Sunday, February 17, 2013

Images of Christ (series), The Branch, Mountain View United Church, Aurora, CO


Images of Christ (series)

The True Vine

By Rev Steven R Mitchell

Mountain View United, Aurora, CO 2-17-2013

Based on John 15:1-8

 

        I don’t know about you, but by the time mid-February arrives, I’m getting very weary of the winter.  I become weary of the brownness, of the cold, of the barren trees.   Although this has been a very dry winter with very little snow, and the temperatures are up and down, over all gardens are still dormant.   On those days when it is in the 20’s, you want to hide inside the house, when the temperatures rise into the 50’s and 60’s, I find that my fingers start to itch to dig into the soil and start preparing the flower beds for this Springs flowers.  I even find myself on these warm days, looking in the flower beds to see if any of the Spring bulbs are starting to break ground with their green shoots.  Then the temperatures once again drop to seasonal averages reminding me that Winter is still with us.

        That’s when attending an annual Home and Garden Show becomes inspiring.  In Seattle, it is just about this time of the year when the annual garden show opens.  I realize here in Denver the exhibitors combine both the home improvement industry with the horticultural industry, making for a smaller floral experience, but none the less, it does allow for those of us the opportunity to experience Spring early. 

I found myself taking a good amount of time sitting on a large stone at one of the exhibits surrounded by tulips, daffodils, Hyacinths, fox gloves, evergreen trees, ornamental cherry trees and many other varieties of flowers.  On two sides of me were pools of water designed as mountain streams with waterfalls.  It was rejuvenating to sit there for awhile, taking in this arrangement of nature, having my senses injected with the beauty that had been designed by a landscape artist.  It was an experience that I didn’t wish to leave.

        The display that I had the privilege to experience was provided by someone with a specific talent.  A person who is able to vision what various plants alongside other plants would look like, then taking a little rock, some water, and a water pump, fashioning it all into a small paradise, where those who stopped long enough to experience this creation would be blessed visually, audibly, and with fragrance.  In essence, the whole body was being fed by this one gardener’s vision and work.

        In this morning’s scripture, Jesus gives us an image of himself as the vine, the part of the plant that comes out of the ground.  It is through the vine that branches and through the branches, leaves appear, that important part of the plant that is needing in order to take the warmth and the light which comes from the sun and turn it into food that will produce the fruit that the vine is designed to give.  The leaves also are designed to take the air that has been polluted and spent of usable oxygen that we breathe and rejuvenates it into fresh, life giving oxygen. 

        The story that Jesus is telling us is a metaphor of how we (the branches) when attached to Jesus (the vine) will produce the fruit that the plant has been designed to produce.  Now, as any gardener knows, a plant left unto itself will grow and produce multiple branches.  This may sound like a good thing, but actually it isn’t.  When a plant has too many branches, the branches become counterproductive, using up needed nutrients needed to produce the best fruit possible.

        When Paul and I moved to our home this past year, we discovered a grapevine along the back fence.  It was obviously neglected with branches going everywhere, growing such that they were all twisted up into one large ball.  Had we left this vine continue to do “its own thing”, it would have continued to produce more branches and growing into a bigger ball, and what grapes that would have developed would not have had enough food from the vine to develop into the best grapes.  So after some studying about how to re-train over grown grape plants, Paul proceeded to prune back the healthy part of the plant and cut away the old dead growth.  By mid-August that once over grown grapevine produced two large bowls of the sweetest grapes that I had eaten in a long time.

        We have the same issue with the two apple trees in our back yard.  They have not been properly cared for and are well over thirty feet tall.  Yes they produced apples this year – a bumper crop actually, but I suspect if we cut back the tree to where it is only about twelve feet high or so, that the apples will actually be larger and easier to harvest.  For you see, we were not able to pick the apples that were in the upper part of the tree.  So much of what the trees were able to produce, went to waste.

        Jesus was telling us, that as the branches, we can only survive by being attached to him.  Yet he alone isn’t the only part of the equation.  He speaks of the gardener that is the one who shapes the vine into what his vision is.  Bearing of fruit also hinges on the work of the Gardener!  God is this gardener.  We are often trying to describe God as a trinity – a three – in – one concept.  I wonder if wouldn’t be better understand the trinity in terms as Jesus is explaining in this story.  God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches.  It takes all three of us to produce the fruit that the gardener is hoping to produce.

        This brings into question then: What is the fruit?  If we look to Matthew 25, Jesus tells us what the Kingdom of God is like, in other words the fruit of God.  In the story of the sheep and the goats, Jesus says, “When I was hungry you feed me, when I was naked you clothed me, while I was in prison you came and visited me, when I was a stranger you invited me in.  And they asked, “when did we see you hunger, as a stranger, in prison, or naked? “ Jesus said, “When you did this to the least of these, you did this to me.”  

        We all are over grown with self-pride, prejudices, short sightedness, greed, grieve, selfishness, just to name a few.  Not just toward others, but with ourselves as well.  Jesus says when we are in his word, we are already clean, but this doesn’t mean that we are not plagued with the pollutants that the world is filled with.  These are the things that God prunes out of our lives.  It is not easy for us, this pruning, but if we wish to grow and provide the fruit that God desires from us, it is a necessary process.

        Jesus says that if we wish to “abide” in him, then we must allow this pruning to take place.  Abide means to “live in”, as the leave lives in the vine, then we too must “live in” Jesus.  To “live in” Jesus, by my understanding means to take the actions and the knowledge of Jesus and store it deep within our hearts. 

        Like the gardener who had the vision to create the garden that I was able to enjoy at the Home and Garden Show, God too, has a vision for us.  For God’s vision to become all that God desires, it takes relationship.  It took a relationship between Jesus and God, it takes a relationship between Jesus and us, and it takes a relationship between God and us.  God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches.  Abide in Jesus and allow the Gardener to shape you!  Amen

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