[Propertalk] Offering for Sunday, May 10, on John 15:1-8

[Joe Parrish]

Here is my offering for Sunday, May 10, on John 15:1-8.  A final version will be posted early next week, God willing, on our church web site at http://sjnj.org
Peace and Easter blessings,
Joe
St. John's Episcopal Church
61 Broad Street
Elizabeth, New Jersey 07201
The Fifth Sunday of Easter (B)
May 10, 2009
DRAFT
A Sermon by the Rev. Joe Parrish
The Holy Gospel according to
John 15:1-8
      Heavenly Father, make us fruitful, make us productive, and keep us always as the apple of your eye.
     Amen.
 
     I just finished reading an interesting treatise on John of the Cross, a sixteenth century Spanish saint who was a close compatriot of St. Theresa of Avila.  In fact John was the chaplain for several of Theresa's monasteries and convents.
John of the Cross paints a wonderful picture of Christ conversing with his Father in Heaven.  The Father tells the Son that he is going to create a bride for his Son, a group of people who will adore him, implore him, and be forever joined to him.  It is a very touching image, one I hadn't contemplated before, but a very heart warming insight about how Christ looks upon us, the Church, as his bride.  We are loved in a very intimate and adoring way.  Christ would and did do anything for us, even to the point of offering his life on earth for us.  Christ gave up his all for us, his beloved people, his Bride.
     No one else would do such a selfless thing for us, not our parents, not our best friend, no one.  Only Christ is as close to us as our very breath.  
      Think of your spouse, if you have or have had one, or maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend.  Can you imagine the infatuation you had once with and for that person?  And should you have been so lucky to have been bonded to them through matrimony or blessing, they became to you the image of what Christ looks upon us all as being the adored, the loved, the beloved, the highest exalted one in the eyes of our Lover.  Christ is like that to his believers, we are his intimately connected Bride.
       The gospel lesson for today puts that image in a more botanical fashion, that believers are as connected to Christ as a vine is to its branches.  The connection is biological, close, symbiotic in a way, we depend on the vine, and the vine depends on us to produce its fruit.  Thus in a way we are simply 'loved' by the vine, directly, closely, and intimately.  
     In the movie, "High Noon", the wife of the sheriff who was an avowed pacifist, at the last minute took a gun in her hand and killed an outlaw who was about to ambush her husband.  She scrapped every ethical argument she had lived by her whole life to protect her man.  Her love was stronger than her ethics.  Her love was absolute.  And that is how Christ loves us, absolutely, without hesitation, completely, as a loving husband loves his wife, his bride, and a bride her husband.  
     But there is another side of the equation that we also need to acknowledge in this very biological relationship between the lover and the beloved.  It can be illustrated by an observation of the birth of a giraffe.  ["God's Little Devotional Book for Graduates"]  The first thing to emerge at a baby giraffe's birth is its front hooves and head.  "Minutes later, the newborn is hurled from its mother's body, falls ten feet, and lands on its back.  Within seconds, it rolls to an upright position with its legs tucked under it body.  From this position it views the world for the first time and shakes off any remaining birthing fluid. 
     "The mother giraffe lowers her head just long enough to take a quick look at her calf, and then she does what seems to be a very unreasonable thing: she kicks her baby, sending it sprawling head over heels.  If it doesn't get up, she kicks it again and again until the calf finally stands on its wobbly legs.  And then what does the mother giraffe do?  She kicks it off its feet!  Why?  She wants [her baby] to remember how it got up."
     Aren't you glad you're not a baby giraffe?!  "In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd and avoid becoming a meal for lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs.  The best way a mother giraffe has of ensuring that her calf lives is for her to teach it to 'get up quickly and get with it.'"
     The point is that the mother giraffe is engaged in tough love.  There are certain demands that every parent must make for the welfare of his or her own child.  There are certain rules that must be enforced.  No loving parent is going to accord a child absolute freedom.  Such freedom could be deadly.  Every loving parent has to say "No" from time to time.  It's not easy.  Sometimes it really does hurt the parent more than it does the child.  But love sometimes says, "No."
     Our bodies do something peculiar as well.  Every day we shed tens of thousands of dead skin cells to keep our bodies healthy.  If we didn't shed those dead cells, our bodies would become infected and we would die.  And also our lungs need to expectorate about a pint to a quart of fluid each day or we would suffocate, or we would die from lung infections and pneumonia.  If we can't cough, we would readily die.  A comatose or paralyzed patient needs their lungs cleared mechanically for them, or they will die.  Amazing how we are so wonderfully and marvelously made, isn't it?
     In other words, pruning is necessary for life.  A grapevine that is not pruned will die from fungal infections and/or aphid and other insect infestations.  These infestations begin the minute the vine comes to life in the spring, and they will kill the vine soon unless they are pared off at the end of the grape producing season.
      It was always painful for me as a little boy to see how unmercifully my Dad would prune our little grape vines in our back yard each fall.  But he was right to do that since the new grapes would not appear the next year if he didn't prune the grapevines.
     If you have ever lost some close friend through death, you will have the feeling I have from time to time.  You will wish they were back with you, guiding you, comforting you, befriending you, conversing with you, whatever your friendship meant to you in particular.  But that will never happen.  That life is lost to you; you will never be able to communicate with it again in this life.  It is gone.  So how do we react to such a loss?  I know one man who spent all his day beside his dear wife's tombstone, he was so lonely and heartbroken.  But we all knew what he needed to do-he needed to make new friends.  His wife wasn't going to come back; she wasn't going to speak to him ever again.  And he needed to fill that void with other people, other activities, other life.
     This is what Jesus is promising us in this parable of the vine.  Even though he prunes us, he needs to prune us in order to give us life, new life.  We don't need and should not dwell on death, or on a dead friend or relative--that is never healthy.  We need to pick ourselves up and make new friends, new acquaintances, find new people to share life with and enjoy life with.  That is one thing that the church does, help folks make 'connections', that is, if we are doing what we are supposed to do.
     Our little effort here at St. John's is to try to get us to know each other's names now.  When I came to St. John's in 1989, I asked the first two people leaving the service how long they had attended St. John's.  One said twenty-five years, the other said thirty-three years.  They were both in the Narthex together at that moment, so I asked them if they knew each other's names, and they admitted they did not know the other person's name.   I would hate to leave St. John's in the condition I found it, with total strangers worshipping side by side or maybe a few rows or seats apart.  Church is a collection of like minded people, even if we don't think so.  Some of the same things sort of 'blew' us into this room together.  It is our human nature to seek a better life, and part of that better life is new friendships and new friends.  We are here to complete the life of someone else.  We are here to celebrate the joys and disappointments of life with one another.  We are here to be real.
     But maybe modern life has gotten the best of us.  It has been said that people live in cities, the larger the better, in order to preserve their anonymity, and I do find that to often be the case.  However, it is against human nature, I believe.  We need to share life with one another, celebrate each other's birthdays, and wedding anniversaries, and grand niece's births and our brother's new job.  We are here to share in all its complexities with one another.  If we can't do that with other Christians, whom can we do it with?
     William Sloane Coffin, 20th century pastor of Riverside Church in upper Manhattan, said, "I think, therefore I am?  Nonsense! I love, therefore I am."  And I believe he had is correctly.  We love, therefore we are.
     Churches get so segregated from one another internally.  Every time the Clericus of the Diocese meets, the clergy of the Diocese of New Jersey, we amaze each other with our common experiences, our common anxieties, our common problems.  And we learn from each other.  Yet, once that conference ends, we tend to go off on our individualistic ways, rarely if ever conversing.  I have tried from time to time to get clergy to talk over the internet-we have a clergy listserve on the internet, but usually the conversations are so trivial it seems we are simply avoiding each other.
But I am a chatterbox, I think I inherited part of that from my Mom who was always talking, either in person or over the phone every day of her life.  Even on her last day she had an entourage of folks in her hospital room and had engaged them in something even when she couldn't talk because of her oxygen mask.  She was naturally gregarious.
     But how many here will talk with someone else here during the week?  Very few.  That needs to change.  We need to befriend one another better than that.  The strength of Christianity is in its friendships.  Staying joined to the vine of Christ means also staying joined to one another.  Some friendships have to die, but others need to become fruitful.
     Let us with joy and gladness acknowledge our love for one another in some new way this week.  Let us love one another just as Christ has loved us.  For then they will know we are Christians by our love.
     Amen.
 
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