Easter 5B

Easter 5B • 6 May 2012

 Saint James’, Arlington Vermont


For years I have had on my office door a photograph of a penguin colony. Thousands upon thousands of Emperor penguins mill around as far as one can see. Under the photograph, I have written, ‘Life in Community.’

Clearly we hope the communities in which we live are more compassionate than penguin colonies, where they steal one another’s pebbles and stones — worse, where they steal one another's eggs — mark their territory, make an awful mess and a lot of noise and lose their chicks to the cold.

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The gospel this morning invites us to consider what it means to live in community, the Christian community as well as the larger community. The critical thematic word, ‘abide,’ dominates the reading from the Gospel according to John. For John, it is through that abiding that Christ lives in us and we live in Christ, and it is through that abiding that we form community.

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We have covered a lot of ground between last week’s and this week’s readings from John’s gospel. We have moved from Chapter 10 with its well-known words about the Good Shepherd, to the Last Supper section. We hear the first part of chapter 15 this week and next week will hear the second half. Both halves focus on being disciples who abide in God’s love and communicate that love to others.

This portion presents yet another one of the great ‘I am’ statements that only John’s Jesus utters. This time, Jesus likens himself to the real or authentic vine. As the vine, he is the source of our nourishment and our growth. Only Jesus can be the vine; only we can be the branches. If we are of Jesus, then we will flourish and produce fruit.

If we are not, according to John, we will wither. This gospel challenges our understanding of what it means to be inclusive and recognise that other faith expressions might also lead to abiding in God. Today I am not going to address that challenge, but I do acknowledge it. Instead, today, I am going to focus on how the vine suggests living in mutuality as disciples of Jesus.

This image of the vine implies a more organic, level way of living as disciples. This image calls us to act in mutuality. Instead of having one person in charge, the many members branch out, bear fruit and prosper. Yet, pruning is essential. Anyone who has grown raspberries knows to cut back the dead cane so that new cane can grow. We cut away those parts of our individual lives that impede our growth so that we can be more fruitful even more later.

Of the eight times this word, ‘abide,’ appears in John’s gospel, five of them are in this passage. The Greek, meneo, is the same word that shows up in the previous chapter of John in which Jesus speaks to Thomas about preparing an abiding place for the disciples to which Jesus will lead them. This abiding place is that famous ‘mansion’ about which those of us who grew up with the King James Bible used to wonder (what was this mansion in my Father’s house anyway?) — the word, mansion, comes from the same Greek word, meneo.

The image of abiding loops back to the very beginning of the gospel’s prologue where it describes the Word that became flesh that abides with us in human form. That Word, Jesus, and the word, abide, both of which say that we should love one another, are entwined in John’s thought. Shortly Jesus in John’s Gospel will declare, ‘You will abide in my love if you keep my commandments.’

The notion of abiding in God’s love or having Jesus abiding in us is lovely but fairly abstract stuff. Is there another way of expressing such an important idea?

From a visual point of view, one of my favourite icons by Robert Lentz is his ‘Tree of Life.’ The cross has even-length arms. At the centre of the cross is Jesus’ head. From north, east, south, and west spring branches of rich vines and fruit. We are those branches and fruit, taking root in Jesus to flourish.

D. Moody Smith writes, ‘The metaphor of vine and branches represents the unity of Jesus and the disciples. The unity is a given, but it does not exist apart from the disciples’ own participation. Jesus is both the one who commands them to abide and bear fruit and the one who enables them to do so. Their bearing of fruit is proof that they are Jesus’ disciples. Jesus has linked discipleship with mutual love…. The abiding and bearing fruit of which Jesus speaks is the mutuality of love among the disciples.’(1)

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These days we hear about anything but love or abiding in one another. We are overloaded with information about one disaster after another. Keeping up with the news becomes an all-consuming task that ultimately risks paralysing us from the sheer volume. Most of us are tangentially affected by all the news of disaster, but it still wears us down. One effect of this barrage of information causes us to hunker in, close ranks and even suspect our brothers and sisters.

Another effect is evidenced in the decrease in our reaching out to others as our scarcity mentality increases. Maybe what affects us sometimes more is whether our wallets are flush or empty. Our anxiety over money becomes a worry. It seems hard to love anyone beyond our inner circle. Despite our own lean moments, if we have internalised the words of this gospel passage, we still understand that we must love people because we abide in them and they in us because God abides in all of us. Put in other words that seem more current, we are all in it together and we are all part of a community somewhere.

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What, then, does it mean to live in community?

Yesterday, in the small town of Plymouth, a town of about 500, about three dozen people gathered for Vermont Green Up Day. Many of them had pulled together in the first days post-Irene when Plymouth also was cut off from the rest of the state. Now, eight months later, they were reconnecting to keep picking away at the mounds of debris that still line the road and hang in the trees along the streams. One of the workers lost everything she owned in Irene. As her friends picked up bits and pieces of her life — a broken CD, a flashlight, a chair, parts of her kitchen cabinet — she thanked them. The people of Plymouth have raised over $100,000 to help flood survivors like her.

Other remarkable communities came into being post Irene last fall. Many, many Vermont Episcopal congregations formed partnerships with their local communities. Gethsemane, Proctorsville, despite the destruction of their parish hall and significant damage to their church, reached out to Cavendish. Saint Stephen’s, Middlebury, was one of the few congregations to make it into the isolated towns of Hancock, Rochester and Stockbridge. Saint Paul’s, White River Junction, initiated the freeway relay that connected congregations up and down Rte 91 and Rte 7 to ferry food and cleaning supplies to those in need. Saint Michael’s, Brattleboro, was one of the first groups to arrive at the badly flooded senior housing, Melrose Terrace. And so it continues.

Within a congregation, other communities form as needed. In each, Christ abides. Here are some snapshots of this more intimate sort of abiding.

— A young person in the congregation has been diagnosed with cancer. The congregation chips in to buy her a laptop so she can stay connected during the lonely hours of chemo and overnight stays in the hospital.

— Both Saint James’ and Saint Stephen’s have massive fund-raisers that raise significant funds for outreach through Uncle Norman’s Attic and the Peasant Market respectively. It takes hours of preparation and even more hands to make them the success that they are.

— A vestry struggles with the financials and invites the congregation into an honest conversation about how each person can think of new ways of being church that might lessen the pressure on the budget.

— A congregation wrestles openly with a divisive subject and even though people hold genuine disagreements, they still manage to find ways to keep one another in prayer and come together at the altar rail for communion.

— If far away, the priest still abides in prayer with the suffering and sick of the congregation in ways that they feel the distance has been bridged. For the past six months, Saint James’ rector, Scott, has abided in prayer with me and his presence has made a world of difference.

Abiding is not just on a congregational level. It also expresses itself through you and me. That thought leads to these questions:

How have you experienced abiding?

How do you abide with another in presence and prayer?

How does God abide in you?

How might you convey God’s abiding to someone else?

If we understand that God, through Christ, already abides in us, we are equipped to communicate God’s presence to those in our communities, our networks, our friends and even our families. Through that abiding, we have the power to form stronger communities, ones that are based in God’s abundant and unfailing love.

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So, yes, really, we are much, much better off than a colony of Emperor penguins., because as those who have been washed in the waters of baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever, we already abide in love and in God.

So, when you leave church this morning, look at the lilacs and all the other trees and flowers ready to burst forth into bloom, think of their strong root systems and then realise that we are like those flowers, ready to bloom, ready to bring forth good works, nourished in the vine that is Christ, fed with the eucharistic feast, and rejoice, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

END NOTE (1) In Imaging the Word: An Arts and Lectionary Resource, Vol. 3, Susan Blain, ed. (Cleveland, OH, United Church Press, 1996), 210.