Sunday, April 29, 2018

God tends to our fruitfulness – John 15:1-8

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B; Holy Infant parish.


We’ve had some pretty dramatic rains recently. But, a good thing about that is that you can already see the difference they’re making to how green things are all around us. I moved away from England almost fourteen years ago, and every time I do go back, I realize I’ve forgotten two things: quite how much it rains, and quite how green it is. I’ll actually be back in Ireland briefly this coming summer for the first time in years, and even though I know perfectly well in my head what Irish climate is like, I know that’ll be somewhat of a shock to system to be back there, to be surrounded by that much rain, and that much green.


This would have been an even more shocking surprise for Jesus and his disciples, I imagine.  Their world was not filled with nearly as much rain even 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 and vines probably needing the most.  You have to prepare the soil around them, build supports for the vines, take care they intertwined the right way, not the wrong way, and prune, constantly prune.  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.  This is still Easter, we’re rejoicing, but we can’t fully celebrate the marvel of God has done for us in Christ without honestly naming the ways we feel drought. We feel athirst.  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 we do not grieve as [people] without hope, for Christ the Lord has risen to die no more.”

The heart of our Christian creed is that dying does not get the final word; it’s but our penultimate fate.  Naming our drought, and naming it in a more personal way than Constitutions for a whole religious order can do, is actually one really important step in growing in our awareness of what God is doing for us; it’s a step the Bible calls lament. 

But we don’t stop there, because we’re not branches of a dying vine.  We’re branches of the vine that is Christ, who rose to die to no more, who has by dying has conquered death.  We are branches of the vine that is tended by our heavenly Father. Lament moves to praise

And that’s despite 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.

Stuff flows in two directions in a tree: we bring the needs of the drought-struck world to God in prayer and bear witness to that same world of the good news of God’s care by offering our fruit.  The first half of that is part of what our lament, thinking about the drought does. That’s a large part of what we bring to Mass, of what we offer, maybe in the penitential rite if part of that is our own sin, certainly as we repeat “Lord, hear our prayer,” and certainly as we join our hearts with the Eucharistic Prayer. “May this sacrifice of our reconciliation, we pray, O Lord, advance the peace and salvation of all the world.”

And God tends us here too. And God roots us more deeply in Christ. In the Word proclaimed, in his Eucharistic presence, re-presenting to us the sacrifice at Calvary that shows us what lengths he’ll go to to tend us, in his body, blood, soul and divinity. And then we’re sent. It’s important that we don’t just wander out of Mass. No, the dismissal, “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by life,” the priest’s last words of Mass, make clear what difference our participation here is meant to make, that we have been fed and watered and tended not just for our own benefit, but so that the world might be nourished by our fruit.

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