May
3rd, 2015 “Organic
Unity” Rev. Heather Jepsen
John
15:1-8
Our reading this morning presents us
with some very familiar imagery. Jesus’
lesson that he is the vine and we are the branches is one of the most beloved
metaphors of our faith. For some of us,
last week’s image of Jesus as a shepherd is pretty foreign to our actual
experience. Lucky for us, this week’s
image is much closer to our everyday lives.
Here in Warrensburg we are not far removed from the world of agriculture. Many of us have gardens and many of us have
witnessed working farms as we drive down highway 50. Most of us have even seen grape vines in the
field and so we can easily draw up an image in our minds of the vine and
branches that Jesus is referring to.
As always, it is important to note the
context of our reading. This passage
from John is taken out of a greater speech that Jesus gives to his
disciples. This is his farewell address,
a final word to them before he faces his death on the cross. Jesus is preparing his followers for their
life without him, and as such his words are helpful to us, the later
generations who have never known Jesus in person.
The image that Jesus presents of the
vine and branches is one that would have been familiar to his disciples. Like many of us, they were familiar with the gardening
practices of pruning and harvest. In
addition, this would not have been the first time they were presented with the
vine as a metaphor. The Old Testament is
rich with imagery describing Israel as the Lord’s special vine or
vineyard. In Isaiah we read that “the
vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel ,
and the people of Judah Israel
There are a lot of potential sermons
in this passage about the vine and the branches and I am certain that you have
heard many of them. There are sermons
about bearing fruit, sermons about abiding in Christ, and of course there are
sermons about the values of pruning.
This morning, I want to talk about what this image says to us as a
church community.
First, the image of community that
Jesus presents is centered on interrelationship. If you picture the branches of the vine in
your mind you will understand what I am thinking of. When the vine is growing, the branches are
almost completely indistinguishable from each other. Each branch runs into the next and it is
nearly impossible to determine where one branch stops and the next branch
starts.
I
was at Powell Gardens last weekend and their giant wisteria by the lake is a
great example of this. When you look at
that area it is very hard to determine where one plant ends and another plant begins,
let alone to follow the paths of specific branches. When examining the branches of the vine you
find a whole mess of similar looking branches twisted together into a
knot. All branches run together as they
grow out of the central vine.
What Jesus is teaching is that each
individual should be rooted in him, and hence they give up their individual
status to become one of the many branches in the knotted vine. The communal life of the church challenges
our culture’s focus on individual autonomy. In order to produce fruit, the church must
work together as one unit. The
individual branch is subsumed into the communal work of bearing fruit and
living in love. To follow this model,
the church must be a place where members are known for the acts of love that
they do in common with all other members, rather than a community built around individual
accomplishments.
In addition, the vine metaphor
suggests a radically non-hierarchical model for the church. When we examine the vine and branches, no
branch is more important than any other.
No branch has precedence over any other branch attached to the
vine. The only differentiation between
branches is their fruitfulness. And it
is the gardener alone who decides which branches need to be pruned and which
branches need to be cut out. All
branches are the same before God, and since all branches sprout from the same
vine there is no place for status or rank among the branches.
Perhaps most striking, the image of
the vine and branches is challenging for the church community in that it is so
stark in its call for anonymity. So
often when we think of the church we think of Paul’s image of the body of
Christ in his letter to the church in Corinth.
We are all familiar with Paul’s metaphor of the church as a collection
of body parts, the hand and eye each having a unique work to do. We often think of the church as separate and
differing people all working together for a common good. Paul holds together the oneness of Christ and
the diversity of gifts and members in his body metaphor.
But in a broad reading of the Bible we
can find a variety of thoughts and opinions. When we read the gospel of John, we find a
metaphor for the church that is dramatically different from Paul’s body
metaphor. The richness and variety of
voices in our Scriptures is something that makes them such a powerful and
timeless text. The metaphor of the vine
and branches that Jesus presents in John’s gospel undercuts any celebration of
individual gifts. This too challenges
our culture’s values of personality and individualism. If the church were to live as branches of
Christ, versus the body of Christ, individual distinctiveness would give way to
the common embodiment of love. The mark
of the faithful community is how it bears the fruit of love, instead of how
talented each of the members are as individuals.
Today’s message is one of sameness
rather than diversity. Jesus presents an
image to the disciples of how a community rooted in Christ would grow. All branches would run together, each branch
indistinguishable from the next. All
branches work together for the bearing of fruit. And all branches are equal before the Lord,
no branch is more important or prominent that any other branch.
What Jesus presents in the gospel of
John is a picture of organic unity. To
live as branches of the vine of Christ is to live in a natural unity, shaped by
the love of Jesus. Together the
branches, rooted in the vine, work as one organic unit to bear the fruit of
Christ’s love and to share that fruit with the world around us.
So often our culture places emphasis
on who we are as individuals. Like last
week’s image, we don’t really want to be sheep in a flock; we want to be
individual leaders. We don’t want God to
take care of us, we want to take care of ourselves. This morning’s reading flies in the face of
such thinking. If we are to be part of
Christ, then we should strive to be one in him.
The church community should be a place of equality and sameness, where
we all work together toward a common goal.
There are few places in our modern
times to experience this sense of oneness and sameness, but one place where we
can clearly understand this idea is here around the communion table. We won’t actually celebrate until next week,
but when we gather together at the table I would invite you to remember that we
all come before the Lord as equals. All
are served the same bread and cup, all are given the same gift of grace and
forgiveness, and all of us are reminded that Jesus died for each of us as much
as he died for our neighbor. Around the
communion table our individuality disappears and we are brought together as one
under the mantle of Christ’s sacrifice.
It is important to remember that the celebration at table is part of our
rootedness in the great vine that is the entire Christian tradition.
As you go out into the world this week
I invite you to ponder this idea of the vine and branches. Take a look at the way the vine grows versus
the other plants in our neighborhoods.
Jesus doesn’t teach that we are each an individual tulip bulb, sprouting
into one solitary flower. Instead he
teaches that like the grape vine we are all connected, we are all the same, and
that we must be rooted in Christ if we are to be the community of faith. Amen.
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