This Reflection is taken from the Sunday Devotion written by this blogger for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, SD on Sunday, March 21, 2021.
John 15: 1-12
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
The Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
REFLECTION
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Lord of love, give us the joy of your salvation and sustain us with your bountiful Spirit. Amen.
I selected an alternate lesson for this Sunday to get us on a fast track to communion, which in the Gospel of John crosses the divide of being in the world but not of the world. This lesson comes from Jesus’ supper discourse with his disciples; John’s version of the Last Supper. In this reading we find Jesus, who earlier described himself as the Bread of Life in John 6, describing himself as the True Vine, thus rounding out the implied bread and wine of Holy Communion, but instead of speaking of wine directly, he speaks of its source, the vine and the fruit it produces. The vine uniquely defines what Holy Communion is about.
We frequently treat the sacraments like vaccines. Baptism becomes the one and done initial dose and Holy Communion becomes a weekly or periodic booster shot to keep us immune from the effects of the sins we keep spinning in, but this is an erroneous understanding of these signs and symbols of God’s grace. The sacraments do not actuate God’s grace, they symbolize it to make it recognizable. One might say they dramatize God’s grace through the blessing of water and the consecrating of bread and wine to remind us whose we are and the role we are to play in living out the grace of God in this world as the mystical (not of this world) Body of Christ.
God’s grace has been present since the first day of creation. God’s eternal assessment of creation as good has never changed, but in the drama that has become this life, we have. In the story of Adam and Eve is revealed the onset of the continuing drama about how we humans have created a world of our own making, a differentiated world dominated by polar opposites brought about by our ability to discriminate and identify what we determine as good and evil. This is why God the Son entered into our drama in the person of Jesus to save us from ourselves; to stop us playing from the same old script of selfishness and deceitfulness in order to provide us with a new script by which to change the setting in which our lives are played out.
This new script has been threaded through the entirety of scripture. It is hinted at in our first lesson where Jeremiah writes, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant (a new script) with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… I will put my law within them… I will write it on their hearts… I will be their God… they shall be my people… for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
Rooted in the metaphorical Tree of Life, the original script, which God guarded after Adam and Eve were banished from Eden, emerges as the True Vine, as a new script played out in the life and ministry of Jesus who, in John14: 6 declared he is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus’ way of life is the way to being truly alive.
Using the imagery of the vine, Jesus describes a mystical, holy communion as a living organism in which those who are baptized into the Body of Christ take on the role of bearing its fruit, of becoming the Body of Christ in this world; being rooted in God’s original script, spoken through the language of love. As we read last Sunday, “For God so loved the world.”
This new script provides a new stage on which to live out our lives. It calls for a new direction in which to play the roles that have been given to us from the beginning. The new setting is a backdrop of contrasts that sheds light on what this world is and what it could be. The one stage direction we are to follow in this new script is to love one another as Christ has loved us; to give ourselves to one another, to be there for the other as Christ was and is for us.
While the Ten commandments provides a list of things we should and shouldn’t do, and can be understood as rooted in the idea of loving God and one’s neighbor, they are not explicit in telling us to do so from the perspective of love, but rather from the perspective of being obedient. In this new script, Jesus transfigures them into one “new” commandment; one thing to invest our our faith in, and this one thing is all that God ever wanted from us from day one; to love God as God loves us and to love one another. The pathway to exhibiting one’s faith and one’s love for God is to love that which God loves as Jesus did, and in that love we find ourselves in communion one another and with God in Christ.
Amen
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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