Sermon - Easter 6 - A
Given at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Brentwood CA
By Rev. Valerie Hart
May 12, 1996
What
beautiful and comforting words “Abide in me as I abide in you.” What a
wonderful relationship we have with Christ, abiding in his love. How incredible
to let ourselves experience abiding in that love. And Christ tells us that He
is the vine, the source of nurturance, of food and water, of all that is
necessary for the branch to grow and bear fruit. And we are the branches. We
are fed by Him, nourished by him. An infinite source of love and support. How incredible, how comforting, what
security. To abide in his love, to be nurtured as the vine nurtures the branch.
Julian
of Norwich, the 14th century Anglican mystic who we heard about on Monday night
compares Christ’s love to mother love. Just as a mother holds us and supports
us, so Christ surrounds and supports us. Just as before birth the baby is
totally and physically abiding in the mother, so we abide in Christ. Just as
the mother supplies all the newborn infants needs, we as the branches on the
vine receive all that we need from God through Christ. Or as Paul puts it, “In
him we live and move and have our being.”
Such
a sense of love and support. This God of ours, through Christ, holds us,
nurtures us as a mother would. This relationship is one of total love and
giving on the part of God. Jesus even says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for
whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” What comforting words. What
Good News, to know that we are so totally and completely loved and supported.
Such courage and strength it gives us, to know, as Julian said, “All will be
well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” This
passage from John is one of the most supportive and beautiful in the Bible.
And
there is another theme that is also entwined in this passage. Along with the nurture and support
there is the theme of bearing fruit. Not only are we to abide in Christ as the
branch abides in the vine, but we are also called to bear fruit.
When
my mother was in town a few weeks ago, we went to visit her relatives in
Cloverdale. She told me of when she was a girl traveling across country in the
train to visit her grandfather, my great grandfather, who owned vineyards in
the area. She told of helping them one day to graft new shoots onto the vines.
The roots were strong and sturdy, and the grower would choose shoots that he
felt would eventually bear fruit. When the shoots were first grafted on, they
were carefully cared for, to make sure that they could take hold. And sometimes
it would be several years before the shoots would actually bear fruit. There
was a sense of faith that it would take hold and bear fruit. That it was worth
all the effort and support and care at the beginning, for the fruit that would eventually
arise.
In
the same way, little is expected of us when we first come to Christ. We are
like small shoots grafted onto the root. The first step is for the shoot to
take hold, to develop the relationship with the vine that is necessary for the
branch to be nurtured and supported. But eventually, any healthy branch will
bear fruit.
What
would it mean to bear fruit as a follower of Christ? Let’s see, all fruits have
within them a seed. And that seed is surround by beautiful, rich, luscious fruit
that is bursting with nourishing pulp that makes it attractive to people, so that they
will eat of it, enjoy it, be fed, and
nurtured with the hope that the seed will
take hold somewhere. So it is with the fruit that Christ wants us to bear. We,
nurtured by the love that flows from the vine, bear the fruits of joy and
service to others that makes it so attractive that others want to be nourished as we
are, so that seed of Christ’s abounding love can take hold in others.
Christ
never says or implies that it is enough just to receive all the gifts that he
showers upon us. Always he speaks of sharing that which we have received with
others. Christianity is not only about coming to church to receive support and
love, but to prepare us to give support and love to others. As the Eucharist
Prayer C states “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for
strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” Christ is the vine, the source
of everlasting nurture and love, but for a purpose, that the vine can grow,
that the Kingdom of God may become more and more manifest on the earth. That all
people may hear of the good news of God’s love
We
as Christians are called to go forth and share the Good News of Christ’s love.
Just as a child is always loved and supported by the mother, there comes a time
when it is expected that the grown up child will go out into the world and make
a contribution. Make a difference in the lives of those it touches. That is
part of how the child shares the love for the mother, by doing things that the
mother would want to see, by becoming all that he or she can be. The cycle of parental love is
complete when the children become parents themselves and love their children,
sharing and expanding the love that they received.
Jesus
says, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my
disciples. He implies here that we do not fully become disciples until we begin
to bear fruit. The full journey to discipleship includes reaching out to others
to share what we have found. And even those who bear fruit continue to be pruned
continue to be encouraged to bear more. Pruning can be quite uncomfortable sometimes.
We continue to be stretched and tested and pushed to give more to share more,
to love more.
We
can also think of the individual churches as branches on the one vine of the
body of Christ. Always they must abide in Christ, they cannot bear fruit unless
they abide in the love of Christ. Each church gets its strength and its nurture from the
one vine. And each is expected to bear fruit. To plant seeds of Christ’s love in
others. To serve the less fortunate, to speak the Good News, to work
toward the expansion of the kingdom.
Today
St. Alban’s is at a crossroads. We have many buds developing toward mature
fruit. We have individuals who want to truly expand our ministry to the community. One would
like to start a program of lunches for the elderly of our neighborhood; another
wants to develop a grant to work with middle school students after school. We
have an enthusiastic leader for our Sunday School program who is ready and
willing to develop a program to not only serve our own children, but also bring
other youngster to the love of Christ. We are in an area that is growing at an
incredible rate. There are so many people who need to hear Christ’s message of
love. There are so many people who are in need of our love. People who are lonely, left behind by the system. People who do not feel connected to any vine, people
who desperately need nurture and love. There is so much potential for
the Episcopal Church in this area. There is so much we can do together. People
are hungry for the fruits that we can share. It is an exciting time to be part
of the church in Brentwood. There is so much that I feel, and others in the congregation
feel,
Christ is calling us to be, to become.
And
we are at a crisis point. As you may remember,
in January the Bishop’s Committee
presented a budget to the congregation that was a deficit budget. It was clear
that either additional pledging or fund raising would be essential this year.
Well, our deficit is catching up with us,
and unlike the federal government, we
can’t just issue more money. I’ll leave it to the Bishop’s Committee
members to share the details, but financially we are at a crisis point.
In
Chinese the character for crisis is the same as the character for opportunity.
Within each crisis lies opportunity. St. Alban’s now has the opportunity to
really consider together what our vision is and how we are to achieve it. We are being asked to bear fruit. We are being asked, for each of us individually as well as collectively, to consider what our commitment
is to doing the work of Christ in the Delta.
On
the surface this looks to be a financial issue, but in actuality it is
a spiritual issue. (Leave it to your
priest to see the spiritual side of everything.). We have talked of stewardship, of time, talent and treasure. There are many
here who give deeply of all three, but right now we are confronted with the need to give more. Are we ready to make supporting the work of Christ
our first priority? Do we give of our first fruits? Or do we give of what’s
left over. Do pay all the other bills first and then consider what we can do for the church, or have we made a
pledge based on a percentage of our income that we pay as our first bill each
month.
I
know, as do the members of the bishop’s committee, that none of us have a lot left over at the end of the month - most of us don’t have anything left after we pay all
our bills. We are all trying to live in
an expensive part of the world, struggling to make ends meet. That is the
financial perspective. But from the spiritual perspective, we are nurtured by
the great endless vine who has promised that when we abide in Him and His words abide in us we will get what we need. When we feel drained, burned
out by giving of our time, stretched in
the giving of our treasure must remember that we have the infinite endless source to drink from. If the branch
looked only at what it had it would never dare to bear fruit,
because then it would run out of moisture, but the branch does not, can
not, live on its own. It receives from the vine more than enough moisture to live and
to bear abundant fruit. We need to look not at our own limited resources, but
at the great abundance of the creator in whom we live and move and have our
being. We then realize that we can bear fruit, and more fruit, and bear it
abundantly and rather than feeling drained we will feel even more abundantly
nourished.
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