God tends to our fruitfulness – John 10:11-18

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B; St. Thomas More, Knebworth, UK.

Having been away from England for quite some time now, and only sporadically returning, there are things I forget and have to re-remember every time I come over.  One is quite how much it rains.  The other is more pleasant, and actually a consequence of the first: quite how green it is.  Especially after having just survived a long Indiana winter when it was first white and then various shades of grey and brown, it’s very refreshing to return to so much lush, living natural greenness.

This would have been even more a pleasant surprise for Jesus and his disciples, I imagine.  Their world was not filled with nearly as much rain as ours, nor anywhere near as much green.  Of course they knew of exquisite gardens, they knew of fertile deltas, but they knew them as rare, and as requiring a great deal of work, painstaking care and attention.  There were really only three types of fruit that would have grown where Jesus lived: figs and olives on trees; grapes on vines.  All of these can survive with very little rain, but take a great deal of work if you hope for a fruitful harvest; vines probably needing the most work.  You had to prepare the soil around them, build supports for the vines, take care they intertwined the right way, not the wrong way, and prune, prune constantly.  But, if you were able to put in the work, the results were quite something.  Properly tended vines could survive with very little water and produce grapes, not so effective for filling the stomach, but wonderful for gladdening the heart.

And, so, Jesus tells us that we are to be branches on a vine.  It’s not just a relevant image for his disciples, it’s a fitting image for humanity.  We do live in a world that can seem like a drought; our natural and human world doesn’t give us all we need, we remain thirsty.  We are pain-stakingly tended by our divine vinedresser, and we are able to bear joy-bringing fruit. 

First the drought:  Our world is not an easy world to live in always.  Amidst all the blessings of our world, we know drought.  The Constitutions of my religious family, the Congregation of Holy Cross, name this experience of drought in these poignant words: “Whether it be unfair treatment, fatigue or frustration at work, a lapse of health, tasks beyond talents, seasons of loneliness, bleakness in prayer, the aloofness of friends; or whether it be the sadness of our having inflicted any of this on others … there will be dying to do on our way to the Father.”

But the heart of our Christian creed is that dying does not get the final word; it’s but our penultimate fate.  Yes, we know drought.  But we’re not branches of a dying vine.  We’re branches of the vine that is Christ, who died to die to no more, who has risen to conquer death.  We are branches of the vine that is tended by our heavenly Father.

How hard we are to tend sometimes!  How much hand-holding we need!  How often we need comfort or correction!  How lovingly he provides it… never counting the cost!  Yes, God tends us; tends us for fruitfulness.  Because that’s the end of this: in a world that knows drought, we, rooted in Christ and tended by the Father, can dare to reach out, to extend our fruit, and gladden the world’s heart.

We’ve been given two speaking assignments: to bring the needs of the world to God in prayer and bear witness to the world of the good news of God’s care.  The more deeply we discover our rootedness in Christ, the more our desires will come to accord with his, and the more assured we can be of answered prayer.  We can sometimes only discover how deeply rooted we are when we do dare to reach out and offer our fruit to our hungry world, athirst for the cup God alone can fill, and lovingly chooses to fill through us, through our sacrifice.

Here in this Mass, we come bring the needs of the world to God, in ardent, confident prayer.  We come to renew our remaining in Christ, present in Word and Sacrament.  We come knowing what needs to be pruned, knowing that we need to be fed.  And we are fed: many of us by receiving communion; all by word and fellowship, and participation in the sacrifice of the altar.  And we’re fed to be fruitful.  To meet a thirsting world and tell them: that we’ve found the joy they seek.