiens. We put our house on the market in the spring and it stood like an island in a sea of blooms and color with everything that grew there.

            We grew a connection with the life that was in that land and it became abundant.

            Jesus is talking about that here isn’t he? He’s talking about connection. Without a connection there’s no life. I am the true vine he says. It could also be translated I am the real vine. The vine is an image that is found throughout the Bible. The vine is used as an image of Israel. But Jesus changes that. The disciples may have thought that they were the vine, that they were part of Israel and Israel was the vine, but Jesus says, “No, you’re not the vine. I am the vine. You are the branches.”

            Unless we have a connection with the vine, with the life-giving sap that comes through the vine, we won’t have life and we won’t produce life. And unless we remain connected to the vine we won’t remain alive. Jesus says, “God, my Father, is the grower.” That’s the literal term for our word “gardener” or “farmer”, grower.” If our relationship with the life of Jesus is all about us being in the vineyard, if all we’re doing is making sure that we can say we’re Christian or Presbyterian then we’re not producing fruit. Can you imagine then that God just cuts us free?

            The truth is that God is the one who knows. God is the grower. He’s not going to keep giving life to someone who doesn’t produce fruit. They may be sitting in a pew in the sanctuary or in a chair in the gym but that doesn’t mean they have life.

 

            I started this by saying you can’t go home again and that’s true. We drove by our old place on a visit up north not too long ago. Everything is gone. Everything is gone. The azalea bank, the oak trees, the apple trees, the grape vine, the shrubs, the two remaining cedar trees… even most of the grass is gone. The house is a stick figure of what it once was. The people in what was our home had no patience… to learn to deal with all that life.

 

            They had no connection with the life that was there.

 

           

Life isn’t about having the right address. Life is being connected with the Life that causes us to bear fruit. It’s not where we are. It’s what we produce. We can be in the best place or we can be in a slum but what we produce there makes the difference to God. God is the grower who is looking for us to bear fruit.

            What does this fruit look like?

            You know, I’ve struggled over this and I know I’m not the first. What did Jesus have in his head when he said be fruitful? Bearing fruit as a person seems kind of odd to me. What does that look like? Does it look like being “productive”? Do we do good deeds and that’s producing fruit. Then how can we be pruned?

When we bear fruit Jesus said God cleans us. We use the word “prunes” but the literal word is “cleans”. You can clean off a grapevine by simply removing the grapes. And maybe that leads in the direction of what our fruit should look like.

The image of fruitfulness in the Bible seems to regularly refer to relationship. It might be seen in character and it might be seen in deeds, but ultimately it seems to connect with relationships. Even the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – shows us that we are fruitful in relation to others. So, I’m wiling to suggest that fruit, the fruit that Jesus is looking for, is seen in the building and establishing and maintaining of good relationships with others. I would push it even a bit further. Our Scripture comes from the place where Jesus lifts the disciples up into a particular position with himself. He calls them friends. He calls them friends as if this is a higher title. He compares it to how they are no longer servants or slaves to him. Now they are friends. And then he tells them that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends.

It seems to me that the fruit that Jesus is looking for is a radical love that changes the lives of others for the better. Our love should change the life of others for the better. People should find themselves sheltered, clothed, educated, fed, visited and have their thirst quenched by us. It also appears that this should be the priority of our lives.

What becomes fascinating to me is that when there’s fruit from our lives in Jesus, God cleans this fruit away. I assume that’s because life isn’t about us showing off what we have. Life isn’t about showing up others. Life is about sharing what we’ve produced, cleaning it away so we can grow more, so we can become abundant.

            And we get clean by the hearing and receiving of the word of God. Jesus says to his disciples that they are clean because of the word he spoke to them. As we read our Bibles and as we listen to the Bible read and preached about we get cleaned. The fruit that’s already grown gets cleared away so new fruit can grow in its place, so there’s more to share and it’s better, healthier.

            Do you know how you can know you that you attached to Jesus? When you live your life out this way it makes you feel better, healthier, full. It makes you feel like you’re complete, like you don’t have that many needs. You’re full. You have resources that surprise you.

I heard about a story from another pastor who shared about a couple in his church. There son was a young man who was hiking in Alaska and got lost in a terrible blizzard. His parents traveled up there and along with others searched in vain for his body. They found the shelter that would have saved him if he had reached it, they went through a four-hour funeral service with the community of friends that knew him there and then they left without him and with questions no one could answer. They were just beaten down, bone-weary as they started home.

During a midnight layover in the Seattle airport they saw a couple just arriving from China with two newly adopted infant girls. Despite their exhaustion, they offered words of welcome and good wishes to the couple, seeing in the arrival of those infants a sign of what they could see only by a faith that outlasts heartache: their son’s arrival into that life prepared by the Easter Lord. Such faithful seeing comes from faithful connection. It provides us with resources that surprise us.

We need Jesus. Without Jesus we’re just a dead stick. We may be good for whacking people, getting them into line, making them listen, bringing a ringing pain to them as they try to live and work, but we’re not going to bring them life. We’re not going to refresh them or help them. A dead stick is good for almost nothing but to be burnt… and at that to provide a little warmth as we get rid of it.

            Jesus says I am the vine. I am the real vine. You’re not the vine. This is not about you. When we bear fruit we demonstrate that we are Jesus’ disciples. When we love each other and other people enjoy being in our company we demonstrate that we’re good branches. We bring glory to God by simply growing in him. In relationship with him we have life and we bring life and that’s the point isn’t it?

            We believe in and live with a God who is here. How do we remain connected in God? Jesus said…