This sermon was preached at Glenwood and Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa, on April 29, 2018. It’s based on John 15:1-8, Acts 8:26-40, and 1 John 4:7-21. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson.
Last week, Jesus described himself as the good shepherd. This week, he says, “I am the vine.” Seven times in the gospel of John, Jesus uses this “I am” language. I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. And, finally, I am the vine.
It is only here, with this culminating image, that Jesus also tells us who we are: I am the vine. You are the branches.
Jesus shares this image with his disciples in the final hours before his suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension. It’s as though, before his departure from this earth, Jesus knows how important it is for his disciples to understand clearly their relationship not only with him, but with God, the Father. Jesus needs his disciples to understand that though he is returning to the Father, he will remain connected to them.
He will continue to be their strength, their security, their source of nourishment. They will bear fruit in the world, because he will be with them—he and his words abiding in them—and the Father will be tending to them, removing what is lifeless, pruning to make way for new growth. “My Father is the vinegrower,” Jesus tells them. “I am the vine. You are the branches.”
When we know what we are, we can also begin to understand what we are not. We are not the vine. We are not the vinegrower. The work of removing and pruning branches is not ours to do. It is not our job to look at ourselves or others and determine what needs to be cut away. Our job is simply to abide, to remain connected to the vine. And even that is called into question with this image Jesus chooses to employ. Does a branch really have any say in whether or not it remains connected to the vine?
Recently, in response to two hate incidents on campus, Luther College Ministries called for videos from alumni and friends telling students that they are loved and supported. Pastor Heidi Torgerson, class of 2000, serves in the ELCA’s Global Mission Unit as Director for Global Service, working with our missionaries and our young adults in global mission around the world.
In her video,1 she affirmed God’s love for the students toward whom this hate was directed, but she also affirmed God’s love for, in her words, “our siblings who made the decision to launch words of hate and division into the Luther community.”
Your actions…won’t be tolerated, but you are loved. Luther College is the place that taught me how deep and wide and expansive is the love of God. And it taught me that we belong to each other…
–Heidi Torgerson
It would be so easy—it is so easy—to look at our fellow branches and decide they aren’t worthy of this vine that gives us life.
It would be so easy—it is so easy—to look at new branches the vinegrower is growing on the vine (branches like the Ethiopian eunuch in our first reading this morning) and decide that they have no place with us.
It would be so easy—it is so easy—to condemn ourselves, to decide we aren’t worthy, to let shame convince us that we can’t possibly be so loved.
But we are the branches. It’s not our decision to make. The decision has already been made by the vinegrower, and the decision is love and life. The author of 1 John tells us that “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”
The vinegrower’s decision is love for the sake of life.
In the midst of violence, the vine works for peace. In the midst of suffering and heartache, the vine reaches out to enfold the weary and wounded in arms of healing and hope. In the midst of poverty and injustice, shameful divisions and unbearable grief, the vine shows up and stands in solidarity with all who suffer and goes to work in the hearts of those who’ve caused the suffering.
So, yes, the vinegrower might bring to birth on the vine branches as troubling to our worldview as that Ethiopian eunuch who asked what was to prevent him from being baptized. Under the law, he would have been excluded from full participation in Israel’s worship. But the vinegrower wanted him, needed him, to be part of the vine. Tradition holds that this eunuch, baptized by Philip, returned to his country and became the first there to proclaim God’s good news. Watching as the vinegrower grows new branches on the vine beside us might feel to us like losing, maybe even like dying, but it will be life at its best.
And, yes, whatever keeps us from love within our communities, within our families, within ourselves, will be destroyed for the sake of life. And that might mean watching as our fear and resentment, judgment and condemnation go up in flames. And it might feel like losing, maybe even like dying, but it will be life at its best.
Life as the vinegrower intends.
Life abundant.
Life powered by love.
Life in which you, branches, tended by the vinegrower and nourished by the vine, bear fruit for a hungry world. Amen.
1 Watch Heidi’s video at https://www.facebook.com.