Poolesville Presbyterian Church
Rev. David Williams; 05.06.12
As April droughts have finally brought May showers, my little quarter acre plot of inside the Beltway suburb has finally begun to green. The grass had been growing a nanometer a week, as it patiently awaited the coming of moisture, but now it’s going full throttle. Yay. More mowing.
The little strawberry plot that was just planted beside my carport is beginning to show signs that it might actually become something more than a five-by-five patch of cracked earth, fenced off so the rabbits won’t get their feet all dusty. The blueberries and blackberries that went in the ground looking like little more than lumps of dirt with a stick embedded now look like sticks with two or three tiny little budding leaves.
With the yard humming away, though, I’ve found myself trying to figure out how to get the boys out to give dad a bit of help. My XY chromosomed ‘uns are remarkably martial creatures, filled with the love of conflict that comes with those first surges of testosterone. Luring them away from the virtual battlefield and out where they can get nice and mud-encrusted just like the Good Lord intended is something of a challenge. For that, I need something they can battle. They need to go to war, to be wrapped up in a life or death struggle with...well...something.
And I found that something. In our yard, winding its way around the gorgeous dogwoods the boys both used to climb when they were little, we’ve got honeysuckle. Honeysuckle is not the most fearsome name for an adversary, even if you put Darth in front of it.
As a little boy, I always thought honeysuckles were lovely. As we’d walk through the North Georgia woods near Athens, my grandfather taught me to pop the copious flowers off their vines, one after another, to suck the tiny one-quarter-calorie drop of sweet nectar from the base of the thousands of pretty little flowers. You could slurp them all day and it wouldn’t be enough to keep you alive, but at least you’d starve with that sweet honey taste in your mouth.
And that smell, oh, that amazing smell. The sweet perfume honeysuckle hangs thick in the air on those perfect, intoxicating Virginia summer nights, when the heat of the day has finally given way to a dark barely-cool moistness. Just a whiff of that delicious odor throws me back, back to an earlier time. I smell it, and suddenly I’m back riding shotgun in a 1972 Chevy Impala on a Fairfax County back road late on a Friday night. The green vinyl seats are cool on my back, the wind is reaching through that wide open window and playing through my hair, the music of a three hundred and fifty cubic inch eight thrumming in my ears.
But to those dogwoods and any other plant in the garden? For them, honeysuckle is lovely flowery evocative death. It grows into a dense tangle of roots and vines that weave and interlock and wind themselves into a nearly impassible snare. The vines explode outward with virulent vitality, a writhing mass of angry green serpents twining around everything they touch. They crush the life out of flowers. They strangle your trees. They’ll collapse your fences. If you let it grow, it’ll grow and it won’t stop growing until you and your yard and your house and your car and your cat all sit under an impenetrable four foot deep mat of vines...and of course, thousands upon thousands of pretty little one-quarter-calorie flowers.
The passage from John’s gospel today is about vines and growth and gardens. But mostly, it’s about Jesus.
Unlike the three other Gospels, which all focus on Jesus’s teachings about the Kingdom of God, John’s Gospel emphasizes the identity of Jesus himself. Rather than using parables to metaphorically explore the nature of God’s reign, John gives us lengthy teachings about who Jesus was, and why Jesus was, all using language that was highly symbolic and evocative.
When Jesus says “I AM the true vine” in verse 1 and “I AM the vine” in verse 5, these represent the last of “I AM” statements in John’s Gospel. Each of these statements attempts to express Christ’s identity metaphorically, in terms that his listeners would have been able to grasp. “I am the bread of life.” “I am the living bread.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am the gate for the sheep.” “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”
In this final passage, Jesus describes himself as the “true vine,” and in doing so draws on a long Biblical tradition of using agricultural imagery to express God’s connection with God’s people. In the two verses we heard today, Jesus uses this image of growth to show the connection he establishes between God and all of us. In verse 1, the connection is between Jesus and God. Jesus is the vine, and God is the vinegrower. In verse five, the connection is between himself and us. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches.
The movement of this imagery has Jesus marking how in his life and teachings we find ourselves grafted in to the life of God, and from that place find ourselves bearing fruit. Jesus asks that we participate in the life of grace that he himself has lived, being a part of him in the same way that he would be a part of us.
The essence of “abiding” in Jesus is a life intertwined, and the language of John’s Gospel weaves and repeats and reconnects with itself. We abide in him, and he abides in us, and his word abides in us. The relationship between Jesus and God and us and Jesus again is as complex and intricately interconnected as an organic system, in which we’re asked to take part.
The purpose of that relationship is spelled out pretty clearly in the verses that follow. We can know if we are abiding in Jesus by the simple measure that we love and show care for one another. When we hear about “bearing fruit” in this verse, it speaks to an existence that directly and actively manifests the love of Christ. Just as we are nourished by grace, received from God, we also nourish others with the grace we’ve received. Bearing fruit does not necessarily mean material abundance, although this might come as a disappointment to some watchers of Joel Osteen. It means that we are able to bear the fruit of grace and mercy and kindness in every circumstance of life. It means we’re able to live into whatever place in life we are, and still be nourished and sustained by our relationship with God and Christ and the Spirit that fills our neighbor.
As we seek to bear that fruit, we need to be aware of those other vines that grow in us. Abiding in loving relationship with God and Christ and neighbor is one manner of life, but there are other vines we can abide in, as sweet and lethal as honeysuckle.
There’s the pretty empty sweetness of consumer desire, ever on our lips, but never ever enough. We can pluck at its flowers all day, but they will only eternally stir our appetites, leaving us always hungry for more.
There’s the ferocious fever-hot growth of partisan anger and spiritual self-righteousness, which snarls and snakes its way around every other plant in the garden. No kind and loving thing can stand near it and be permitted to live.
There are the deep taproots of anxiety and fear, which snake and wind their way under the surface, invisible to the eye. They feed all kinds of growth, and choke out the roots of grace in us.
We need to set ourselves against those vines in ourselves, with the same eager focus my boys found wielding shovel and spade, tearing down and digging deep, making room for the growth in grace that Christ is seeking in us.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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