Reconciling Spirit

The Holy Spirit has a reputation for being a reconciler. Through Christ, in the power of the Spirit, humanity is reconciled with God and reconciled with one another. Theologians even talk about the role of the Spirit in maintaining the unity of the Trinity.

On this day of Pentecost, we are in the middle of 2 important weeks of prayer for reconciliation. The first one began last Sunday (24 May). It is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity founded in Jesus’ prayer “that they may all be one… so that the world may believe” (John 17:21). Here Jesus is referring to his disciples. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is particularly concerned with unity among the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, the body of Christ.

The second “week” began on Tuesday (26 May), Sorry Day, the day when we remember the stolen generations of Australia’s indigenous people removed from their families through government policy. This week is the Week of Prayer for Reconciliation. It extends from Sorry Day to Mabo Day (3 June), the anniversary of the High Court decision which overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius (the concept that the Australian continent was not “settled” by the indigenous people who lived here). Another major anniversary (27 May) has occurred in this period: the anniversary of the 1967 Referendum which gave the Australian Commonwealth Government to legislate on matters relating to indigenous people in Australia. This decision allowed many Aboriginal people to vote for the first time and for a range of social policy initiatives to be undertaken. In the Week of Prayer for Reconciliation, we pray for the ongoing work of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in Australia.

It’s a big “week”. The National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) puts it this way:

In 2009 (which is also the UN Year of Reconciliation), the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity overlaps with the Week of Prayer for Reconciliation. Over 11 days - May 24 to June 3 - including the great feast of Pentecost on May 31- we therefore have a wonderful opportunity to renew and deepen our relationships in the one God in whom we share together through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. This year's theme appropriately is 'That they may become one in your hand (Ezekiel 37:17).

For more information on WPCU and WPR, see the NCCA website: http://www.ncca.org.au; and don’t forget to pray!

Ascension

The Ascension is a very strange story. If you’re looking for a strange episode in the life of Jesus to confound would-be followers, then there’s nothing stranger than this one. Okay, resurrection’s pretty far fetched and a virgin birth is just about unbelievable. But somehow it seems easy to assimilate those stories to the meaning demands of our time, than it does the Ascension. Resurrection is about new life and the virgin birth about Jesus’ origins in God, but Ascension, what’s Ascension got to do with anything logical or rational or practical or comprehensible in our day and age? In the modernist scientific and historical assumptions that underlie much of Western culture, the language and imagery of Ascension simply doesn’t make sense.

And despite this incredulity, the Ascension is not something that we’re free to give away or leave it. The Ascension is identified as part of the must-haves of the Jesus story in both the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds, the most ecumenical statements of Christian faith we have. Both creeds have virtually the same text: “On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father.” (ELLC Apostle’s Creed).

The story of Jesus’ Ascension appears in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Both books are from the same Christian community and possibly even the same writer. But if it’s the same writer or community, then the story has been recorded twice in two slightly different ways. So at least for the community of Luke-Acts, the Ascension was a significant event. The Gospel of John mentions it (20:17), but does not portray the scene. Sparcity of occurrences in the Gospel literature is no excuse for overlooking the story however. Only Matthew is concerned by the virgin birth; and Mark’s resurrection is very minimalist event if ever there was one.

No, the Ascension has to stay. But where does that leave us? The directional settings in this story are unbelievable. It doesn’t make sense to think of “heaven” as “up”—we know something of the vastness of the universe—a flat earth and a three-tier cosmology doesn’t wash. And this stuff about the right-hand of God brings back unpalatable memories of left-handed people being treated abysmally by parents, teachers and the general society. It’s a long time in Western society since left hands were for cleaning bottoms and right hands for eating. It’s not quite so long since we stopped forcing left-handed children to try writing with their right hands; but we know how futile and cruel such an exercise is now.

The story of the Ascension is unbelievable, directionally challenged and fairly difficult to swallow even with its right-handed bias. So what is its continuing significance and why should we bother with it now? What meaning can it possibly hold for twenty-first century intelligent humans schooled in Western philosophy and science?

It is not to the Ascension story in the Gospel of Luke or in the Acts of the Apostles to which we turn in the first instance to consider this enigma; it is the letter to the Ephesians, an epistle in the Pauline corpus.

The reading from Ephesians today is couched in the form of a prayer. It’s part of the usual establishing of relationship that occurs at the beginning of ancient letters; and particularly so at the beginning of the Christian epistles, and especially the Pauline ones. The introduction of the Pauline letters generally follow the basic structure of “Who From”, “Who To”, “Greeting” and “Thanksgiving”. When we get to v. 15 of the first chapter of Ephesians, we are definitely into the “Thanksgiving”: “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” (vv. 15-16 NRSV).

But the prayer doesn’t finish there. It moves from thanksgiving to intercession, asking for God to endow the Ephesians with wisdom and insight in order that they know the fullness of who they really are: Christ’s body. And the motif which the letter-writer uses to explain the heritage of the people of God, the body of Christ, the Christian church is the imagery of the Ascension: “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”

And the power which God puts to work is the power which exults the Crucified and Risen Christ, calls Christ’s followers to hope, endows those same followers with the richness of the inheritance of Christ and continues to work within Christ’s body which is the fullness of Christ. This power is hope and rich inheritance and our enfolding into the fullness of Christ.

In the story of the Ascension, the supremacy of Christ and Christ’s work is affirmed. Far more has been accomplished in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection than we might ask or imagine. And in the process, the hierarchy of power among earthly rulers is subverted. Jesus’ Ascension, the establishment by God of the reign of Christ, is a radical overturning of all human reigns and claims to sovereignty. God’s reign is re-affirmed in Christ, as Christ, because of Christ—a radical inversion of human power relations, the least has become the greatest through the powerful work of God. And what’s more, in Jesus’ Ascension, the church is marked out as Christ’s heirs in fullness as the body of Christ. And our inheritance is one of hope, one of riches and one of power. But not false hope or fools’ hope—this is a real hope found in the risen, reigning Christ. And not earthly riches or worldly riches, but the riches of being enfolded into Christ’s body, the riches of being Christ as the corporate community of the church. And not the power of might or the love of power, but the power of love gifted to us through the graciousness of God because of what God has made us in Jesus Christ, risen, ascended to the right hand of all power, and reigning in and through the church.

The Ascension of Jesus is a call to us to rise up as God’s people, as the body of Christ and to claim our inheritance, not out of pride or arrogance, not out of the need to be loved or recognised, not out of our earthly power, but out of the power that we have because we are called to be the fullness of Christ as the body of Christ, now Christ has ascended to God.

The 16th century mystic, Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) put it this way:

Christ has no body but yours,
no hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks
compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which Christ walks doing good;
Yours are the hands with which Christ blesses people now.

And that’s not an invitation to go about being busy, to do a lot of doing, or to think that we need to save the world. It is an invitation to recognise, accept and live out our inheritance from the Risen and Ascended Christ.

Tough Love Extended

Love’s as warm as tears,
love is tears:
pressure within the brain,
tension at the throat,
deluge, weeks of rain,
haystacks afloat,
featureless seas between
hedges, where once was green.

Love’s as fierce as fire,
love is fire:
all sorts—infernal heat
clinkered with greed and pride,
lyric desires, sharp-sweet,
laughing, even when denied
and that empyreal flame
whence all loves came.

Love’s as fresh as spring,
love is spring:
bird-song hung in the air,
cool smells in a wood,
whispering “Dare! Dare!”
to sap, to blood,
telling “Ease, safety, rest,
are good; not best”.

Love’s as hard as nails,
love is nails:
blunt, thick, hammered through
the medial nerves of One
who, having made us, knew
that thing He had done,
seeing (with all that is)
our cross, and His.

You know, sometimes I think that the four letter word that should really be banned from the English language is LOVE. It gets in the way of so much. It gets used in so many different and so many inappropriate ways. It’s a wonder it still persists. You think we’d have given up long ago.

The word “love” is used in the most wishy-washy fuzzy way that it loses all its meaning: “I love chocolate.” “I love that outfit you’ve got on.”

It’s used so lightly that some people find it possible to profess their undying love for someone even as they are sticking the proverbial knife in that person’s back: “You know I love you and it’s for your own good!”

It’s used to humiliate others as greater and greater demands are made in its name: “If you loved me, you would…”

It’s used to force people to stay in physically and emotionally violent situations and to prevent them from protecting themselves: “But I love him, he doesn’t mean it.” “If you loved her, you’d stay.”

And it’s used to justify the breaking up of stable families: “I’m just not in love with you anymore.” “I’m in love with someone else.”

The word “love” is used to justify, manipulate and perpetuate some of the most painful, useless, exploitative and even horrific acts which the human race has ever managed to perpetrate. It all sounds a bit too much like a B-grade soap opera. There seems good reason for banning it.

And yet in the midst of all this we dare to say: “God is love.” We dare to hear Jesus' commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” We dare to read passages of scripture such as we have heard today. And we dare to believe that we understand at least a little of what this thing called love is all about. We dare to make commitments to each other which are said to be based in love. We dare to sign at the bottom of Birthday and Christmas and Fathers' and Mothers' Day cards, "Lots of Love from". We dare...

The movie, Places in the Heart, begins with a family scene. The father, a strict disciplinarian, heads the table at the traditional Sunday roast dinner. It's the southern United States in about the mid 1930's, the middle of the Great Depression. The mother bustles with the dinner endeavouring to make sure that things are just to her husband's required taste and pleasure. She seems timid and uncertain in the expectations placed upon her to be perfect mother and wife at least in the understandings of those times. Two children are kept in line by their mother's cajoling and their father's reprimands.

Then there's a knock at the door and the father, who is the local sheriff, is called away to deal with a drunken black American adolescent male in possession of a firearm. While attending to this matter, the father is accidently shot by the adolescent.

In a scene of chaos, the lifeless body of the sheriff is unceremoniously delivered to the kitchen table where the family had just been eating their dinner. Unable to cope with their own grief and this unexpected death, the deliverers come and go without so much as a word of explanation to his distressed widow. They leave to join a mob to lynch and drag to death the offender, the only answer they have for their grief.

As the film unfolds, the mixture of good and bad, of sin and sainthood, is played out before the viewers' eyes. A man and a woman are unfaithful to their respective partners but ultimately remain loyal to the one to whom they made their initial marriage commitment. The grieving widow is befriended by a black American who helps her to retain her financial independence by managing her cotton crop. Friends of her husband who purport to offer support to her in her time of crisis turn out to be members of the Ku Klux Klan who ultimately beat up and run her black American friend out of town. A tornado occurs and the old woman who lives in her car is killed even as she offers shelter to a child. The good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly of human life are all paraded before the watchers' eyes in this cameo of the life of that southern American town.

It all seems rather pointless. Life and death, fidelity and infidelity, pride, prejudice and compassion placed uneasily side by side without comment for the viewer to watch. And then, almost as a by the way, the filmmaker surreptitiously adds to the end of the film another family scene. And somehow, just by that one addition the whole of the film, the whole of life, the whole of humanity seems to make sense.

Yet the scene is not one that could actually have taken place physically. Its membership includes living and dead, saint and sinner and all those in between. It is another meal, a visionary and prophetic meal, another family meal and the guests are the family of the whole community in that place. There are black Americans and Ku Klux Klan members, husbands and wives, parents and children, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, every member of the community who remain in this small town and in their community despite its apparent inadequacies and difficulties. But this meal is possible because this meal is a special meal. The setting is a church and the table is the table of the Lord. All those people are seated in the church, in the congregation, side by side at the table of the Lord. All of them despite themselves and their inadequacies, loved and cared for by a presence which transcends the lives which they lead and the humanity which is theirs. All those people finding for themselves a place in the heart of God. All those people, God's beloved children despite themselves. Such is the love of our God.

In the time described by Acts, it was similar. There were Jews and Greeks. Those who thought certain laws were important and those who didn't. Those who would eat meat offered to idols and those who wouldn't. Those who backed Peter and those who backed Paul. Those who saw the reign of Christ as bringing new social freedom to all people including Gentiles, woman and slave. And those who didn't. There too, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly of humankind in all its various shades of grey existed. There too they lived and worked side by side and there too the invitation remained the same.

It was an invitation intended to be extended and preached to all. It was an invitation intended to extend beyond the barriers of class and race and sex. It was an invitation extended to people in their humanity not in the impossibility of their ability to be perfect. There too, God's spirit was working bringing about community despite the failures and inadequacies of the people. There too, people were discovering that all people, Jews and Gentile, men and women, slave and free were loved and cared for. There too, people were discovering that each of them could find for themselves a place in the heart of God as God's beloved children. Such is the love of our God.

And this is the claim that we make today too. That God’s love is a love that embraces us all. And that’s the kind of love we dare to proclaim, we dare to practice, we dare to preach.

But that kind of love isn’t very popular. It threatens people's worldview and people's power-bases. And the kind of obedience in love which Jesus demands leads to real and painful consequences. Jesus' commandment is not given lightly, nor is it an easy one. It demands deep commitment and plenty of endurance. It is given because for Jesus we are not servants but friends, companions on the hard road on which he travelled and still travels with us.

I have a very old poster with a picture of a much-loved and much-worn Teddy Bear seated in an old wooden chair. There are places where the bear’s seams have needed to be re-done and they have been done by hand in big child-like stitches. There are places where the stuffing protrudes through these repairs. The material is worn. It no longer carries all its fur. The bear only has one button eye left; and in the space where the other should be there is more stitching… in the shape of a cross. The caption says:

Learn to listen like a Teddy Bear
With ears open and mouth closed tight.
Learn to forgive like a Teddy Bear
With heart open, not caring who is right.
Learn to love like a Teddy Bear
With arms open and imperfect eyesight.

For me, this poster captures something of the kind of love that Jesus enacts. It is a love that brings with it hard decisions and hard actions that leave us worn-out and wounded in places. It's not the kind of love that leaves you with a feeling of self-satisfaction but more often with the recognition that although you have loved as much as you are able, there is still room for more love to be given and received. It's the kind of love that lead Kahlil Gibran to write in this book The Prophet: “For even as love crowns you so shall love crucify you.” And to C.S. Lewis writing:

Love’s as hard as nails,
love is nails:
blunt, thick, hammered through
the medial nerves of One
who, having made us, knew
that thing He had done,
seeing (with all that is)
our cross, and His.

Remembering

What does it mean to remember?

Sometimes when we talk about remembering, we simply mean thinking back to a previous time or experience. When Christians talk about “remembering” Christ in the Eucharist or Holy Communion, there is a much deeper meaning. The technical word for it is anamnesis (Gk).

Anamnesis is not simply a “bringing to mind” but a “making present”. In Eucharist, we believe that Christ is made present in the meal and in the community which shares the meal. (Different parts of the church place the emphasis in different places, but the presence of Christ is affirmed.) In Eucharist, we are united with Christ in the body of the Christ, the church.

In this respect, the word “remembering” makes more sense if we type it this way “re-membering”. In the sacrament the pieces of God’s story and our story in God are pieced together (words, narrative, symbols, actions, prayers) are parts (members) of a whole understanding and way of being in the world—of being the Body of Christ. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) talked about it this way in one of his sermons:

Let us receive what we are;
let us become what we receive.
The body of Christ.

We sometimes use this as a response in our services of Eucharist when the bread is broken and the elements (bread and wine) are presented to the people. All that Christ has accomplished for us is made present to us in the sacrament.

And that brings us to another technical term

prolepsis

(Gk) which is perhaps best expressed as “re-membering the future”. Not only do we understand the Christ is made present in Eucharist, but we also believe that we catch a glimpse (a foretaste) of the fulfilment of all things in God—of God’s realm. In our worship and particularly in the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist then, we believe that we find our place in “God’s time” which encompasses our past, present and future in God.

Creation

Three words that you may have seen used together to describe the immense complexity of God’s work are creation, redemption and sanctification.

Christian theology thinks about God creating the world from nothing (ex nihilo). This understanding affirms that God is the origin of all creative activity. It also reminds us that we are neither God nor created from something that is outside of God. Instead, it reminds us that we have an intimate relationship with the God who created us and the universe in which we live.

Christian theology also affirms that our good God made a good creation. (We’ll leave sin and evil for later too! The main thing at the moment is to note that we do not regard sin and evil as “of God”. Good things come from the good God.)

Christians also understand that humans have been given a special place in creation. The first creation story in Genesis (1—2:4a) puts it this way (1:26 NRSV):

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’

That word “dominion” has been a source of trouble for us in understanding what our role is in God’s good creation. We have not always been good stewards of God’s good creation. Stewardship is perhaps a better word to use for our role in creation because it does not tempt us to “lord it over” creation. Stewards are called to manage the resources of the household for the benefit of the household.

Finally, Christian theology says that God’s creative activity continues (creation continuo). When we recognise the good stewardship of the environment by someone, we are honouring something of the nature of who God is and who we are in God as part of God’s continuing good creation.

Love

Sometimes I think that the four letter word that should really be banned from the English language is LOVE. The word gets used in so many different, inappropriate ways. It is used in the most wishy-washy fuzzy sense that it loses all meaning. It is used so lightly that some people find it possible to profess their undying love for someone even as they are sticking the proverbial knife in that person’s back. It is used to humiliate others as greater and greater demands are required in its name. It is used to force people to stay in physically and emotionally violent situations; and it used to justify the breaking up of stable families. The word “love” is used to justify, manipulate and perpetuate some of the most painful, useless, exploitative and even horrific acts which the human race has ever managed to perpetrate. There seems good reason for banning it.

And yet in the midst of all this we dare to say: God is love. We dare to hear Jesus' commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. What is it that we can say then that love is? How shall we define love in a world in which that word is so misused?

The kind of love which Jesus talks about is an unpopular type because it threatens people's worldview and people's power-bases. The kind of obedience in love which Jesus demands leads to real and painful consequences. Jesus' commandment is not given lightly, nor is it an easy one. It demands deep commitment and plenty of endurance. It is given because for Jesus we are not servants but friends, companions on the hard road on which he travelled and still travels with us.

I have a very old poster with a picture of a much-loved and much-worn Teddy Bear seated in an old wooden chair. There are places where the bear’s seams have needed to be re-done and they have been done by hand in big child-like stitches. There are places where the stuffing protrudes through these repairs. The material is worn. It no longer carries all its fur. The bear only has one button eye left; and in the space where the other should be there is more stitching… in the shape of a cross. The caption says:

Learn to listen like a Teddy Bear
With ears open and mouth closed tight.
Learn to forgive like a Teddy Bear
With heart open, not caring who is right.
Learn to love like a Teddy Bear
With arms open and imperfect eyesight.

For me, this poster captures something of the kind of love that Jesus enacts. It is a love that brings with it hard decisions and hard actions that leave us worn-out and wounded in places. It's not the kind of love that leaves you with a feeling of self-satisfaction but more often with the recognition that although you have loved as much as you are able, there is still room for more love to be given and received. It's the kind of love that lead Kahlil Gibran to write in this book The Prophet: “For even as love crowns you so shall love crucify you.”

Jesus, as a Mother

What are your favourite images or metaphors for Jesus? There are plenty of them in the Bible and in the history of Christian thought. Last week, we focussed on the Good Shepherd.

One unusual though persistent image has been that of Jesus as mother. We find it in Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37; cf. Luke 13:34). It is present in the image of Jesus as the mother pelican used by the early church—feeding her children with her body. And it is present in a very beautiful prayer from one of the most significant theologians in Christian history—Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109). It was Anselm who said that theology (God-talk) is “faith seeking understanding”.

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you;
you are gentle with us
as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement.
You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us
and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying, we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labour
we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness;
through your gentleness, we find comfort in fear.
Your warmth gives life to the dead,
your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy, heal us;
in your love and tenderness, remake us.
In your compassion, bring grace and forgiveness,
for the beauty of heaven, may your love prepare us.

Abide in Me

Year B Easter 5 - Sermon - Armidale Uniting Church

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide:
the darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide:
when other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
help of the helpless, O abide with me.

[Henry Francis Lyte 1793–1847 alt. Reproduced with permission Together in Song 586]

Abide with me. It’s a powerful hymn: a plea for God’s presence in the transitions of life, and particularly in the transition from mortal life to eternal life. Rightly, it’s a popular hymn for use at funerals; and, of course, it is used at most Anzac Day services. There are several stories about its origin. Henry Lyte probably wrote the words at the time of the ending of his active ministry; and William Monk, the tune Eventide, after the death of his first child, a daughter, at the age of 3. According to Monk’s widow, they were “watching the beauty of a sunset” together at this “time of great sorrow” and Monk wrote the tune as twilight fell (Companion to Together in Song). Abide with me, O God—be with me, stay with me, watch with me, O God. It’s a hymn of great comfort—a powerful plea for strength.
But that’s not the abiding that our Gospel reading for today is concerned with. The Gospel reading for today is not our plea to God to abide with us; but Jesus’ plea to us to abide in him: “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Abide in me as I abide in you. I’m already in you, with you, around you; now tell me where you are and, more than that, live it.

And the image used for abiding in Christ is a powerful one: the vine and the branches. The vine is one of the great biblical symbols for Israel. It occurs frequently in the writings of the Prophets and in the Psalms. Isaiah says, “Israel is the vineyard of the Lord Almighty; the people of Judah are the vines [God] planted” (Is. 5:7 TEV); Ezekiel, “Your mother was like a grapevine planted near a stream” (Ezek. 19:10 TEV); Hosea, “The people of Israel were like a grapevine that was full of grapes” (Hos. 10:1 TEV); and Psalm 80, “You brought a grapevine out of Egypt; you drove out other nations and planted it in their land” (Ps. 80:8 TEV). Jeremiah has God saying, “I planted you like a choice vine from the best seed” (Jer. 2:21 TEV).

And now here in the Gospel of John, Jesus says: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.” Now I’m imagining that this was a pretty provocative statement in its time. “I am”—you’ll recall that that’s code for God, for Yahweh, the great I am who I am, the great I was who I was, the great I will be who I will be. And Jesus is equating himself with the vine, the real Israel, the real people of God, God’s chosen ones; and simultaneously with God’s very self. In this very short statement, the locus of the realm of God is shifted from a chosen nation to God’s very self and to God’s chosen and sent one, Jesus. God is the vine, God in Christ is the vine and the people of Israel, the emerging Church, are merely branches—branches which should bear fruit, must bear fruit if they are really a part of the vine—if they are really abiding in Christ, and branches which are subject to pruning. Abide in me because this is who you are; if you do not abide in me you are nothing and you will produce nothing.

It’s a fairly forthright passage—a clear call to right relationship with God; and when the context of the vine passages from the Hebrew Scriptures are taken into account, it’s a fairly clear warning against losing touch with the vine. Isaiah’s “vineyard of the Lord Almighty” was “expected… to do what was right, but their victims cried out for justice” (Isaiah 5:7 TEV). Ezekiel’s grapevine was uprooted and thrown to the ground (Ezek. 9:10, 12 TEV). Hosea’s “grapevine that was full of grapes” turned out to be a “people whose hearts are deceitful” (Hos. 10:1,2 TEV). And the Psalmists “a grapevine out of Egypt” was “set … on fire and cut … down” (Ps. 80:8, 16 TEV). Even Jeremiah has God saying to the “choice vine from the best seed”: “look what you have become! You are like a rotten, worthless vine (Jer. 2:21 TEV).

The passage in the Gospel of John where Jesus affirms himself as the “true vine” shifts the whole frame of reference. No longer is it the people as the grapevine who must bear fruit on their own; but rather the people are called simply to abide (that is, to tabernacle, to tent, to dwell, to live) in the one true vine, the living God, the God made present in Jesus; and, by abiding in that vine, to bear much fruit.

And this image of abiding is a powerful one. The branches abide in the vine. Now I ask you where does the vine begin and the branches end. This is a very close relationship—a symbiotic relationship—an intimate dwelling together of very different organisms—God the great Creator and the people of God, the created ones; Jesus the great Redeemer and the Redeemed Ones, the ones who cannot redeem themselves and who apart from Christ are nothing. Without Christ we are nothing; and yet as part of Christ we are integral—we are Christ’s body.

It is interesting that Ezekiel connects the imagery of the grapevine with the imagery of motherhood. The relationship depicted between Christ and the disciples of Christ is depicted as being as close as that between a mother and the child in her womb, joined by an umbilical cord and surrounded with her very body—literally dwelling inside, tabernacling with Christ. You can’t get much closer than that; and yet this is what Jesus invites of us, demands of us; what discipleship requires of us—simply that we abide, we tabernacle, we dwell in Christ; and by that dwelling bear much fruit.

We are reminded of this intimate imagery, this demanding call to dwell, every time we celebrate the meal of Christ—every time we are invited to the table to share in the body of Christ as the body of Christ—we are reminded that we are called to abide in Christ, to live in Christ, to be the branches of the true vine, integral to the vine and thereby to bear the fruit which the vine will and must bear. As branches we have sprung from the vine and through the vine we are fed. If we do not remain connected, we will wither and die; but if we do remain a part of the vine, the promise is that we shall bear much fruit to the glory of God. And all this comes to us from Christ the true vine and from God the vinedresser.