5/6/12
Fifth Sunday of Easter
“Fruit of the Vine”
Acts 8:26-40
John 15:1-8
Last week the Gospel of John provided us with a really good metaphor for our relationship with Jesus and with each other as Christians. We talked about how Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are his sheep. And we were challenged by the scripture to accept the others that Jesus brings into the fold as well as to follow in his example and become good shepherds ourselves.
This week we have another great metaphor for our relationship to Jesus and to one another. Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower… I am the vine, you are the branches.” I love this metaphor because it’s so… organic. Grape vines grow and climb and spread and send out these little branches that twist and entwine. It’s one of those mysterious things that happens so slowly that you can’t tell it’s happening when you’re watching, but when you turn your back for a while, suddenly it’s just everywhere.
Well in the grand scheme of things, that’s what healthy Christian communities are like. Everyone is all entwined together in communities that grow and spread and branch out into the world…
Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. This goes way beyond the idea of Jesus protecting his sheep, who hear his voice and follow him. If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, then we are deeply, profoundly—I mean we are completely dependent on Jesus for life. I suppose it’s possible to have a branch all entwined with the other braches without it being attached to the vine any more, but that branch wouldn’t be getting any nutrients, right? It would die.
Now, of course I’m not saying that people who don’t believe in Jesus are zombies or something. But I do believe that Christian communities—and I mean churches, when I say that. I do believe that churches sometimes cut themselves off from the vine and wither and eventually die. And I believe that sometimes people withdraw from their churches in hurt or anger and they let that hurt and anger eat them up inside rather than working the problem out or finding a new church—and so they die inside a little.
Jesus said, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” I think it’s important to remember that if we really abide—I mean if we really eat, drink, breathe and live in Jesus—then we get all entwined with each other. We get all wrapped up in each other. We get so close to each other that it’s hard to tell where one branch ends and the other begins. I’m telling you that if you get close enough to Jesus, all the places where your brothers and sisters in Christ seem different simply don’t matter anymore.
One of my favorite examples of what I’m trying to tell you here is found in the Book of Acts. It’s the story we heard earlier this morning, where an angel went to Philip and said, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court treasurer of the queen of the Ethiopians.
Now, I have to ask, how many of you know what a eunuch is? Ok, how many of you know the difference between a stallion and a gelding? Ok, what you’re thinking right now? That’s right. If you’re lost, come ask me later.
So, this is important because in the ancient Jewish law—check out Deuteronomy 23:1 if you want to see for yourself—but in Jewish law eunuchs were not allowed to be admitted into the assembly of the LORD. Keep that in the back of your mind for a minute, I’ll come right back to it.
Now this eunuch had come to Jerusalem to worship and was riding home in his chariot. And as he was riding, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" The eunuch replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" So he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.
Now the passage he was reading says, "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth."
And the eunuch asked Philip, "Is Isaiah talking about himself, or someone else?" So Philip started with this scripture and proclaimed to the eunuch the good news about Jesus. Then they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look! What is to prevent me from being baptized?"
Well, Philip could have said to the eunuch, “Look, you seem like a nice enough guy, but you’re a eunuch, and there’s this one verse in Deuteronomy that says that eunuchs don’t get to be full members of the church. Sorry. You’re just too different.”
But then again, he’d just been teaching from Isaiah, which says, “thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
In other words, Isaiah is saying that there are more important ways to please God than simply making babies, and if eunuchs do those things, they’ll be rewarded in other ways. Philip, of course, not only knew what Isaiah had to say about eunuchs, but also would have remembered the very core teachings of Jesus—that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And that there is a second commandment which is similar—love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said that everything the Jewish law and all the prophets have to teach us is based on those two commandments.
Philip recognized that the eunuch was doing the things that please God. He recognized that the eunuch was his neighbor. And so when they come to the water and the eunuch asks if there’s anything to keep him from being baptized, Philip knows—he knows—that there’s absolutely nothing keeping that eunuch from being a good Christian. So they stop the chariot, and both of them go down into the water, and Philip baptizes the eunuch.
Jesus is the vine. Philip abides in Jesus. And now the eunuch abides in Jesus. They are both branches, even though they are very different in some very obvious ways. Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. Jesus said, “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit…”
Much fruit! Isn’t that exciting? I think that we all crave few things as much as we crave being fruitful. As uncomfortable as it is to preach about a eunuch, I have to admit that I want the kind of fruit Philip bore—one more member of the church gathered in, one more branch entwined with the vine—that’s good stuff right there.
I believe that we are blessed to be members of the United Church of Christ, because we can claim a great history of bearing some wonderful fruit. For example, did you know that Zion UCC of Allentown once saved the Liberty Bell? It’s true! During the American Revolution the British occupied Philadelphia and planned to melt the bell down to make cannon. But by the time they got to it the bell had been removed and hidden—under the floorboards of Zion Reformed Church in Allentown, which is now Zion UCC.
Or did you know that a Congregational minister named Joshua Leavitt was ordained at 1st Congregational Church of Stratford, Connecticut then went on to work for the freedom of the escaped slaves from the Amistad and edited the famous abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator?
Or did you know that the serenity prayer, “"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other," came from a sermon given by Evangelical and Reformed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr?
Or did you know that the United Church of Christ once involved in Federal court case instigated by the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.? It’s true! Southern television stations imposed a news blackout on the civil rights movement, and Martin Luther King Jr. asked us to intervene. Everett Parker of the UCC’s Office of Communication organized churches and won a court ruling that the airwaves are public, not private property. That decision lead to a proliferation of people of color in television studios and newsrooms.
Now, I’m not telling you all these things because I’m a cheerleader for the United Church of Christ—although I suppose that’s true, too. I’m telling you these things because they seem like exciting good fruit to me.
Or let me put it the way Kathryn Matthews Huey, who is on the Congregational Vitality and Discipleship Ministry Team on the national level of the UCC, when she writes:
“The question for the church today is whether we find ourselves speaking and acting a word contrary to the "comfortable" within us and around us, where we face together, not alone, the forces arrayed against justice and mercy. What would happen if our congregations spent less time talking and worrying and working on our survival and more time on putting ourselves in the line of fire…”Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. And when we abide in Jesus and Jesus abides in us we get in the line of fire to bear good fruit. Why? Because the best fruit is the fruit closest to the vine, where the nutrients are more concentrated. I’m trying to tell you that the closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to God, as we live in Jesus and Jesus lives in us, then we end up wanting what God wants.
The truth is that on my own, I couldn’t accomplish much of anything. But Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. “This is really good news for us, no matter how much it flies in the face of everything we're told about success and measuring up. It's not up to us to dig deep down inside and make happen what needs to happen.” Together we can accomplish great things.
All we have to do is get closer to the vine.
Amen.
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