April 27, 2008 , Sixth Sunday of Easter, All Souls; Episcopal Church

Spiritual Vineyards
John 15: 1-8

 As our Gospel so clearly articulates, God is in the business of growing spiritual vineyards.  If you know anything about growing grapes, you know that with all the fertilizing and spraying and pruning you may do to help the vines produce their fruit, if they don’t give any harvest, you cut them down.  What good is a grapevine with no grapes?

Jesus used this metaphor of a vineyard with its vines and branches to talk about how God wants to bring us into union with Himself. Our Lord stated clearly that if we’re not connected to Him and we don’t allow His  Nourishment to flow through us, we have no life.  If we have no life, we will have no fruit. This is a vital fact we share as Christians. You and I are called to bear fruit!

So……why are we called to be fruit bearers for Christ? Well, I think that it has to do with production and multiplication of fruit where we share and touch other lives in the Name of Jesus Christ. This multiplication is not just in numbers but it is in the hearts of those we touch. Here is where we share the personal joy we experience in our own faith. And to help and encourage another to find their “life in the vine”, we must be convinced and be living testimonies to the truth that apart from His life, we have no life, that as Paul said, “Apart from Christ, I am nothing.”

To say this another way………….You and I have what the world desperately needs.  Wall Street doesn’t have it.  Eddie Bauer and Dillards don’t have it. Home Depot and Barnes and Noble don’t have it.  Even Disneyland doesn’t have it. As Baptized Christians, you and I have been given the very life that the world seeks and our lives must and should produce and multiply the Fruit of Christ. All of us from time to time should stop…..and self-examine and try to evaluate the quality of our fruit.

 The author, Donald Grey Barnhouse cited an amazing example of lasting and deep fruitfulness.   He tells that in Hampton Court near London, there is a grapevine under glass.  About l,000 years old, it has but one root that is at least two feet thick.  Some of the branches are 200 feet long.  Because of skillful cutting and pruning, the vine produces several tons of grapes each year.  Even though some of the smaller branches are 200 feet from the main stem, they bear much fruit because they are joined to the vine and allow the life of the vine to flow through them

 If, we, the individual branches, are not bearing much fruit, it may be that we are not feeding as we ought upon the life-giving flow from the vine.  That is, of course, true of any church denomination.  A cartoon in The Churchman magazine showed a small boy standing before a very large church door, and asking the minister in the doorway, “Is God home?” That is a relevant question for our Episcopal Church or for that matter, any church denomination!

 Is God home in the decisions National church leaders make in their church? Is God home in their decisions on orthodoxy and tradition in their church? Is God home in changes some leaders make as they attempt to revise long accepted Bible belief? Are they really allowing the nourishment of the Vine of Christ to produce fruit and multiply?

  And, yes, individual congregations bear fruit in direct proportion to the number of people who find God there (where God is “home”) in the worship, in the fellowship and friendships, at the coffee hours, in the Sunday school classes for young and old, and in the service to the community that the church provides.  Obviously nourishment from the Vine of Christ sustains us here at All Souls and “God is Home”, but we must always seek to do more to multiply our fruit!

 But, let me play the devil’s advocate, since none of us is perfect and we all stumble and drop the ball from time to time, what happens when the branches intentionally try to separate themselves from the root?  ……We do this at times, don’t we? And don’t give me that old Flip Wilson excuse, “the devil made me do it!” I’m sure the devil was involved, but no, we, in our free will, decided and chose to do it or not to do it…….so my question is what “brave new world” were we attempting to create in our  intentionally or even unintentionally separation from the root?

In all cases it is because the branch thought that it could bear fruit of itself.  And it cannot, and it never will.  We are full of schemes for social betterment and human brotherhood.  But as a generation, many have little use for Christ, see no need for Him, push Him impatiently aside!  “We are a great breed,” some folks claim.  “Faced by any problem and given a little time, we shall ultimately solve it.   Have we not, to a degree, harnessed the lightning, gained a new empire in the air and another underneath the sea; are we not eliminating space, and dragging nature’s jealously guarded secrets into the light of common day?  A Savior?  A Savior from what?  What do we need from Christ?”  So many people ignore Him as a useless irrelevance; He is certainly not for many the source of life-giving nourishment! As much as Christ loves each of us and initiates, they won’t allow it!! So, whether they realize it or not, they live life the “hard way”.

Recently, I was reading an rather positive article on faith in America, and one of its statistics said that 2/3rds of those polled said that “Religion was important and almost ½ go to church once a week. Interesting stats, however I guess my question is then why are our prisons crammed, why can’t we win the war on drugs, why is there so much violence in our movies, on our TV’s and in our lives? I could, obviously, go on and on. Stating the obvious, there is a big difference in “talking” and “doing”, isn’t there? Yes, I am a Christian, but am I a Practicing  Christian ! Do I “walk the walk and talk the talk?” On the other side of the coin is an author who says pretty much the opposite of this article. He said this,“ Our age is the most irreligious age since Christ was born,” Since Christ was born!  Pretty strong language! Another author with the same train of thought, said, “Search the annals of humanity since man was man and we will find no age in which religion was so slighted and ignored.” Now, it does seem that in our lifetime of human history there is coming to maturity a very affluent generation of men and women many of whom have practically no active religion and  many feel no need for one. It seems that unbelief is more radical today that it ever was regardless of some polls taken

Sure…..we are “scientifically and technically correct” in many areas of life today, but how “correct” are we spiritually, aesthetically, morally? Obviously, all things are not black and white, but in the world, I would sure love to see more love, forgiveness, sacrifice, integrity, honesty and repentance? Am I so old that these words are irrelevant?  I think not!

Seneca, the great ancient philosopher, once confessed,

“All my life I have been trying to climb out of the pit

 of my besetting sins—in vain.  And I never can, and never will, unless a hand is let down to me to draw me up.”

Seneca is actually saying that he needs a saviour! So, if we share this same thought that as a Christian, we need a saviour, need a “hand”, there is hope for us. For, of course, the hand is there! The other gods of Seneca are of no concern to us. We have the Hand of Christ that stretches out to us! The Hand of the Son of God who died for us! We have the Hand that offers us nourishment from the root, and we must stay focused and reach for that hand. We must allow Him to “work” in our lives and pull us from the pit. Yes, the branch cannot bear fruit of itself.

Here is a basic truth. It is not what we have, not even what we do, but what we are that gives us our kingdom. We are created to flourish and prosper as a branch attached to the Root of Christ. What we are can not be lukewarm or neutral. God wants wholeheartedness!  Remember that great verse from the 3rd Chapter of Revelation:

“So because that thou are lukewarm, and neither cold or hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.”

But, no matter what we do, every life is a profession of faith, and  exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda. Every man and woman is a center of perpetual radiation like a luminous body….a beacon which entices a ship upon the rocks if it does not guide it into port. It’s one or the other.  Every man or woman is a priest, even involuntarily; his or her conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others. You preach to your children, to your grandchildren, your parents, your friends not necessarily with your words, but by the way you live! Such is the high importance of example. Such is the importance of being a branch attached to the Vine of Christ allowing Him to nourish us!

It was not to those first disciples alone that our Lord spoke later in verse 16 when He said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.” No…..His Words are carried on the rushing wind of the Holy Spirit through the ages to us…….now…today spanning 2000 years.  He speaks to you and He speaks to me as He reaches for us…….He stretches out His hand seeking to sustain and nourish us. Oh, how we must grasp that hand as the Vine of Life and allow Him to be our Saviour!

 “In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost”